However, it now seems that at times Maher wants to be taken seriously as a sane, social critic, and sometimes he actually has something interesting  to say, as when he recently spoke out against Islam’s continued encroachment into the Western world. Maher worries about Islam’s spread because he believes Western values are “better” than Islamic ones. And when given every chance to retract or recant such statements, Maher instead insists that the correctness of his statement is proven by the fact that Christians and Jews laugh off criticism of their religions, while Muslims make “death threats to cartoonists.”

But there’s an inconsistency in Maher’s social criticism, and it lies in the fact that he appears too ideological to allow himself to fully follow his own maxims or embrace his own truisms. For instance, after fighting off accusations of racism (for his comments about Islam), Maher told his detractors: “It’s not because of [their] race, it’s because of [their] religion.” Is this not something Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and dare I say Juan Williams, have all said as well?

This is a well reasoned, succinct, and demonstrable point of view.

But after saying it, Maher was so bothered by the impact the Tea Party had on the 2010 midterm elections that he turned around and compared Americans to dogs: arguing that they “cannot understand actual words,” but instead only understand “fear.” (Here Maher makes the same mistake that Sheryl Crow made when she lashed out at Tea Partiers by saying: “These people…really don’t even know what the issues are, they’re just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it.”)

First of all, I would argue that the Tea Party was not driven by fear as much as by principles (although the argument could be made that they did fear further damage to this country by Democrats if Republicans didn’t win in 2010).

And secondly, what’s wrong with fear if it’s a response to something that’s worth being afraid of? Maher himself indicated as much in his defense of the West when he said Islamists were “violent” people who “threaten us.” He said this in such a way as to intimate that the threat was too great to casually overlook.

I would argue that the threats we faced while the Democrats were running the show justified a certain degree of fear on the part of every thinking American: for what could we do but fear as Obama & Company tried to appease terrorists with apologies for American exceptionalism on the one hand, and promise to bring our troops home and leave the murdering cave dwellers alone on the other?

It doesn’t make me a dog to recognize the same threat Maher recognized (and obviously fears), nor do I (or the Tea Party) merit criticism because of wanting to somehow place the reigns of the military closer to the hands of the party that knows how to use that military.

Maher can continue to be outrageous all he wants: that’s his style. I’m just hoping he’ll also be consistent.

These questions and more troubled my soul until August 7, 2010 AD, when Sheryl Crow released her long-awaited 13th album 100 Miles to Memphis.  After over a decade of records peaking at #2 and #3 on the Billboard 200, Crow decided to completely revolutionize her sound by taking on the styles of R&B, funk, and even reggae.  Without their tawdry expressiveness, and without the divisive spirituality so inherent to the southern gospel style injected into a few tracks, Memphis is a Muzak masterpiece. It is so perfectly pleasant and unobtrusive, it seemed highly inappropriate to give it a critical listen and analyze its minutiae.  But, in my duty to Big Hollywood readers, I’ve taken on the Sisyphean task of codifying the greatness of these songs, even though their value is so obviously apparent.

1. Economy is for suckers.  Not one of the twelve tracks on the album is under four minutes, and for good reason.  Ms. Crow understands the helpfulness of extending the fast-paced opener “Our Love is Fading” from what could be a comfortable 2 ½ minutes to nearly 6 ½.  When I’m sitting in the urologist’s office waiting for my name to be called, I don’t want to grasp just how slowly the quack is getting to me.  As long as the same song is playing from when I last took notice, I don’t feel like I’ve been waiting as long.  It’s as skillful a utilization of the medium as I’ve ever heard.

2. Dynamics are distracting.  If I were to hop onto an elevator in the middle of the song “Eye to Eye” (which I’m told features Keith Richards) and hopped out two floors later, I wouldn’t have any regrets missing the remaining five minutes of the song.  I’d be satiated by both of its hooks already! 

3. 48 is the new 20.  Nothing says “youth” like the video for Memphis’s first single, “Summer Day.”  Between surrounding herself with young, virile men and sporting a completely natural-looking tan, Ms. Crow reassures us that you don’t need to act your age to make it as a veteran in the music industry.

—–

4. Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl.  If you love the woman, you will get your fill and then some.  Every song, her voice is first and foremost in the mix, its signature breathy and nasal timbre crowding out less interesting elements like drums, bass, and horns (that last one is especially great if you prefer the saxophone sound of Kenny G to that of groups like Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings with their aggressive—nay, threatening! feel).  However, Sheryl does know how to share the spotlight.  On “Sign Your Name,” if you listen very, very closely to the background vocals, you will notice that the singer is in fact pop superstar Justin Timberlake (kinda—I had to see it in the liner notes, but still). 

