Not that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were flawless people, produced perfect documents or uniformly followed their own best propositions, yet I have no doubt that they would look with alarm upon what’s come of their hopeful handiwork, a politics where rules are for suckers and freedom’s just another word for messing with someone else’s liberty. Years from now, when historians come to speak of this time — and they will — they will not be kind. Fortunately, we have television to distract us from this darkness, as long as we don’t turn on the news.
TV has long looked at the American Revolution and various founding figures, in ways satirical, thoughtful and completely without historical merit — but generally with a degree of optimism. With the Fourth of July upon us once again, I have assembled a brief, entirely personal guide to relevant small-screen viewing, old, new and red, white and blue. The internet will be your portal for much of what follows.
My first thought in approaching this assignment was to wonder whether Jean Shepherd’s delightful “The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters” (YouTube) was living anywhere on the internet — and happily it is . A production of the still-missed public television series “American Playhouse,” it arrived in 1982, the year before the film of Shepherd’s “A Christmas Story,” with Ralph, now a teenager, played by a young Matt Dillon. (There are passing referenc.
