August, 2006 – It ran on the 12th of August in mid-afternoon.  The program detailed the history of the Ku Klux Klan in every respect but one.   This one manipulation tells you the purpose of  those running the History Channel, and clearly proves the oft-made charge that said location on the television spectrum is when needed nothing more than a propaganda tool for the modern Democrat Party of America.

When it is repeated, watch Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History with the following point in mind.

During the first half listen for the political affiliations of Klan members in the North.  In Indiana, as well as other locales, you will frequently hear the word "Republican."  Then during the second half of this two hour ‘documentary,’ which features Klan activity in the South during the civil rights days of the Fifties,  see if you can tell by the narrative which political party these Klansmen serve.  Not even when they are marching in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama ("the city’s law enforcement was known for its working relationship with the Klan") carrying signs castigating "Martin Luther Coon," bombing black homes and businesses – and even churches – not during all of these references did I hear the program mention the politics of the Klan members and public and private supporters in the region during those days.

Know from this essay that they were Democrats.  The entire South was Democrat in those days.  It had been solid Democrat since the Republican, Lincoln, and the Republicans in both houses of Congress had ended slavery and gone to war, literally, against the Secessionists – Democrats to a man.

A host named Mudd

You may, while watching this program, hear a familiar voice.  It belongs to a famous broadcaster named Roger Mudd.   A longtime major TV network "journalist," his last name is appropriate in this case.  He has lent any credibility that name has been awarded to this program, and that is where said credibility ended.

If Mr. Mudd had ever been a real journalist he would have known that to attach evil association by Party name to one major American political philosophy, and then to ignore even greater evil association by the members of another major American political philosophy in the same purported work of journalism, is clear evidence of the existence not of said journalism, but rather of propaganda, in the work in question.

I recall another famous "journalist," Marvin Kalb, doing a show about mainstream media bias, a while back.  Along with most of his "panel" of "journalists," Kalb could not find evidence of the crime charged to his category of information workers.  Neither Kalb or Mr. Mudd had anything to say about the journalistic abortions by Ken Burns aired in recent years on PBS.  His program on Congress  was, for example, a titanic abortion of history in that where the topic of this essay is concerned, members of the Democrat Party were invisible – and ironically, Republican polilticians who wrote, introduced as legislation and voted in the first Civil Rights Act in American history (nearly a century before the one you've heard about) were not identified by Party.

Nothing new here, except for recognizing the practice

So it is a longstanding pattern, this attempt to pin all racial evils on Republicans and to hide the true history of the Democrats in this regard.  Setting aside the bias of the bulk of America’s major newspapers and magazines, the historic bias by the Big Three commercial television networks, and the public broadcasting system, every bit of which is invisible to the big media journalilsm stars (and J-school university staffs) of today, is so blatent and visible to any but the totally illiterate and totally politically involved that the process burders on lunacy.

It is described by the Biblical reference to a man who can see a sliver in another’s eye, but not the beam in his own.  It is described by the cultural maxim about the un-noticed elephant standing in the middle of the living room.  It is described by the reaction of the fairy tale child who along all the parade route was the only one to point out that the emporer was naked.

The History Channel, just based on this one program’s blatent titanic abuse of common decency and professional requirements, is not a source of knowledge about our past.  It is a source of propaganda which serves the needs of the modern Democrat Party.  It is a tool the Left is using to gain political power.

Like the old Pravda in Moscow, it does this by telling you lies, or more subtly, failing to tell you the full truth when that information might be damaging to the politics they support.

(LL)

© 2006 Oregon Magazine