Arts of War on the Web

The first episode of the new series “Locked Up Abroad” airs on Wednesday evening at 9:00 on the National Geographic Channel.  Titled “Vietnam POWs: McCain and Brace,” it looks at the bonds formed by two long-held Vietnam War prisoners of war.

One was John McCain, the former Navy aviator who was shot down over Hanoi in October of 1967 and who later gained national fame as a Congressman, Senator, and Republican Party presidential candidate. The other is one of the lesser-known Vietnam War POWs,  civilian pilot Ernie Brace, a former Marine Corps Korean War pilot who was working for the CIA when he was shot down over Laos in May of 1965 and held for nearly eight years.

Both men suffered extreme privations while held prisoner by the North Vietnamese. They formed a bond when they were held in solitary confinement in adjoining cells for most of the five years McCain was held prisoner.

Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States is the hyped-up title of a new, ten-part documentary series that begins tonight, Monday, November 12, on Showtime. In it, Stone—the often hyperbolic Hollywood director and screen writer who served as an infantryman in the Vietnam War—trains his penetrating lens on big historical events beginning with World War II.

The series is based on the just-published door stopper (784 page) of a book of the same name Stone wrote with Peter Kuznick, an American University history professor. In the book and TV series Kuznick and Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, et al.) concern themselves primarily with what they firmly believe the United States has done wrong on the world and domestic stages, rather than noting what America has done right.

In her mixed review of the series in The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley calls Stone “a dramatist of truth who tramples facts to spin alternative histories that may be grandiose and grotesque but can sometimes have a hint of grandeur.”

On the other hand, she says, “it’s too easy to focus on what Mr. Stone does wrong; it’s also useful to focus a spotlight on what he gets right. ” Still, Stanley notes, “in all the overblown rhetoric and self-righteous hyperbole (Mr. Stone is his own narrator) accuracy is sometimes hard to find.”

Mary McNamara, the Los Angeles Times TV critic, had a similar assessment. The series, she wrote, “is a hodgepodge of terrific if often disturbing historical footage and bizarre theatrical asides.

“It seems, more than anything, a response to the notion of ‘American exceptionalism,’ though it’s difficult to imagine that those Americans who do believe, as Stone puts it, that America is the center of the universe and always the good guy, will be swayed by him.”

The series “narrative,” she says, “is too often just as one-note as the versions Stone seeks to replace.” Stone, McNamara concludes, “presents his case with little recognition of the social, political and psychological complexities that dominate much of human development, turning it, intentionally or not, into an alternative mythology that relies far more on broad-stroke storytelling than rigorous analysis.”

Gen. Wesley Clark (the retired four-star, West Point Class of ’66, Rhodes Scholar, and NATO Supreme Allied Commander)  earned his military spurs in Vietnam commanding a First Infantry Division Company in 1970—and being severely wounded in the process.

Since he retired in 2000 Gen. Clark (in the center in the top row of the photo above) has been involved in a variety of endeavors, including running for President in 2004. His latest venture is anything but political: as the eminence grise on the new NBC-TV series “Stars Earn Stripes.” It’s a reality-competition show in which celeb athletes and show biz folk pair with former military men to take part in rigorous military-like missions (some with live ammo) for fun and bragging rights. The show began with a two-hour premiere on Monday, August 13.

“Wesley Clark, the retired Army general, is a welcome presence overseeing the proceedings and evaluating the performances,” Neil Genzlinger of  The New York Times said in his otherwise mostly negative review of the show. “He has an easy manner on camera and, as you’d expect, plenty of real-world knowledge to bring to these fake soldier games.”

Karl Marlantes—the former Marine and the author of the highly acclaimed Vietnam War novel, Matterhorn—was the subject of the July 27 edition of the excellent PBS-TV  show “Moyers and Company.”  Marlantes, who will receive the VVA Excellence in the Arts Award at the National Leadership Conference Aug. 11 in Irving, Texas, spoke to host Bill Moyers about the subject of his incisive new book, What It Is Like to Go to War.

