In defense of Ken Burns’ The Civil War

The Washington Post

It’s unfair to blame a 14-second Shelby Foote clip from Burns’ epic documentary for White House chief of staff John Kelly’s view that the Civil War was the result of “the lack of an ability to compromise,” says Alyssa Rosenberg in response to Jonathan Chait’s article published Tuesday. “Focusing narrowly on a lone clip rather than the sequence framing it does a profound disservice to both the documentary and the idea of careful close-reading,” says Rosenberg, who has pressed Burns about the amount of time Foote received in The Civil War.