Telling lies about history: “The Fifties” on television

Criticism, of course, cannot prevent lies from being told. But it does make it its business to see that they do not establish themselves as truth.
—George Watson, The Literary Critics

It is a melancholy task to return to the subject of David Halberstam’s book on The Fifties,¹ first published to much misguided acclaim nearly five years ago and lately turned into a lengthy television series on the so-called History Channel that is an even worse travesty of the period than the author’s original text. The book itself, running to some eight hundred pages of recycled myths, clichés, and caricatures drawn from the received wisdom of the Left-liberal media, is a monstrous compendium of misinformation about one of the most admirable epochs in American history. In the History Channel...