5. I hate Sarah Palin too!  On the controversial “Say What You Want,” Ms. Crow crystallizes the feelings of an entire generation with her righteous anger at Sarah Palin using the word “reload” to rally opponents of the health care bill.  Obviously, Mrs. Palin was talking about shooting the President, since she had already told everyone to shoot at him once, and everyone in the Tea Party was too stupid to think that they should reload their guns before shooting at him again!  Through the song, Sheryl really takes Palin to task, saying “You’ve got a lot of nerve to talk that way.”  Brilliantly, she then moves on to suggest unplugging Palin’s microphone so that President Obama will not be obstructed from achieving real Change.  “If this is America you’d never know it” crows Crow, which really hits the nail on the head.  America has been historically defined by one class’s compulsory labor propping up the lifestyle of those who don’t work, so in these troubled times, with all the dissent and resistance to this founding principle, I often find myself wondering if I’m really in Fascist Italy when I wake up each morning.  It’s a magnificent song that shows that Sheryl Crow is really in touch with the majority of us plain American folks.

6. MJ Tribute to the Max!  Everything great about 100 Miles to Memphis is summed up in the album’s final track, a cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”  This track gives us a glimpse into just how much effort Ms. Crow and her audio engineers put into making her singing voice sound like an adult’s.  Freed from her rigorous nostril resonance and heavy compressor/limiters, there are times you can barely tell whether it’s preteen Michael Jackson or the 48-year-old Sheryl.  Obviously, you can tell when she fails to hit the high notes as he did, but I believe this artistic choice is really Ms. Crow sending the message that as an empowered single white adoptive female mother, she doesn’t have to meet the expectations of male oppressors.  The real strength of Crow’s version of “I Want You Back” is the more mechanically precise, neatly mixed instrumentation.  It really removes the freewheeling, loose style that gave the original its disconcertingly ethnic feel.

—–

So, if you love not having to actually listen and pay attention to your music, then 100 Miles to Memphis is the album for you.  If you could get it back above Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, the Eat Pray Love soundtrack, and Kidz Bop 18 on the Billboard 200 chart, I’m sure Ms. Crow would appreciate it almost as much as Muzak appreciates her bringing them back into the black.

—–

Sounds as though Crow did nothing more than to add fascist, left-wing talking points to every other flat, tuneless song Ms. One-Square-of-Toilet-Paper’s ever written.

Is the title, “Say What You Want,” meant to be ironic? Because in it she calls for Sarah Palin’s microphone to be unplugged. A so-called artist advocating for the silencing someone is … well, refreshingly honest!

According to this site, here are the full lyrics to Crow’s “Say What You Want”:

You used two squares today
You’re supposed to wipe your bum this way
That’s why I smell like ass every day
And can’t hold on to a man no way

Here they are for real:

I saw you ranting on tv today
I heard you tell me to reload
You got a lot of nerve to talk that way
Someone unplug the microphone

I’m tired of all the fighting
Cynicism and back biting
Can’t even hear myself think
Your pour the kool-aid and then we drink

So much noise so much chatter
Does the truth even matter

Say, say what you want to (even though you never mean it)
Say, say what you want to ( ain’t got time to be wasting time)
Say, say what you want to (We had a chance and now we’re gonna blow it)
Say, say what you want to (If this is America you’d never know it)

Ignorance is patriotic
Reasons so idiotic
The winds of change just keep on blowing
This is America you never know it

So much noise so much chatter
Does the truth even matter?

Say, say what you want to (even though you never mean it)
Say, say what you want to ( ain’t got time to be wasting time)
Say, say what you want to (We had a chance and now we’re gonna blow it)
Say, say what you want to (If this is America you’d never know it)

All you little ones with open hearts
Don’t let hatred tear your world apart
And if you wonder who is wrong and who is right
Better go ask God to shine some light

Earthquakes and gihad Jane
Talking heads and hate campaigns
If aliens should land today
Who would be more afraid us or them?

Say, say what you want to (even though you never mean it)
Say, say what you want to ( ain’t got time to be wasting time)
(Say it loud yeah)
Say, say what you want to (We had a chance and now we’re gonna blow it)
Say, say what you want to (If this is America you’d never know it)

Say, say what you want to (You gotta say it, say)
Say, say what you want to (Whatever’s on your mind)
Say, say what you want to (Give me a microphone baby)
(say it loud)
Say, say what you want to (All the things I want to say

NewsBusters has a whole lot more.

