Once Again Oliver Stone Hypes his New TV Documentary: Time to Tell CBS to Cancel It
A few years ago, I wrote on these pages about a forthcoming documentary series for Showtime, produced and directed by Oliver Stone and co-authored by American University left-wing historian Peter Kuznick. You can find what I wrote here and here. I also took Stone on about this project in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and you can also look at my op-ed.
Now, in an interview appearing in the January issue of Rock Cellar Magazine, Stone announces that the 10 part series will air on the network this coming May, and in late April, the companion book written by Stone and Kuznick will be published by Gallery Books, the same publisher that ironically published Dick Cheney’s memoir.
Now, Stone argues this history documentary will be “a liberal progressive history of the U.S.” Titled The Untold History of the United States, the information Stone offers us about it first shows how disingenuous the title is. Rather than never being told before — at least the title was changed from the first version that it would be the “unknown” history — it is a repeat of a very old and now stale leftist version of our past that dates not from the work of the late Howard Zinn, but from the old CPUSA “scholars” like the late Herbert Aptheker and the secret KGB agent and American Communist activist Carl Marzani, who in the early1950s wrote a book titled We Can Be Friends, the very first “Cold War revisionist” account that blamed the then-ongoing Cold War not on the aggressive policy of Joseph Stalin, but on American imperialism and the warlike anti-Soviet policy of the “fascist” president, Harry S. Truman.
Here is Stone’s message, in his own words:
The Cold War itself. The whole concept we grew up with in school is that we have been aggressed by the Soviets since World War II; that they started the Cold War, and we responded. We deal with that very in depth, and it’s important because it sets up the mindset that has infected America since then.
Stone continues to say that the U.S. thought “we had to respond to communism because it was seeking to dominate the world. I think that’s a very important thing to overcome.”
To Stone, the well-grounded view that John Gaddis spelled out so thoroughly in his 1998 book Now We Know: Rethinking Cold War History (which I reviewed here) in which Gaddis wrote that “Once Stalin wound up at the top in Moscow, and once it was clear his state would survive the war, then it looks equally clear that there was going to be a Cold War whatever the West did,” appears nowhere in Stone’s repertoire of all those books he claims to have read for his series.
In fact, Gaddis wrote his book as a corrective not only to his own earlier thinking, but to all those who were mis-educated in precisely the kind of history Oliver Stone is again going to present to us. Most Americans who have gone to college from the 1960s on have learned precisely the kind of history Stone is presenting — the Cold War revisionist account that is only now beginning to be challenged by writers like Gaddis and the Notre Dame University historian, Wilson B. Miscamble.
Among other surprises in Stone’s documentary, he reveals, is the portrayal of FDR’s first Vice-President and then Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace, whom he says “emerges as one of the unsung, forgotten heroes of our history.” Again, for decades, Wallace has not only not been forgotten, but has been continually resurrected by the American fellow-travelers of Communism as a hero. In 2000, we had John C. Culver and John Hyde’s American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (which I reviewed for TNR), in 1973 the Communist historian Norman J. Markowitz’s The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century:Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, and in 1976 Richard J. Walton’s Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War, all of which argue precisely what Stone claims is going to be a new argument in his documentary. Most recently, we had the documentary about Pete Seeger shown on PBS, filmmaker Jim Brown’s Pete Seeger:The Power of Song, which goes out of its way to treat Wallace as one of America’s great unsung heroes.
“the same publisher that ironically published Dick Cheney’s memoir.”
The same publisher which, coincidentally, published Dick Cheney’s memoir? Or did the publisher publish Dick Cheney’s memoir in a paradoxical or deliberately dissembling way? The publisher, perhaps, didn’t believe any of Mr Cheney’s claims but thought it would be amusing to see how many readers were taken in, or wittily used ink which will disappear any day now?
Well spotted! Not only is “ironically” in there, but it has no commas before and aft. An odd sentence indeed.
Personally, I would go with “interestingly enough” instead of “coincidentally.”
At the end of WW II America had an incredibly rapid demobilization of its troops in Europe; Stalin kept what he could and those countries only finally shed occupation by the Soviet Union when they revolted.
That is not an argument that Roosevelt and Stalin had anything in common on this issue or that America was an imperialist entity; quite the opposite.
Stone was at one time a really bright filmmaker but when he got into his Roswell mode it all fell apart, starting with the Kennedy film I guess. Stone had a really nice run from ’86 to ’91 and it’s been all downhill since.
One wonders when the Left will get tired of its Marx-based Critical Pedagogy which portrays success as racist, moral failure and failure as nobility incapable of bigotry; I can get more nuanced views about human nature from The Flintstones and I mean that quite literally.
