A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Recently, novelist Harry Turtledove, the acclaimed author of Ruled Britannia, The Guns of the South, and many other alternate history stories, shared a whimsical Tweet with his followers which he titled #70sChristmasList: Harvest gold refrigerator Avocado stove Betamax Quadraphonic sound system English Leather, or maybe Brut Cargo pants for the guys Hot pants for the women Platform shoes A leisure suit A case of Miller Lite Or of US-brewed (aka ruined) Löwenbräu Taking inspiration from Mr. Turtledove and his amusing Tweet, I decided that I'd revisit the past four decades' worth of Christmases past and share my typical wish lists for each, starting with the 1970s and ending with the 2010s.  As I've pointed out in my previous posts in this series, these aren't real Christmas lists that I wrote and passed around. Indeed, I often bought most of the items herein, although on occasion I did get a few of them as presents during the holidays or for my birthday.  ...

Photo Credit: Pixabay What's wrong with the Republican Party in the 21st Century? I mean, seriously, people. I've been around long enough to see the GOP, the supposedly grown up and sober party that allegedly promotes civilized behavior and "upholding the rule of law" that elected Richard M. Nixon to the Presidency 51 years ago morph into the "winning at all costs" wild bunch that supports Donald J. Trump in 2019. Well, if one cares to examine the historical record, the Party of Lincoln has been taking the nation to oblivion for a long time, even though pinpointing the exact era of American history in which Republicanism lost its way is difficult. In my lifetime, though, I'd say that the madness that has led us to Trumpism and its bizarre, MAGA cap-wearing cult of personality began in the mid-1960s with the aforementioned 1968 Presidential race. That campaign season, which took place during a tumultuous year that included the Tet Offensive in V...

Why was Nixon impeachable but somehow Trump isn't? The times, they have a-changed since the 1970s. There are various reasons as to why Richard M. Nixon was easier to consider impeachable in the 1970s and Donald J. Trump seems to be “untouchable.” The biggest factor is, of course, the differences in the political environment in which both Administrations existed. Nixon was elected in 1968 and took the Presidential oath of office on January 20, 1969, and was re-elected in November of 1972 and managed to stay in office until he resigned on August 9, 1974. Trump was elected in November 2016 in a vastly different electoral and cultural environment. Nixon’s Presidency took place at a time when the Internet was not quite a thing; a proto-Internet existed in 1969, but it was essentially limited to the federal government and academia. The Vietnam War and its divisiveness were sowing the seeds of social discord that made Trumpism possible. The war - which America was losing an...

(C) 2009 Picador Books In 1989, when Rick Atkinson was on a leave of absence from his job as   a staff writer at the Washington Post, Houghton Mifflin published his first work of military history, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of the West Point Class of 1966. Based on a series of interviews with three West Point graduates of the titular Class of ’66, The Long Gray Line earned rave reviews for its intimate and often painful account of a handful of American boys who entered the U.S. Military Academy, endured the brutal hazing and harsh discipline of cadet life, and graduated during the Johnson Administration’s rapid escalation of the Vietnam War. James Salter, the Post’s book critic at the time, hailed The Long Gray Line as being “enormously rich in detail and written with a novelist’s brilliance.” Another contemporary reviewer, writing in Business Week, called Atkinson’s first major work of military history “the best book out of Vietnam to date." Two decades...

(C) 2017 Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), Florentine Films, and PBS. (Photo Credit: PBS.org) On September 15, 2017, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) released The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick – The Soundtrack, a 2-CD album that features 38 of the 120 music tracks used in the 10-part, 18-hour documentary that premiered two days later on the 300-member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Per the press release from UMe, the album complemented Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Vietnam War: The Original Score, which features 90 minutes’ worth of instrumental music composed for the most in-depth exploration of the Vietnam War yet filmed. According to the UMe public relations staff’s press release issued last August: Sarah Botstein, the senior producer on the film, said, "We are indebted to a great number of musicians, their families, agents, lawyers, technicians and others, all of whom came together to make it possible for our f...

The World at War Last Days in Vietnam The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns Vietnam: A Television History The War: A Ken Burns Film Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns The Cold War Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick Victory at Sea The West: A Film by Stephen Ives A Film by Ken Burns: The Roosevelts: An Intimate History Empire of Dreams: The Making of the  Star Wars  Trilogy The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick The Central Park Five: A Film by Ken Burns The American Experience: Battle of the Bulge

Episode Ten: The Weight of Memory (March 1973-Onward) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick While the Watergate scandal rivets Americans' attention and forces President Nixon to resign, the Vietnamese continue to savage one another in a brutal civil war. When hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese troops pour into the South, Saigon descends rapidly into chaos and collapses. For the next forty years, Americans and Vietnamese from all sides search for healing and reconciliation.  On September 28, 2017, "The Weight of Memory (March 1973-Onward)" premiered on the 300 or so affiliates of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Written by historian Geoffrey C. Ward and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, it was the tenth and final episode of The Vietnam War, an 18-hour-long examination of "one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history." Ten years in the making,  The Vietnam ...