For many, The Global Warming debate has been a similar exercise in hypocrisy. Al Gore has been a big violator. The man who wants to limit our ability to fly coach, needs a private plane when he travels to Hollywood to pick up a trophy he didn’t even win (and a masseuse he couldn’t seduce).

I recently pointed out a similar flaw in the character of Sheryl Crow. While she went around preaching the merits of CFL light bulbs, she prefers the warm glow of incandescents and halogens in her own home. I thought perhaps that Sheryl had grown up a little; the same way a college vegan gets out into the real world, admits that she’s been sneaking meat when nobody was looking, and switches to a less fastidious diet.

For Sheryl’s sake I had also hoped that the one square of toilet paper idea really was a joke, that there wasn’t a guilty fixation every time she closed the door to do what people on high fiber vegan diets do more often than the rest of us.

Sadly, no. In her recently published contract rider on the Smoking Gun, we learn that Sheryl is still fussy about toilet paper. The rider is loaded with pretentious demands that make brown M&Ms seem reasonable. She isn’t satisfied to just keep her disease to herself; she wants everyone around her to share her pathology, instructing concert promoters how to be green, and recommending brands.

Most remarkably she demands that all traditional light bulbs replaced with CFLs, a restriction she doesn’t even place on herself. She also demands that all her snacks be locally grown.

Of course this doesn’t pertain to her liquor. While she is perfectly willing to sample local produce on her veggie tray, she insists that her wine comes from Napa Valley (Stags Leap), her tequila comes from Mexico (Patron), and her Vodka comes from the Netherlands (Ketel One). When mommy needs to check out for a few hours, she gets a little picky. Damn the environment, Sheryl has expensive taste!

It is doubly ironic, that Crow herself is not local product. Why is it okay to import an entertainer from the other side of the country, when the food she eats must come from the region? It would make more sense to use a locally grown talent. (Or at least require Sheryl to pack her own lunch).

The reason, of course is the heart of a free trade economy. North Dakota has lots of oil, but no cheese. Wisconsin has  lots of cheese, but no oil. With a little bit of trucking, residents of Wisconsin and North Dakota have both. Likewise Des Moines, Iowa has lots of pork, and New York has Sheryl Crow. Through the magic of free trade, Governor Paterson gets to eat bacon, and the Iowa State Fair gets another exhibit. (August 21).

Even Las Vegas gets a Sheryl Crow concert (September 11). Unfortunately, Sheryl is going to have to eat onions. potatoes, and hay while she is there, because there aren’t many other local vegan crops in Nevada.

I don’t know how long she can continue to eat local, since she is booked in Amsterdam (October 20). Not only will it be difficult to get the bio-diesel tour buses over the ocean, there isn’t a lot of produce still growing in Amsterdam on the last week of October. There might be a few things grown in hothouses, but is there really an environmental benefit, to heating and lighting a glass house in the middle of a Northern European Autumn?

Of course, there is one kind of locally grown produce that Amsterdam is famous for, and I speculate that Sheryl enjoys more of that, than we can imagine. At least the vodka will meet the local requirement on that day.

Suffice it to say, Crow couldn’t have insulted Country Music fans more without calling them by name.  She apparently doesn’t know (or doesn’t care to know) that Country Music fans put the heart in heartland America: that they are loyal to those whom they see as being loyal to American ideals but couldn’t care less about those who go against them.

These things not withstanding, as Crow undertakes the American leg of her latest tour, her backstage rider for venue owners reads more like the musings of a speech writer for Al Gore than a would-be country artist. For instance, the rider contains an “environmental portion” which clearly states that Crow wishes to “minimize the overall environmental impact of the tour.” And while there’s nothing wrong with this on the surface, the problems arise when her to-do list for achieving this lowered environmental impact is fleshed out.

For instance, she asks venue owners to “utilize…non-petroleum cups” and other “alternatives to Styrofoam” for backstage drinks. She requests they reduce their reliance on fossil fuels by using “renewable sources and/or to [buying] sustainable energy credits where possible.” She actually asked them to check with their local utility companies to see if there’s a “green power” option they can switch to during her concert. She asks for “eco-friendly cleaning and bathroom products [and] post-consumer recycled toilet paper and paper [towels].”

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something kind of weird about the thought of using “post-consumer recycled toilet paper” (and I’ll bet you there a lot of guys on tractors in heartland America who concur with my point).

