Anyone watching "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" by Ken Burns on PBS?

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7_Sorrows said:
Well I guess maybe I just recorded the first night then.
Thanks for the info.
Interesting the challenges they both had. I had the paralysis at 6 years old that they now suspect FDR had instead of polio - called guillain-barre syndrome. I fortunately learned to walk again. Plus I had asthma. I consider myself fortunate that I made it to 62 so far.

Must have been nice to be rich in those days and have so many advantages.
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It’s also nice to be rich in these days, taxes aside. But, as the Talmud states, “Who is rich? He who is content with his own share.”
 
jeannetherese said:
Reading this thread is enough to make me wish I had television. Hopefully the series will eventually make it to hulu .
Those of you who love the personal stories might especially enjoy reading Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel. 👍
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It probably will make it to Hulu, which has a lot of good stuff. Thanks for the recommendation.
 
GEddie said:
I heard somewhere that all of our Presidents, save Lincoln (as well as all of the Mexican Presidents) were Freemasons.

It seems you can’t become a world VIP without intersecting with them.

The Bible used in our Presidential inaugurations is kept at a Masonic lodge in NYC.

ICXC NIKA.
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Interesting info. Freemasonry wasn’t exactly a religion, though, was it?
 
What has struck me is the difference between the response to the Great Depression then and the Great Recession today.
There seemed to be a real “let’s all pull together” sort of feeling then. The president was just the leader of the team. Everyone helps.
Today, it feels more like the president has to do something to fix the problem without any (name removed by moderator)ut from the people. Results are to handed to them.

There also seemed to be a much deeper feeling of responsibility towards others back then.
" When life is better for everybody, it’s better for everybody".

I found that very impressive. I wish we were more like that now.

I know the film is skewed. History Is done by humans.
But I’ve really struck by the difference. But then I wasn’t around for the first one, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge.

And I love TR. Always have. He and Captian Cook are my two heros.
 
Deltadeliquent said:
What has struck me is the difference between the response to the Great Depression then and the Great Recession today.
There seemed to be a real “let’s all pull together” sort of feeling then. The president was just the leader of the team. Everyone helps.
Today, it feels more like the president has to do something to fix the problem without any (name removed by moderator)ut from the people. Results are to handed to them.

There also seemed to be a much deeper feeling of responsibility towards others back then.
" When life is better for everybody, it’s better for everybody".

I found that very impressive. I wish we were more like that now.

I know the film is skewed. History Is done by humans.
But I’ve really struck by the difference. But then I wasn’t around for the first one, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge.

And I love TR. Always have. He and Captian Cook are my two heros.
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The America that existed during FDR’S days is no more. It makes a difference when the president believes in his country and wants to help the american people instead of himself. FDR migh have been one of our best presidents. Our current president is one of our worst. It makes a difference if you feel the president cares about the citizens.
 
7_Sorrows said:
The America that existed during FDR’S days is no more. It makes a difference when the president believes in his country and wants to help the american people instead of himself. FDR migh have been one of our best presidents. Our current president is one of our worst. It makes a difference if you feel the president cares about the citizens.
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Ken burns writes and produces from a bias. He is a well known democrat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns
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Burns is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, with almost $40,000 in political donations.[10] In 2008, the Democratic National Committee chose Burns to produce the introductory video for Senator Edward Kennedy’s August 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention, a video described by Politico as a “Burns-crafted tribute casting him [Kennedy] as the modern Ulysses bringing his party home to port.”[11][12] In August 2009, Kennedy died, and Burns produced a short eulogy video at his funeral. In endorsing Barack Obama for the U.S. presidency in December 2007, Burns compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln.[13] He said he had planned to be a regular contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV.[14]
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meltzerboy said:
I’m really enjoying this fascinating account of Teddy, FDR, and Eleanor. It’s not a black-and-white portrait, but instead reveals both the good and the bad in all of these figures, as well as a good deal of their personalities and private lives, both the joys and sorrows.

Any thoughts?
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I caught most of the last two hour episode. It was very interesting. I wish I would have seen the part on teddy.
 
jimmy said:
I caught most of the last two hour episode. It was very interesting. I wish I would have seen the part on teddy.
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No one can say teddy did not live his life to the fullest!
He was passionate about life. I think he lived in the most interesting of times!
 
gam197 said:
Ken burns writes and produces from a bias. He is a well known democrat.
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Thanks for letting me know that. Usually most shows on pbs lean to the left and from some of his documentaries I figured he probably was bur I wasn’t certain.
 
