WNED DEFENDS IN WAKE OF SCATHING SHOW REVIEW

REWRITING HISTORY: If PBS did a World War II documentary, would they make mass murderer Stalin out the brave hero, while making Roosevelt, Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton, cowardly nincompoops?

PBS affiliate WNED utilized video images of 9/11 as a backdrop for a station identification promo.

The WNED-TV public relations department went into full damage control mode last week after a scathing review of their documentary "The War of 1812" was published in the Reporter. The two-hour PBS special, produced by WNED and funded by various Canadian philanthropies and the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, is an appalling exercise in historical revisionism and political correctness that portrays the British, women and various ethnic groups as possessive of every imaginable virtue including courage, honesty and intelligence while American presidents and generals are villains, drunks and cowards. The United States is depicted as a warmongering and opportunistic aggressor with expansionist ambitions for Canadian territory.

An alternative account of the conflict might be as follows: After suffering a decade of depredations visited on our trade and commerce by the British navy, including sinking of vessels, confiscation of cargo and kidnapping and impressment of U. S. sailors, we launched a pre-emptive invasion of neighboring outposts held by the King of England and his largely mercenary army.

Contrary to WNED's fantastical claims, Canada was not a victimized sovereign nation in 1812, but rather territory held by British imperialists 3,000 miles from home, who ruthlessly exploited its inhabitants and resources much like they did ours until our forefathers kicked their blooming arses at Yorktown.

In fact not only was there no Canada at the time, it took another 50 years for that to happen.  One could make the case that even after Canada achieved nationhood it remained a colony of Great Britain. They even instituted a draft to send young Canadian men over to the continent of Europe to fight for King and Country during World War I. Over 60,000 of them were slaughtered on the poppy fields during that particular installment of Rule Britannia's perennial squabbles. All because of Queen Victoria's spat with her grandson-gone-bad Kaiser Wilhelm, and so that Prince Harry could one day cavort and parade his bare butt to his worshipful subjects.

Marking the 200th anniversary of a conflict that shaped the destiny of North America, but which has been largely ignored by everyone except Western New York heritage commissions desperate to encourage tourists to spend a couple of dollars outside of Niagara Falls State Park, WNED has cobbled together yet another panel of experts to explain to the public why they should be spending their summertime commemorating and celebrating the long-ago war instead of enjoying picnics, county fairs, ball games and outdoor music festivals.

Held at the WNED studios last Wednesday, the sparsely attended seminar featured six panelists, not one of which was a high school teacher or college history professor, probably because no self-respecting academic would go within a country mile of the biased, unpatriotic public television rendering.

"Our panelists here are like several moons orbiting the same earth" said panelist David F. Sherman, managing editor of the Amherst Bee, as quoted in the Buffalo News. "We all have very specific domains of history that we just devour."

Anti-American sentiments are nothing new at Buffalo/Toronto's WNED. World War II Japanese internment camps, or "concentration camps" as WNED called them in its promo, while a regrettable aspect of that era, are an important, recurring subject for the culture of the ashamed. WNED also once featured the video of the plane crashing into the World Trade Center as one of several backdrops for its station identification spot, using the real-time image of our citizens dying in that horrible disaster to huckster their television station.