Crow also describes how every food item, from snacks to dinners, should be prepared and packaged, and is explicit in her demand that everything be organic. From the “good quality, dark, organic chocolate bars” that are supposed to be placed in her backstage hospitality room, to the “organic coconut water” she’s going to use to wash those bars down, everything is painstakingly detailed in echo-friendly terms.

The arrogance of all this is magnified by the fact that Crow is a c-player in the music industry at best (and it’s always aggravating to watch somebody pretend to be more famous than they really are). Yet as bad as her arrogance is, her duplicity is worse.  She proved this in her rider when she asked venue owners to use the same type of “ride-sharing program” she uses in order to cut down on pollution while she’s there. This is quite a request coming from a woman who’s touring the country in two buses (each 45 feet long) complimented by 2 full-size tractor-trailer rigs.

Unless those buses and trucks are running off solar panels, Crow needs to hush. And she need not be surprised that when heartland Americans look at her, they see what they saw in John Kerry during 2004: A snooty leftist who doubles as a control freak.

Shut up, Sheryl! Actually, I don’t mean that. She has the right to say what she wants, and I have the right to disagree. As you will hear and see in this lil’ viddy! Dang, that was some straight Dr. Seuss-level rhymin’!

More recently, Crow purchased a home in Nashville, and has popped up at different events there, including last month’s Country Music Awards. To the curious onlooker, it appeared she was courting the Country Music audience, which is understandable because it’s a great group of people to have on your side.

But right in the middle of this apparent outreach to Country Music fans, Crow gave Katie Couric an interview for Glamour magazine, in which she lashed out at Tea Parties and other aspects of the Country Music crowd. As I read the interview, I could only imagine the Dixie Chicks’ former tour manager picking up a copy of Glamour and screaming – “Sheryl, didn’t you learn anything from Natalie Maines’ big mouth?!”

With one fell swoop, Crow insulted the kind of Americans who go hear Martina McBride sing at one of Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concerts on Tuesday, then attend a rally against high taxes and big government on Thursday.

For example: When Couric asked about the Tea Party movement, Crow referenced watching videos on YouTube and said: “These people…really don’t even know what the issues are, they’re just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it.”

Hmm… By watching videos on YouTube Crow was able to ascertain that Tea Partiers are ignorant people who are controlled by base impulses (“fear” and “anger”). I’ve watched YouTube videos before and learned that Crow only wants us to use one square of toilet tissue after going to the restroom (in order to save the planet). Does she want me to form an opinion of her based on those videos and propagate it?

Her comments continued: “They’re not sure what they’re angry at; they don’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street. They haven’t educated themselves.”

Let me see if I’ve got this right: Tea Partiers are dumb (“they’re not sure what they’re angry at”), issues of finance are over their heads (“they don’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street”), and they live in a self-imposed ignorance (“they haven’t educated themselves”).

As I read further in the interview, I wondered if Crow has somehow missed the fact that “these people” she’s insulting are the heart and soul of the Country Music?

She’s not really going to try to sell an album to ”these people” after this is she?

As I pondered these questions, Crow inadvertently answered them by describing her current “political activism” to Couric. This entailed going off on a tangent about the environment being “the mother ship,” and adding: “If you’re going to live in a wasteful manner, if you’re going to drive a giant car, and you’re going to live not considering that you share the planet with everybody else, then shame on you.”

When she said “giant car” and “shame on you” in the same sentence, I could only think of the insult it was to owners of 4 wheel drive pickups, SUVs with lift kits, and first generation Hummers: The kind of “giant [cars]” Country Music artists write songs about, and the kind of “giant [cars]” Country Music fans love to drive.

The one bright spot in this interview, if you’re the kind of person who looks for silver linings and such, is that somewhere, in an undisclosed location, Natalie Maines is overjoyed to see she’s finally going to have someone to eat lunch with.

In the summer of 2007, Sheryl and alleged home-wrecker, Laurie David put together their Stop Global Warming Tour, consisting of a bus, several semi trucks and a private jet; caravanning across the nation, to tell college students to stop wasting energy. Of course, Crow and David weren’t hypocrites because the bus was fueled with leftover french-fry grease.

In the official press release they promised to encourage college students to “Simply Switch” to CFL light-bulbs. But what kind of bulbs does Sheryl use?  Well this was a mystery, until she recently opened her apartment to Elle Magazine. Apparently Sheryy likes her apartment brighter than she is, and CFLs just don’t seem to do the trick.