Like a lot of people, when they become more senior, they tend to drift off into another dimension.
Such is most likely the case for Mr Grassy Know-it-all.
At the end of WW II America had an incredibly rapid demobilization of its troops in Europe; Stalin kept what he could and those countries only finally shed occupation by the Soviet Union when they revolted.
Why do people put so much attention to the post-WWII world? It is as if the Soviet Union was not expansive and imperialist from its very inception. Already in the early 1920-s the Communist International was created exactly for the purpose of subversion and destabilization of governments abroad. It is exactly then the Communist revolution/coup was sponsored and organized by commies in Germany. CPUSA was not the only Communist party run from Moscow via the International, there were much more of them: in France, Germany, etc. Kho-Chi-Minh was a Communist International officer. A lot of people in the West were soviet spies.
The Jihadists & friends are real enemies, and Iran (like Afghanistan) is a dangerously backward society. Rest assured though, Mr. Stone may actually know something about Iran’s ridiculous government.
yes, we have real enemies. dealing with them in a real way has been to the world’s great benefit of having an american superpower.
the problem with oliver stone or any of this fake history is that truth gets mixed in with junk thinking and that is how fakery becomes a commonly held belief. now that we have so many outlets for opinion it’s worse than it could ever have been.
The Untrue History of the U.S.
Stoner really needs to go away. He’s been a delusional goofball since El-Puerco-Lips Now
You’re thinking of Platoon. Apocalypse Now was produced and directed by Coppola.
Stone had nothing to do with Apocalypse Now; that was John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola. His was Platoon.
Wouldn’t you just LOVE to see a voluntary mass migration of the more obnoxious lefties to Cuba or Venezuela, or some other worker’s paradise? Oliver Stone and Barbara Walters could go to Cuba to be “free” (she once posited the idea that “if literacy rates are any measure of freedom, Cuba is one of the freeest nations on Earth”). They should take Joy Behar with them. Sean Penn could go to Venezuela and live in the castle with his buddy, the new Emperor Hugo. That would be poetic justice on a grand scale. Alex Baldwin of course, would have to go to North Korea, just because Trey Parker has deemed it so. Susan Sarandon would get to work in a worker’s paradise, the FoxConn factory in Shenzhen, China, with Van Jones, Cass Sunstien and Howard Zinn. Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill could live in Gaza, to teach the freedom loving rebels of Palestine how to oppose evil oppressors. And Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn could go (okay not voluntarily, but after being convicted of murder) to the collectivist paradise in Leavenworth Kansas known as the Federal Penitentiary (or better yet, SuperMax in Florence Colorado). The silence following these departures would be pure heaven, and this would probably reduce global warming, too, as less hot air would be needlessly spilled into the atmosphere.
Do you have this dream often?
What a great dream! Can we send many in the current administration in a similar direction in Nov?
Communists were always good at propaganda. Stone proves the point. What I could never understand is why do people like that live here? If we are so very horrible, then go live in Cuba. I’m sure the Castro brothers would love having him there. Gucci leftists like this always gave me a swift pain. I guess I’ll do what I did to these people when we were actually living throught the Cold War, and that is just ignore them. I just hope some idiot teachers in high schools or colleges don’t use this tripe to infect the minds of young kids. But you know they will, and kids will eat it up with a spoon, especially if they think they’re getting school credit for it.
Perhaps the best documentary series ever made for television was The World at War. Kids should watach that to see the real origins of the Cold War.
That and Victory At Sea. I watched both when I was in elementary school when they came on late at night on weekends if mom would let me stay up.
Will Michelle Obama be narrating alone, or will it be both Michelle and Nancy Pelosi?
But don’t ever question their patriotism…
Wallace was not FDR’s first Vice-President, but his second. John Garner was his first. Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and is responsible for the USDA’s heavy hand on agriculture policy and production. The plans he and FDR made to “adjust” the crisis in the farm states led to the Wickard v. Filburn commerce clause decision that gave the federal government nearly complete power to regulate commerce, even over one as Wickard who raised more grain than allowed by the federal plan, intending to use it on his own farm rather than sell it, because it made up the “interstate market” the national supply and demand curve the USDA was attempting to manage. Of course Wallace is an “unsung” hero of the progressives and Stone’s ilk.
‘Now, Stone argues this history documentary will be “a liberal progressive history of the U.S.”’
So, it’s a comedy?
“So, it’s a comedy?” no more like a tradedy!
But they see it as the inverse. Liberals see everything upside down and the truth means nothing, it is all about feelings.
No, it passed comedy and went straight to farce.
