It was on this date in 1975 that President Gerald Ford announced that the Vietnam War era was over, a declaration that doesn’t even register a blip on the historical calendar because the war actually ended more than a week earlier when Ford told a graduating class at Tulane University that for America, the war was over. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Vietnam
The Vietnam War isn’t over for a lot of people and the Rochester Post Bulletin’s lovely feature about Ray Winkels is proof of that.
Ray is in a wheelchair thanks to Vietnam. Read more →
In publicity interviews before the series, Ken Burns seemed to suggest that the nation remains conflicted over whether the Vietnam war, which took the lives of 58,000 Americans, was worth it. The first episode last week seemed to promise to deliver an answer to that question.
It didn’t.
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Not surprisingly, PBS’ documentary, “The Vietnam War” is getting more and more difficult to watch from episode to episode. Read more →
In putting together his Vietnam War series over a 10-year period, filmmaker Ken Burns said he hopes to start a national conversation on the war. That hasn’t happened yet, although we’re only three episodes in (the entire series is online). Critics have applauded the series but, anecdotally, the buzz hasn’t taken hold.
It’s not because people aren’t watching.
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We’re three episodes in to Ken Burns’ outstanding series, The Vietnam War, and among the more compelling debates to come from its airing is the question of whether there really is no such thing as a ‘single truth’ in war. Read more →
For people like me who grew up hating everything about the Vietnam War, the politicians who gave it to us, the hard hats who insisted ‘America, love it or leave it,’ the opening of Ken Burns long-awaited documentary, The Vietnam War, came out hard. Read more →
Ken Burns’ ‘The War’ series provided a sentimental, if painful, look at World War II. There’s no way his latest epic can. It’s still too raw. America is still coming to grips with the discovery that our leaders are often con men. And sometimes, 50,000 young people die because of it. Read more →
It’s not that I don’t honor the unimaginable courage — and acknowledge the unimaginable fear — of those who stormed the beaches, it’s just the feeling that it’s far easier for the nation to recognize the events of World War II than it is to acknowledge Vietnam. Read more →
The American news media doesn’t cover war on the front line much anymore. But when it did, Anne Morrissy Merick fought her own country for the right to be there. Read more →
It was a pretty neat scene in Faribault yesterday when a replica of the Vietnam War memorial wall made its way from Owatonna to the city. Read more →
It’s hard not to imagine what the family might have contributed to a better Iron Range had his family spent more than a year in the Iron Range town on his way to a better life. Read more →
Al Hams, who started a few music careers when he owned Al’s Music in St. Cloud, isn’t allowed to forget Vietnam. Not anymore, anyway.
He’s got Parkinson’s Disease, believed to be linked to the widespread use of the Agent Orange defoliant he was exposed to during the year he served in Vietnam.
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Far be it from us to recommend you go listen to another radio station today, but go listen to another radio station today. Read more →
On this date 45 years ago, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State protesting the war in Vietnam. Four people died. It’s impossible to forget. Read more →