REVIEW: In 'The People Speak' Some Everyday People Are More Equal Than Others

You can see the possibility that small acts multiplied by the millions can merge into great movements of social change. — So speaketh Howard Zinn in summing up the theme of last night’s two hour History Channel telecast of “The People Speak.” But like all Leftists, Zinn’s using a t-shirt ready face, focus group-tested platitudes, and cherry-picked bits of American history to further a monstrous ideology that will ensure all but a few Matt Damon-esque elites lose their liberties to Big Government overseers.

If you think about it, taken at face value, that Zinn quote personifies the Tea Party movement, doesn’t it? But what do you think Zinn and his fellow celebucrats think of those everyday people? That question can be answered in two words: Sarah and Palin:

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A large portion of “The People Speak” celebrates “everyday” women who came from nowhere to fight the establishment and have their voices heard … and yet here’s Matt Damon trashing the self-made reformer from Alaska who took on her own party.

It’s important to keep in mind that in Zinn’s poseur-infested world, some who believe democracy is not a spectator sport are more equal than others.

I know, I know, what a shock — elitist hypocrisy from a bunch of celebrity millionaires calling for socialism. But big or small, nothing with these types is ever as advertised. Hell, the very foundation of “The People Speak” is an audacious lie. We’re told the program will introduce us to “dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans.” You know, everyday Americans like Muhammad Ali, Neil Young, Woody Guthrie, Mark Twain, Susan B. Anthony, Dalton Trumbo, Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, Susan Walker and John Steinbeck.

Looks as though the definition of “everyday American” now means someone famous who once wrote something the less famous would like to read for the History Channel.

Other than discovering that grunge music isn’t dead and seeing Marisa Tomei in a late-career performance where she keeps her clothes on, nothing in “The People Speak” surprised – including its lack of success as a piece of leftist agit-prop.

Howard Zinn, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore, Matt Damon

What worries me as the lights dim for the latest piece of Hollywood propaganda is what I call “The China Syndrome Standard.” In other words, is this latest going to be good enough to fulfill its mission in undermining America? Because it was a superb piece of filmmaking released just after the Three Mile Island incident, “The China Syndrome” had a major impact on our turning away from the safest and cleanest energy resource available. While France was building enough nuclear power plants to create over 70% of their energy, Jane Fonda and company effectively set us back decades.

So I worry because this is the kind of lightening in a bottle Hollywood Leftists keep trying to recreate. Thankfully, the kids Matt Damon and producer Chris Moore have targeted with their love letter to Zinn are going to be alright. “The People Speak” is no “China Syndrome.” In fact it’s closer to Michael Moore’s work where celebrity narcissism always seems to get in the way of Mission: Spread Chic Socialism.

Narrated throughout by Zinn, “The People Speak” offers some very powerful moments, especially during the sequences covering American slavery and segregation. But as the two hours roll on, the idea of having celebrities read the words of others becomes fairly tedious, especially when the readings are so look-at-me over the top they become uncomfortable to watch.

David Straitharn, Kerry Washington, Lupe Fiasco and the guy from Run DMC are especially melodramatic; Matt Damon’s predictably wooden (foolishly allowing himself to be compared to Henry Fonda with John Steinbeck’s “Wherever there’s a man.” monologue); and the musical interludes are so stuffed with stripped-down smug self-importance there has to be a “South Park” attack in the works. On the other hand, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Jasmine Guy and Viggo Mortensen (until he pretentiously lays a little Spanish on us) do manage to stay out of the way of the material they’re performing.

Much of what’s read and sung is undeniably elegant and powerful. Few spoke with more power on issues of race than Frederick Douglas and Malcolm X, and the courthouse words of John Brown and Susan B. Anthony are filled with the kind of moral authority that’s unforgettable. But as with all things Leftist and Zinn, context is their kryptonite and nowhere is this more apparent than the sequences involving World War II and Vietnam.

…2 million deaths would follow.

No honest student of history would present the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as cruel attacks on civilians. The inevitable invasion of Japan would’ve killed many more Japanese civilians (not to mention American servicemen) than those two bombs, and Zinn’s proud contention that civil disobedience ended the war in Vietnam is especially disturbing. The anti-war protests ended with the withdrawal of our troops after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. With U.S. financial backing, our South Vietnamese Allies were able to hang on to their country, but in 1975 that all ended when Congressional Democrats cut funding. This demoralized the South, emboldened the Communist North, and Saigon fell ushering in a four-year holocaust that took nearly two million innocent lives.

What kind of monsters take pride in such an outcome?

That would be Howard Zinn and his celeb-minions who — thankfully for America — are just a little too wrapped up in themselves to meet “The China Syndrome Standard.”