In her “gallery-like hallway” there is a row of halogen bulbs alongside the right wall to illuminate her cultural appreciation.

In the photo of her bathroom, you can clearly see an incandescent light over her sink, but not a single square of toilet paper. (There are also books all over her house, so it seems she has found a solution to her one-square dilemma.)

In one photo, you can clearly see that the light bulb over her head has been photoshopped out, as if to say that she is out of ideas. It seems someone might have noticed the ideologically contradicting bulb after the photo shoot was completed.

Why did she let photographers take pictures of her light-bulbs in the first place? Either she was to dumb to realize the light bulbs would show, or she was too overwhelmed with vanity to care, when she was approached by Elle with the layout pitch. (Apparently vanity is more than just a bathroom fixture.)

And she is vain. She has never been able to recreate the success of her 1994 hit  “All  Want to Do,” (which shares a title with the Elle article) because she abandoned the people who actually wrote the song. Not only did she steal their songs, she even stole the band’s name as the title of her debut album.

I suspect her recent environmentalist conversion is just milking a little more notoriety out of one hit song. (Ace of Base should have considered Environmentalism.) And Sheryl will probably be riding that wave long after solar panels have been installed over Santa Monica Boulevard.

KATIE COURIC: What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Because that is the specific sort of group of people who would say we’re out there, we’re getting involved in the process and—

SHERYL CROW: I think our system is broken in ways that can’t be fixed at this moment until we get some kind of campaign finance reform and we get people in office who—I think perhaps everybody starts off in office being altruistic and thinking they’re going to make big changes, and then they see the big dollars coming in. I don’t know what it is at the most fundamental level that…you know, what’s first, the chicken or the egg? But I appreciate the fact that those people are out there and that they are fired up.

My main concern is that it’s really fear-based. What’s coming out of the Tea Party most often, especially if you go onto YouTube, and you see some of the interviews with these people who really don’t even know what the issues are, they’re just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it. They’re not sure what they’re angry at; they don’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street. They haven’t educated themselves, but they’re just pissed off. And I understand that, I’m pissed off too. But knowledge is power, and anything less than that when it comes to anger can be dangerous.

So that’s why we cling to guns and religion!

Hold on there, Sheryl. Let’s wade through these thoughts and reconsider what you’ve said.

1) The tea party movement is fear-based. Nope. It is based on a keen appreciation of individual responsibility and the threat posed by statist policies. That’s why tea party supporters make a point of offering liberty-based policy solutions. If you want to see fear-based activism that’s also fear-evoking, try the SEIU-sponsored storming of a private residence.

2) Some tea partiers don’t know what the issues are. I can’t speak for the level of engagement of every member of the tea party movement, but many are motivated by a strong desire to learn more about the big issues of the day. In fact, a March 2010 Rasmussen survey found that “52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress.” Go to any tea party and you’ll see homemade signs touching on topics ranging from the Constitution, government-sponsored enterprises, monetary policy, and regulatory overreach. Tea partiers know the issues—plus they’ve got great wit.

3) Tea partiers don’t know what they’re angry at. Really? How about corporate bailouts? Runaway government spending? Increasing taxes? Misguided plans to drive up energy costs through cap’n’tax? My colleague John O’Hara wrote the book about issues driving the tea party movement; Crow should give it a scan before she cavalierly dismisses such a wide swath of the American public.

4) Tea partiers haven’t educated themselves. This is off base on so many levels. A February 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that “nearly three-quarters of Tea Party activists attended college, compared to 54 percent of all Americans.” Glenn Beck’s show—watched by many tea party activists—is adding tomes on history and economics to Amazon.com’s best-sellers list. After Glenn Beck featured the economist Friedrich von Hayek on his show, The Road to Serfdom shot to the #1 slot on Amazon.com. Tea partiers are educating themselves, just not with big government dribble.

5) “But knowledge is power, and anything less than that when it comes to anger can be dangerous.” Crow gets this one right—knowledge is power. Active and informed citizens are a force to be reckoned with. The tea party movement’s political potential is scaring the bejeezus out of political fixers who prefer the Obama-Pelosi-Reid status quo. That’s why liberals are working so furiously to discredit the tea party movement in advance of the 2010 elections. The good news is that liberty-based ideas are on the move!

Crow and I are unlikely to see eye-to-eye on tea parties, but it would be refreshing to see Glamour and other outlets regularly feature women who appreciate the genuine grassroots movements supporting economic freedom.

