Which is pretty much the leitmotiv of Ric Burns' new mega-documentary (five two-hour installments now airing on PBS-TV, with at least one more installment due to air in the spring) on New York City. The series has been faulted for being very non-NYCish in the sense it is slow-moving, and indeed I nodded off during the first two hours. Last night's episode, though, was certainly not snooze-inducing, since so much of it focused on the Civil War draft riots. I knew these riots were brutal, but it had never really hit home to me before that they were, as I believe the program put it, the worst insurrection in U.S. history (apart from the Civil War itself of course). One thing that irritates me is the way the script keeps referring to NYC as a multicultural "experiment"; I guess if the experiment works out, New York City will be established for *for real* at some point.
Carl
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