History Channel
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The History Channel is a US based cable television channel. While it airs a few serious shows that might teach you something (the UK version History strips out most of the gun nut yee-haw type "documentaries" and replaces them with quaint David Starkey–type stuff in between the MOAR HITLER), it also airs some really strange shows that are notorious promoters of woo, sometimes branching out into thinly veiled pseudohistory. Its newest edition has stretched this even further into outright religious propaganda.
It is sometimes called the Pseudohistory Channel by people who are disappointed with its scholarly standards, the Hysteria Channel by people who are pissed off by the scaremongering end-of-the-world shows, and the Hitler Channel by people who were fed up with its extensive programming covering the Second World War (though they probably regret saying that now- at least that was actual history).
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[edit] All Hitler, all the time
The channel had earned the unfortunate nickname of "The Hitler Channel," due to its need to fill the schedule with content related to World War II.[1] Military programming has since moved to its sister channel, the Military History Channel, leaving the channel to fill their programming gaps with shows about old stuff like Pawn Stars and American Pickers, utterly non-historical dumb content such as Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Life After People, and the topic of the next section...
[edit] Pseudocrap and sensationalism
[edit] Ancient Aliens
One of their classic intellectual achievements is their incredibly embarrassing series, Ancient Aliens.[2] Sadly, it namechecks huge numbers of our articles, so rapidly as to be difficult to keep up with, such as:
- 2012 apocalypse
- Ancient astronauts
- Baghdad battery
- Bermuda Triangle
- Crop circles
- Crystal skull
- Dendera lamp
- Erich Von Däniken
- Fermi paradox
- Jungle hypothesis
- Native American woo
- Noah's Ark
- Pangea
- Pyramids
- Spinning plasma vortex!
- The Bible[3]
- Zoo hypothesis
To quote a typical talking head featured on the show, discussing of all things, the coming 2012 apocalypse, "you would think that had to come from extraterrestrials" (sure, but only for very small values of "think").
Every segment has the announcer saying "could it be that...this is evidence of ancient aliens...maybe!" Near the end of one show, at least, Michael Shermer gets a few moments to call it all rubbish. Otherwise, it is so much non-stop woo, it sounds like a train whistle! So much bullshit, even the farmers are complaining!
At least Ghostfinders is on the Sci Fi channel, where it belongs.
[edit] Parallel universes
An episode of the channel's show The Universe called "Parallel Universes" went so far as to promote parallel universes as being solid scientific fact.
People like Michio Kaku started theorizing the reality of parallel universes and classify their work in this regard as physics instead of metaphysics. Michio Kaku reveals this theory in his books, Parallel Worlds and Hyperspace. When physicists start to speculate about parallel universes as based in reality, they have drifted away from science a bit too far.
[edit] The Bible
Continuing its recent history of producing programs promoting historical revisionism and mystic pseudohistory, the History Channel has decided to feature a 10-part series called The Bible, covering (watered down, family friendly) events from the (wait for it!) Bible! The series was created by Roma Downey, an actress who played a role in Touched by an Angel, and her husband, "reality" television producer Mark Burnett. The series was launched on March 3rd, 2013 and is set to conclude on March 31st, 2013. Although it has received high ratings, the series has been criticized for "errors, mistakes, fiction, made up stories."[4] On March 17th, 2013, the series met with a bit of controversy when Glenn Beck (of all people) tweeted:
"Anyone else think the Devil in #TheBible Sunday on History Channel looks exactly like that Guy".
"That guy" referred to President Barack Obama. This caused a firestorm on the net. However, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett responded to the criticism by stating:
"This is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics -- including satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our president." Executive producer Roma Downey added, "Both Mark and I have nothing but respect and love our president, who is a fellow Christian. False statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of The Bible."[5]
Obama later tore the History Channel and Beck's friends a new one at the 2013 White House Correspondents' Dinner.[6]
[edit] Worth watching?
Perhaps at one time yes, the "History" Channel might have had some intellectual merit. However these days its quite clearly fallen into a New Age nonsense trap, its shows having been long replaced with the above nonsense and generally boring and/or non-history related content, effectively selling its educational value for short term ratings and sensationalism. This seems to be a general theme among its sister channels (TLC, The Discovery Channel, etc) these days. At least Animal Planet continues to have a shred of dignity: it still airs animal-related content, at least for the time being. Not to worry though, they are starting to push even that aside for barely/non-animal related content as well.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ All Hitler, all the time A viewer of History could be led to believe that nothing of note happened in recorded history outside of World War II and ancient Egypt. And those were the H.C.'s better days.
- ↑ Yes, this is really on the "History" Channel. Warning: you will laugh hysterically.
- ↑ No joke, they actually peddle this stuff as "History" now? But really, are you really suprised at this point?
- ↑ http://www.examiner.com/article/history-channel-tv-show-on-bible-continues-with-errors-mistakes-fiction?cid=rss
- ↑ http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/tv-zone-1.811968/bible-producers-obama-satan-resemblance-nonsense-actor-mehdi-ouzaani-highly-acclaimed-1.4833941
- ↑ http://youtu.be/ON2XWvyePH8?t=7m29s