The History channel has been airing a multi-installment special "America -The Story Of Us" this week, and I happened to catch last evening's episode "Westward". I was anticipating a piece about how the west was settled, the challenges that were faced and overcome. I would not expect a sanitized Wagon Train story, and boy did I not get it.We got to meet the Donner Party, a cursed group of people heading west who are caught in a savage snowstorm and marooned in the mountains for 5 months. Husband ends up eating wife's dead body to survive - you know, classic Americana. We revisit the Trail of Tears where Andrew Jackson and Congress ordered the Indian nations onto reservations out west, one of our darker moments. We get a recap of slavery, complete with scenes of children being torn from their moms, since its spread into the west was a contentious issue as the frontier opened up. We visit the factories up North where women work in textile factories for $2 a week to support their families since dad's a drunk or invalid (with a cameo commentary by that great historian Martha Stewart). We overan Mexican territory and forcibly took it from them, we built the Erie canal with drunk Irishmen who blew themselves up since there was no OSHA around, and - well, you get the picture by now - a film Michael Moore would just adore. While I'm all for an awareness of our low points since such examinations allow us to become a better society, I somehow have to believe that characterizing America's real history as that of a bunch of druken, slave-owning, racist, misogynist cannibals misses that balance one needs to have an effective, accurate story about us.
