Stop Kennedy Smears Press
by Sharon Waxman at The Wrap | April 29 2010
Left-wing documentary firebrand Robert Greenwald Thursday challenged actors Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes — who were cast this week to play John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie in a History Channel miniseries about the Kennedys — to “insist on a historically accurate and politically unbiased script.”
by Dave Itzkoff at New York Times | April 28 2010
“The Kennedys,” the coming History Channel miniseries, has found its lead actors to play the central members of that Democratic political clan. Greg Kinnear, an Academy Award nominee for “As Good As It Gets,” will play John F. Kennedy; Barry Pepper (“Saving Private Ryan”) will play Robert F. Kennedy; Tom Wilkinson, an Emmy Award winner for “John Adams,” will play the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy; and Katie Holmes (“Batman Begins,” “Dawson’s Creek”) will play Jacqueline Kennedy.
The miniseries, produced by Joel Surnow, a creator of the Fox action series “24,” has been criticized by historians who were provided early drafts of the scripts by the liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald. They said the scripts contained historical inaccuracies and presented an unflattering depiction of President Kennedy and his family. The History Channel plans to show the eight-hour miniseries next year.
on MSNBC | March 5 2010
on MSNBC | March 4 2010
on CNN | February 28 2010
by Daniela Perdomo at AlterNet | February 25 2010
Following my article last week on the campaign to quelch the History Channel’s upcoming mini-series on the storied Kennedy family — produced by a FOX News-affiliated right-winger — comes more news on the heated story.
For context, the channel is developing a mini-series called “The Kennedys” that has been called, by historians and people who knew the people that’ll be depicted in the show, sex and sleaze disguised as history. The best way to paint the picture is to quote what Ted Sorensen, JFK’s legendary speechwriter and adviser, told me for my article:
According to Sorensen, “not a single scene” in which he appears took place. “Some of that is simply sloppy invention, but most of it is because the script has been distorted by a hatred for the Kennedys,” he told AlterNet. “Almost everything is invented or slanted in one way or another against the Kennedys.”
Now it appears that David Talbot, a historian whose books the show’s screenwriter, Stephen Kronish, told the New York Times he read as background, is outraged that he is being cited as a source for the maligned script.
by Mike Farrell at Huffington Post | February 25 2010
My name is Mike Farrell. I’m an actor.
Many years ago, I was lucky enough to realize an ambition to portray John F. Kennedy, the first US President I was old enough to vote for. Made for PBS, the project was JFK, A One-Man Show, produced by David Susskind, written by David and Sidney Carroll and directed by Frank Perry.
This extraordinary team, understanding its responsibility to history, carefully researched every word that went into the show. As actors portraying historic figures, we can do no less.
To learn, as we near the 50th anniversary of JFK’s presidency, that a project now in the works is not only grossly inaccurate but clearly intended to assassinate the character of a man who gave his life for this country fills me with contempt for the tone and depth of the political rancor that rages about us today.
by Ted Johnson at Variety | February 24 2010
David Talbot’s book “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” was cited by screenwriter Stephen Kronish as source material for his script for the upcoming History Channel miniseries “The Kennedys.”
But Talbot now has come out against the script for the project, joining a chorus of historians who have characterized it as a politically motivated hatchet job, focusing on soap opera aspects of the Kennedys’ private indiscretions and ignoring seminal events of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Talbot’s comments were posted in a web video this afternoon on the site of BraveNewFilms, the progressive org run by Robert Greenwald, who has been spearheading the campaign against the project. “The Kennedys” is being produced by Joel Surnow, the former “24″ executive producer and unabashed conservative.
by Dave Itzkoff at New York Times | February 24 2010
Add David Talbot to the list of authors who are pre-emptively criticizing “The Kennedys,” a planned mini-series that the producer and “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is preparing for the History channel.
Mr. Talbot’s book “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” was among the works cited by the “Kennedys” screenwriter, Stephen Kronish, as source material for the television project in a recent article in The New York Times.
At that time, the mini-series was under fire from Robert Greenwald, the liberal filmmaker who had obtained early copies of Mr. Kronish’s screenplays and provided them to other historians, whose critiques he recorded and posted at a Web site, stopkennedysmears.com. Mr. Kronish said he identifies himself as a liberal Democrat and suggested the criticism was politically motivated because Mr. Surnow is an outspoken conservative.
by Paul Harris at The Observer | February 21 2010
A new TV mini-series masterminded by the rightwing co-creator of the hit show 24 has outraged liberals and placed the legacy of the Kennedy family at the heart of America’s culture wars.
The show is the brainchild of producer Joel Surnow, who is a rare political conservative in liberal-dominated Hollywood. The planned series, entitled The Kennedys, has been accused of emphasising the sexual shenanigans of the Democratic party’s most famous dynasty rather than the story of their rise to power and the way they captured of the imagination of the American people in the 1960s.
Despite not yet having a cast or a release date, Surnow’s plans for The Kennedys has already triggered an astonishing backlash among leading liberal Hollywood figures, former Kennedy aides and many Kennedy scholars. Leading the charge is liberal documentary-maker Robert Greenwald, whose films include Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism and Iraq For Sale.