lol, yes, this series was a warts ‘n’ all portrayal of the US and you might conclude that the warts have been given too much prominence but I don’t remember Mr Schama ever claiming that Britain or Europe was any better, indeed his ‘History of Britain’ series was made in a similar tone, wars and bigotry make more exciting television than people being nice to each other.
You guys just need to lighten up a bit, even on the ‘anti-american’ BBC you can find plenty of positive portrayals of the US if you want to look for them (Carol Gould prefers to look out for the more negative stuff), the recent Stephen Fry series was a good example, he seemed to like most of the places he went to and portrayed the people he met sympathetically.
If I tilt my ear to the west and listen closely I can hear the sound of thousands of knees jerking furiously as commenters descend onto their keyboards ready to condemn all 700 million Europeans as evil jew-killing commie anti-american leftist losers who spit on black people and keep immigrants in ghettoes simply because Simon Schama made a TV programme they didn’t like (even though they haven’t seen it).
Such is the world though, ho hum.
