Good post. I've always been interested in the history of WWII, I'm re-reading Ken Burns' "The War" these days. The best book I have read is David Webster's "Parachute Infantry", he was a good writer who was there at the Normandy and Market Garden airdrops and also did Germany occupation duty. They did him a real disservice in the "Band of Brothers" episode "The Last Patrol", they made him out to be a weasel when he was anything but.

Spielberg is a master storyteller, he's not a documentary filmmaker.

That's why we were given Ken Burns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/opinion/campaign-stops/a-week-for-all-time.html?emc=edit_th_20160617&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=40977923

Golden quote:
"In this week of trial and tragedy, Trump showed us how he would govern — by fear, by intimidation, by lies, by turning American against American, by exhibiting all the empathy of a sociopath. Seal this week. Put it in a time capsule. Teach it. History will remember. But come November, will we?"

By the way, I've stayed out of this extremely boring back and forth. There was nothing to be gained by weighing in. It finally has come to a blessed end, just as this op-ed was published in the New York Times.

So I'll say it again, since this video is my contribution to the Sift and I am claiming final word. I may not be accorded it, but I am claiming it.

It is a stone hard fact that eligible does not equal fit. A brain-damaged accident victim with the right birth certificate, with the right age, is eligible to be president. That person is not fit to be president. This is logic. It just is. You can ignore the crystalline beauty of the fact of this analogy and have a fine time talking around it. Doesn't change the fact that Ken Burns is right, Timothy Egan is right, Mitt Romney, both Bushes, Meg Whitman, and the Republican strategist who is quoted in this op-ed are all right.

Trump is unfit for the Presidency.

Congratulations! Your comment on Ken Burns slams Trump in Stanford Commencement has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Okay. You're right. He can be a politician. He is a politician. A stinking poor one, but since he is running for public office, he is by definition a "politician."

Doesn't change the fact he is unqualified to be President. He knows nothing. He promotes fear-mongering and encourages violence. He says he will do things as president that are clearly unconstitutional and outside his powers (banning Muslims, changing the libel laws so he can gain financially.) He is thin-skinned.

He has just revoked the press credentials of The Washington Post because he didn't like a front page story. The man doesn't understand the three branches of government plus the fourth estate of a free press.

I'm qualified to disqualify him because I am a thinking American who knows some history. Like Ken Burns. Like Mitt Romney.

Trump is a unifier, all right. For the first time in almost eight years, some Republicans are putting their love of country above partisanship. I've never been more proud of everyone who has the courage to tell the truth about Donald Trump.

He is patently unfit to serve our country. He has never done it before. He isn't interested in doing it now.

Who did you see on the list?

Kareem Abdul-Jabar
JJ Abrams
Alan Alda
Christiane Amanpour
Jon Batiste
Big Bird
Cory Booker
Tom Brokaw
Ken Burns
Bill Clinton
Andy Cohen
Francis Collins
Cookie Monster
Bob Costas
Katie Couric
Bryan Cranston
Mark Cuban
Jeff Daniels
Bill DeBlasio
Maureen Dowd
James Franco
Thomas Friedman
Vince Gilligan
Doris Kearns Goodwin
David Gregory
Terry Gross
Mike Huckabee
Arianna Huffington
Dean Kamen
Toby Keith
Henry Kissinger
Nicholas Kristof
Paul Krugman
Alexi Lalas
Cyndi Lauper
David Leonhardt
George Lucas
Yo Yo Ma
Barry Manilow
Senator Claire McCaskill
Tim Meadows
Willie Nelson
Randy Newman
Grover Norquist
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Ric Ocasek
Keith Olbermann
Mandy Patinkin
Stone Phillips
Samantha Power
Pussy Riot
Charlie Rose
Dan Savage
Smaug
Shane Smith
Eliot Spitzer
Gloria Steinem
Jon Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Michael Stipe
Andrew Sullivan
Matt Taibbi
Jeff Tweedy
Neil Degrasse Tyson
Sam Waterston
Elijah Wood

(http://www.vox.com/2014/12/19/7419893/colbert-finale-song)

"This is Ken Burns present, I hope ya enjoys, a watch."

And which one's on crack?

Ah that's right--one of Ken Burns's lesser-known works, I'd forgotten about it.

olbermann has been up ken burns' ass since burns did a baseball documentary.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ashokan farewell, jay ungar' to 'ashokan farewell, jay ungar, ken burns, the civil war, fiddle, violin' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'civil war, animation, map north, south, ashokan farewell, fiddle, violin' to 'civil war, animation, map north, south, ashokan farewell, ken burns, fiddle, violin' - edited by calvados

There's no more Ken Burns intro, but the song belongs back on the sift.

I think most musicologists find the documentary quite lacking, but as a layman's introduction to the early history of jazz it's quite decent.

It's well put together and contains a lot of great music and video clips that can serve as an introduction to the diversity of the earlier forms of this genre.

I think this quote from Jeffrey St. Clair sums up the brunt of the criticism:

"Ken Burns's interminable documentary, Jazz, starts with a wrong premise and degenerates from there ... Burns is a classicist, who is offended by the rawer sounds of the blues, its political dimension and inescapable class dynamic. Instead, Burns fixates on a particular kind of jazz music that appeals to his PBS sensibility: the swing era. It's a genre of jazz that enables Burns to throw around phrases such as 'Ellington is our Mozart.' He sees jazz as art form in the most culturally elitist sense, as being a museum piece, beautiful but dead, to be savored like a stroll through a gallery of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(TV_series)#Negative_reviews

>> ^mauz15:
As a jazz noob, it would be nice if someone with experience could tell me the quality of this documentary. Ken burns is good at documentaries, but does he know enough about jazz? I find the series interesting, but have my doubts.


The first couple of episodes are quite good, and give a decent overview of the beginnings of jazz. But as it gets closer to the end of the series, he gets bogged down in conservatism, and gives a quite reactionary view of modern jazz. The problem is that it depends too much on the interviews with Wynton Marsalis. It would have been better with some more diversity among the sources.

As a jazz noob, it would be nice if someone with experience could tell me the quality of this documentary. Ken burns is good at documentaries, but does he know enough about jazz? I find the series interesting, but have my doubts.