The informing and engaging conversation centered on Marlantes’s battlefield experiences as a young Marine lieutenant in Vietnam during the height of the war, as well as his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his violence-filled Vietnam War tour of duty.

“’Thou shalt not kill’ is a tenet you just do not violate, and so all your young life, that’s drilled into your head,” Marlantes says in the interview. “And then suddenly, you’re eighteen or nineteen and they’re saying, ‘Go get ‘em and kill for your country.’ And then you come back and it’s like, ‘Well, thou shalt not kill’ again.

“Believe me, that’s a difficult thing to deal with. You take a young man and put him in the role of God, where he is asked to take a life—that’s something no nineteen-year-old is able to handle.”

To view the entire show on line, go to http://billmoyers.com/segment/karl-marlantes-on-what-its-like-to-go-to-war/

Yesterday, March 30, 2012, was the last day on the job as chief executive of C-SPAN for Brian Lamb, the man who founded the non-profit, non-partisan public TV network in 1978 and was its guiding force for 33 years.

Lamb, 70, joined the U.S. Navy after he graduated from Purdue. He served on the USS Thuban, and worked at the White House and in the Pentagon Public Affairs office during the Vietnam War. Eleven years after he got out of the Navy, Lamb was the driving force behind the founding of C-SPAN.

Lamb was a ubiquitous presence on C-SPAN from when the time it went on the air on March 19, 1979. He interviewed some 800 non-fiction authors, as well as a wide array of public figures, including Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Lamb, who never once said his own name on the air, will continue as executive chair of C-SPAN and will still host his Sunday “Q & A” interview program.

There is an interesting interview with Pat Sajak  in The New York Times‘ on line blog about his interest in the National Hockey League. Sajak, the popular host of Wheel of Fortune, is a Vietnam veteran who received the VVA Excellence in the Arts Award at the 2009 National Convention in Louisville.

Since then, Pat Sajak has been a big supporter of Vietnam Veterans of America. He has donated his time to narrate VVA public service announcements. And in 2010 he named VVA as his charity on Celebrity Jeopardy, winning a large amount of money for our organization.

Vietnam in HD is the name of a three-part, six-hour documentary that begins tonight, Tuesday, November 8, at 9:00 Eastern time on the History Channel. Much of the in-country Vietnam War footage in the series was shot by American troops. The voices of veterans’ first-person testimony are those of participants, as well as those of some Hollywood actors.
We’ll catch the first episode tonight and give a fuller review later in the week.

The excellent documentary, My Vietnam, Your Iraq, which we reviewed a year ago, will be aired on many PBS stations around the nation around Memorial Day weekend, from May 28 to June 2. Check your local listings for times and dates.

Also: the DVD of the doc–a series of incisive interviews with Vietnam veterans and their sons and daughters who served in Iraq, produced and directed by VVA member Ron Osgood–may now be pre-ordered from PBS Home Video.

For more info on the documentary, go to the My Vietnam, Your Iraq page on the PBS web site or the film’s web site. To order the DVD, go to the PBS Home Video site.

Jennifer Nguyen Noone’s personal story of Operation Babylift will be  featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network TV show, “Searching For…” tonight, Monday, April 18, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Jennie Noone (above) came to this country as an infant on the final Babylift flight, on April 26, 1975, and was adopted by Byron and Lana Noone in June of  1975. The program will deal with her journey and also will pay tribute to the Americans who took part in the humanitarian Operation Babylift.

For more info, go to the Vietnam Babylift web site or email Lana@Vietnambabylift.org

The Cav goes into Cambodia

Norman Lloyd’s Shakey’s Hill, an award-winning documentary that combines his 1970 CBS News footage of the American incursion into Cambodia with interviews of participants 35 years later, will be shown on The Military Channel on Saturday, November 20.

Norman Lloyd in Vietnam

The former CBS cameraman went along with the men of Bravo Company of the 5th Battalion 7th Cavalry into the Cambodian jungle 40 years ago. His footage shows them in action as they discovered NVA weapons and supply caches and wound up in a sharp fight at a place called Shakey’s Hill.