Not that I ever indulge in despair about the Future; there always
have been men who have gone about despairing of the Future, and when
the Future arrives it says nice, superior things about their having
acted according to their lights. It is dreadful to think that other
people’s grandchildren may one day rise up and call one amiable.
There are moments when one sympathizes with Herod.
—Saki
Poor Saki didn’t know the half of it! The crushing contempt of other
people’s grandchildren for his generation (and all that came before
it) does not even allow him the dubious title of “amiable.” History,
or at least that version of history that makes it through the
filter of the media culture, only rises above contempt and furious
denunciation insofar as its victim-subjects may be construed—and
admittedly there is a great deal of ingenuity devoted to making such
constructions—as holding exactly the same views of the world as
those of the media culture.
That was the redundant message of Ken Burns’s two-part series for
PBS, Thomas Jefferson. [1]
Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and done in the
trademark Burns style familiar from The Civil War
and Baseball—only without (obviously) period photographs—it achieved its
effects with the familiar, plaintive solo instrument (usually violin
or piano) playing the same hymn tune over and over as
accompaniment to sepia-toned prints or portraits, loads of
architectural detail (has Monticello ever been so much
photographed?) or videotape of