CBS will cancel it if they can’t sell commercials to show it, unless they can’t buy any other filler for dirt cheap. They can’t be expected to actually produce something of their own anymore. That would be too much like actual work and who do they have that would try any of that? I saw Dan Rather on the tube tonight and I still hate CBS, so my opinion is probably biased.
It’s on showtime; no commercials. They’ll only cancel it if they see that it may lose them subscribers. The sad thing is that other good shows on the same network may save it by keeping viewers subscribing to the network.
We caused the Soviets to violently suppress all the nations of Eastern Europe, and later suppress peoples’ revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We caused North Korea to invade South Korea. We provoked the North Vietnamese into invading South Vietnam. We made the Soviets target Western Europe with SS-20’s so they would look real bad. And now Stone has uncovered even more of our crimes against humanity. The guy’s a genius.
I remember doing all that stuff. I also remember how we made Hitler invade all those countries and exterminate all those Jews even though he didn’t really want to.
Pfft. The Soviet Bear was misunderstood and just wanted to give everyone a big hug? Pull the other one.
FDR thought Stalin just wanted peace and as my grandfather (channelling Winston Churchill) quipped me to me ‘Yes, a piece of Poland, a piece of Czechoslovakia etc etc etc’.
OK, now I remember – this is the old “sympathy for Hitler and Stalin” thing he was on about. “Secret” and “Unknown” History? God, please spare us.
What we have here is another liberal Hollywood airhead who decides that because he is ignorant of history, everyone else is, too. Furthermore, if he was unaware of certain unpleasant facts of history it means they were carefully hidden from him – and everyone else – by powerful people with sinister motives. And so it’s up to him, the heroic leftist, to reveal the Truth to the ignorant masses. The result, of course, will be the American people’s complete acquiescence in the Progressive agenda.
Trouble is, what he’s peddling aren’t facts. Those are available in any decent public library. No, he’s selling an *interpretation* of facts – the leftist interpretation. That, too, has been widely available for many years to anyone who’s interested. So I’m not sure why Stone thinks he’s dropping a blockbuster, blowing the lid off decades of “official” secrecy and obfuscation.
I must admit that since the implosion of the USSR it is very difficult to bludgeon Liberals with it. The reason being the latest crop of Left Wing Loons was born after the Clown Empire collapsed. Learn from history or hit the Replay.
The left has to keep pushing their lies. If they stop then their whole “big lie” will collapse. Look at everything the left does: push racial stife, envy, tension, agitation, distortion of US history, denigration of America, violence, fear, victimization, victims vs. Americans, the more complete dumbing down of each successive generation and so on in order to get what they want: a marxist America. And now they are at the precipice of victory; the re-election of Dear Leader will complete the hope and change they have sought for nearly 100 years.
Don’t believe me: Take a good look at us. Then as yourself why the left allows or better said foments and supports something corrosive or ruinous to America to happen-OWS, NBP, etc? And yes I said the “left allows” on purpose because if we on the right had the stones, we would have stopped them 70 years ago or at least 50.
So Stone is just doing what the left has to do is asking him to do to help the cause.
“Surprise, surprise. Far Left and Far Right once again come together on behalf of the most extreme and anti-American candidate available.”
I’m in agreement with a lot of what Ron Paul says, but the man is simply incapable of adjusting his ideological tenets to deal with real world situations, and I think he would be an absolute disaster as POTUS…not that he has any chance at all of ever becoming POTUS (fingers crossed).
I’m totally in favor of the idea of American neutrality, and non-involvement in Old World affairs, but not after an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. At that point, isolationism becomes idiocy, and I don’t think Paul is capable of seeing that. He’s basically a 21st century version of Jeanette Rankin. Caveat: He did vote in favor of authorizing military action against Al Qaida, so he’s not quite as crazy as Jeanette…but, he’s too close for comfort.
As for Stone, I don’t care what he says or does, but if he’s going to be honest, he ought to note that all (or most) of the things he hates (Cold War, U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Woody Wilson’s various lunacies) were pretty much 100% the work of liberals and/or Democrats..IOW, the work of guys who think like him.
DS: Cong. Paul said he would never use the military. Please read his mission statement and foreign policy ideas. What he did say is that we should no longer be the world’s policemen. He has said we should protect our borders instead of S. Korea, Germany, and many areas of Africa. He never said he was an isolationist.
Okay so what would you like our president to do with Iran? Be advised that our troops are bone tired, our military machinary are broken and not being refitted in time for another war.
Oh, and while you are fighting Iran who will be supported by Russia, China will no doubt take advantage of our distraction and push for a greater China sphere of infuence….