Ken Burns officially outed as America's "Empire Whisperer"

I was calling out Ken Burns for promoting American exceptionalism in his PBS documentaries (mockumentaries?) more than 15 years ago.

But, the photo above, from this Pro Publica piece not actually focused on Ken Burns, but rather on Clarence Thomas, is proof positive of him as that "Empire Whisperer." Kudo to Jeet Heer, as seen by my via my Twitter alerts email feed, for first pointing out (as I'd not seen the article yet) how many people were overlooking Burns standing between Clarence Thomas and David H. Koch. (Jeet himself forgot to add the magic words about the photo's location: Bohemian Grove.)

Kudos to Pro Publica for noting in the caption that Koch has financed Burns' movies. He's also financed other things via "The David H. Koch Fund for Science," which long ago pressured PBS to tone down anything it said about climate change.

Maybe #BlueAnon type librulz will start waking up about PBS and stop giving it money. I said they should, for this reason (and it accepting other wingnut money as well), nearly a decade ago, and had a folo piece about Koch money buying PBS omerta a year later.

I ran into one of those #BlueAnon on Twitter, responding to the person whom Heer had quote-tweeted. Said person I ran into was gushing about Burns' Vietnam series. I told him the truth about just how craptacular it was.

In another post, I noted that bringing to PBS his dramatization of the book, "The Emperor of All Maladies," about the "war" on cancer, David Koch apparently bought Burns' silence about the carcinogenic power of petrochemicals. That link also notes him writing American Indians out of the picture in his librulz-acclaimed National Parks series.

He also had errors, presumably in the service of empire, in his Roosevelts series. His "10th inning" add-on to "Baseball" was meh and included Landis hero-worship.