Abraham Lincoln and P.T. Barnum (you know, “You can fool some of the people some of the time…” and “There a sucker born every minute.”) had it right. It was the huge amount of money spent on advertising that bought those ratings. Ratings of course bring in advertising dollars but to put it bluntly, dog feces still smells bad and is hard to shake off of your foot. This series was the historical documentary equivalent a big steaming pile. In fact numerous Los Angeles-based cable documentary producers have quietly expressed their disdain to me at the poor execution, production values and content of The Story of Us.

The Story of Us was produced by Jane Root an English producer and former Discovery Channel President and BBC executive. So a foreign producer not only got the considerable money for this show but also tells us about us from a decidedly British, ill-informed and surface, slop politically correct point of view. At a time when American cable producers are starving for work, History shows their true colors by enriching an English company with a major series on our history. Most of the terribly produced reenactments were actually shot in Great Britain and South Africa, standing in for the good old USA!

History had numerous far better filmed and authentic looking reenactments in their vault made by American producers like Craig Haffner’s Greystone Productions and Gary Foreman’s Native Sun Productions. Producers who can no longer get the time of day at the now reality-driven History who would rather show dumbed-down, contrived tripe like Pawn Stars and Ice Road Truckers. They should have just bumped those American producer’s footage up to High Definition and saved themselves time and money and got it right.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I wrote and co-wrote several shows for Native Son Productions like The Battle of New Orleans and Boone & Crockett. I defy anyone with half a brain and a decent eye and ear for top quality historical programming to not score those shows as far better than The Story of Us in visuals, content, historical accuracy and production values.

Partially told through the slant of American commercialism and technology The Story of Us most often utilizes know-nothing non-experts like Donald Trump, Melissa Ethridge, P. Diddy, Bill Maher, Michael Douglas, Sheryl Crow and even Pawn Stars patriarch Richard Harrison. Only Generals Colin Powell and David Petraeus, historian H. W. Brands and a very few others loan any air of knowledgeable dignity to the proceedings.

Comedian Margaret Cho was tapped to talk about the Chinese laborers who helped build the Central Pacific Railroad – didn’t anyone check, she’s Korean!  Al Sharpton and Henry Lewis Gates certainly didn’t lend any air of accuracy or legitimacy to the historical proceedings. Most of the celebrities wind up sounding like the verbal equivalent of a deer stuck in the headlights, as if they were just given a printout from the pages of the book that the producers wanted regurgitated.

The series even violates its own standards. Take for instance the story of Timothy Murphy, the frontier rifleman who changed the course of the American Revolution. In 1777 at the battle of Saratoga, he shot British General Simon Fraser at a distance of over 200 yards with his early Kentucky Rifle ensuring an American victory. The English filmed reenactment of the event is so amateurish looking that it might have been culled from a bad episode of NBC’s 1960s Daniel Boone series which was at least entertaining.   Murphy isn’t even shown with the unique double-barreled swivel breach flintlock rifle he used. The system allowed the skilled rifleman to flip a toggle and change to a second loaded barrel for another quick shot.

In a show that supposedly features exceptional American technology there is no mention of this unique American made weapon. There are actually contemporary American flintlock rifle makers who still make swivel-breach flintlocks today. I guess the English producers couldn’t find their way to these skilled American artisans who live and work in flyover country. Just as surprising there is no mention that Murphy’s feat importantly reverberated all the way to Paris where the American victory at Saratoga helped Ben Franklin convince the on-the-fence French to finally support our Revolution with gold, guns and troops.

The series computer-generated graphics were continually recycled and poorly conceived in the first place with an eye towards grabbing a channel surfing thirteen-year-old boy. Every time a new group of settlers or immigrants cross the Atlantic it’s the same boring under the water CGI shot of the same ship’s hulls racing through crystal clear water. The buffalo herd looks like a bunch of furry cockroaches and one historian described the horde of wagons heading West as the “stampede of the covered wagon RV’s.”

Custer’s Last Stand is filmed with merely eight or nine horsemen in phony looking uniforms riding over a hilltop, that was either in South Africa or Northern England, and firing a few shots. Of course the white eyes are still the bad guys despite the preponderance of well-researched books that have repatriated Custer for more then twenty years now. And the Indians (that’s right, I don’t use that silly Native American title) in the series, both eastern and western are downright insulting in their laughably inaccurate looking clothing, hairstyles and accouterments.

History wants to provide copies of this abominable series to schools nation wide. So start monitoring your kid’s history classes and put up a fuss. History’s Story of Us isn’t the story of America, but the story of what we are not.