7_Sorrows said:
Thanks for letting me know that. Usually most shows on pbs lean to the left and from some of his documentaries I figured he probably was bur I wasn’t certain.
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It is not what we think that matters but what every 12 year old student in the public schools will be taught.
My seventh-grade son recently wrote a U.S. History paper extolling the virtues of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “It ended the Great Depression,” he wrote with great certainty. He’s only 12 and parroting what the history texts and his teachers told him.
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That’s his excuse. What’s Ken Burns’?
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Mr. Burns’ docudrama on the Roosevelts — for those who weren’t bored to tears — repeats nearly all the worn-out fairy tales of the FDR presidency, including what I call the most enduring myth of the 20th century, which is that FDR’s avalanche of alphabet-soup government programs ended the Great Depression…
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Read more: washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/19/moore-the-enduring-myth-of-fdr-and-the-new-deal/#ixzz3Dzo9fS4S
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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Any author will have a point of view and neither Burns nor The Washington Times, which is owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church through its company News World Communications, is an exception.

Critically analyzing news sources seems reasonable as does considering the possibility that one might receive good information from a source with which one is not in complete agreement.

Back to Teddy, I appreciate his efforts on behalf of the national parks. The link below is to a history of the national parks, from their website.

nps.gov/history/history/hisnps/npshistory/teddy.htm

My information for the Washington Times comes from:

sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Washington_Times

which, like any source, has its own bias.

jt
 
I think they make it VERY clear.
The programs helped in the short term, but they were ended too soon. When things got hard again, some were reinstated and things began to slowly get better.
But, and this is quite clear in the film, it was the war, and the need to produce the weapons of war the really ended the Great Depression. And they speak about how the business of war needs to able to be run on capitalistic terms.

I do think most people know that. It’s what I was taught in school.
The programs were a band aid. But they were needed, and helped many, many people. I know that many men, now in old age, speak of their time in the CCC or WPA was the best thing that ever happend to them. They got to see the country, meet others from all walks of life, and learned skills they would use subsequently. Plus they got paid. In a way, I wish my son could have such an experience.

I think FDR was the right person at the right time. A lesser man would not have been able to do as well, before or after the war. Can you imagine Obama in his shoes?

And for the record, it’s not a sin, wrong, incorrect or immoral to lean to the Left.
 
Deltadeliquent said:
I think they make it VERY clear.
The programs helped in the short term, but they were ended too soon. When things got hard again, some were reinstated and things began to slowly get better.
But, and this is quite clear in the film, it was the war, and the need to produce the weapons of war the really ended the Great Depression. And they speak about how the business of war needs to able to be run on capitalistic terms.

I do think most people know that. It’s what I was taught in school.
The programs were a band aid. But they were needed, and helped many, many people. I know that many men, now in old age, speak of their time in the CCC or WPA was the best thing that ever happend to them. They got to see the country, meet others from all walks of life, and learned skills they would use subsequently. Plus they got paid. In a way, I wish my son could have such an experience.

I think FDR was the right person at the right time. A lesser man would not have been able to do as well, before or after the war. Can you imagine Obama in his shoes?

And for the record, it’s not a sin, wrong, incorrect or immoral to lean to the Left.
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I think FDR was lucky he had Churchill to confer with.
I think America should have entered the war against Germany sooner.
America was different then. FDR might have been the man for the job, but it definitely aged him. I don’t know if there was anyone else that might have stepped in. He shouldn’t have run the last time because his health was too bad.
 
7_Sorrows said:
I think FDR was lucky he had Churchill to confer with.
I think America should have entered the war against Germany sooner.
America was different then. FDR might have been the man for the job, but it definitely aged him. I don’t know if there was anyone else that might have stepped in. He shouldn’t have run the last time because his health was too bad.
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He had to. The country had never before changed leadership in the midst of a war.

At least, when death took him, the war was almost won.

As to joining WW2 earlier, even he couldn’t do that. Neither the citizens, nor more important, the Congress, could be convinced that it was our fight.

ICXC NIKA
 
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