OLBERMANN: Originating with legitimate concerns about the well-being of the nation and its citizens, a political movement mutates in a kind of irrational, religious-related zealotry. Before its influence is fully measured, it dominates nearly every state government, and is beginning to infiltrate the House, the Senate, the presidential race. Its ire is directed at immigrants, city dwellers, the users of recreational drugs. It wants to rewrite laws, dictate what the government spends and how. And, it wants a constitutional amendment.
In our number one story, The tea party? No, the Anti-Saloon League, The Women's Christian Temperance Union, the prohibitionists. They seem like an antique brought down from the high shelf of history, until you watch Ken Burns' new documentary on them premiering Sunday on PBS. Ken, in a moment. The clip first.
(Excerpt from video clip) MAN #1: We therefore declare for alcohol's national annihilation by an amendment to the federal constitution, which shall forever prohibit throughout the territory of the United States the manufacture and sale, and the importation, exportation and transportation of intoxicating liquor to be used as a beverage.
(Excerpt from video clip) MAN #2: Here were all these evangelical Christians -- familiar figures today -- who decided to pass a law that . . . would imprison Jesus if he turned water into wine. They'd say "there he goes -- Lock him up."
OLBERMANN: A pleasure to be joined here for the first time by documentary filmmaker and "Countdown" contributor for "History and Stuff," Ken Burns. Hello, my friend. How are you?
KEN BURNS: I'm well, how are you? Thanks for having me.
OLBERMANN: Our pleasure. I -- holding up on the zealot trail pretty well?
BURNS: The grueling trail.
OLBERMANN: A premise -- this is actually about today's history, and you just sort of covered it with yesterday's history. True or false?
BURNS: You know, everything I think we've ever done has been about today's history. You know, the Civil War was about a new imperial presidency and weapons of mass destruction, about women's liberation, shoddy government contract work -- all the things.
And when we stepped into this pile of stuff called Prohibition, we couldn't believe that it was just echoing with everything of today -- single-issue campaigns that metastasize, demonization of immigrants, a whole group of people who feel like they've lost control of their country and want to take it back -- tell me to stop.
OLBERMANN: But -- there's something else, too. The -- apart from those parallels, there's also this idea that there was this slow buildup to a process that people just saw at the last moment -- which you could argue was the conservative movement for the last, you know 45 years in America that sort of -- the final version of which was the tea party. And, prohibition I -- frankly, I think I know my American history pretty well. I thought Prohibition was something that started about 1885 or so.
BURNS: Yeah, no. It goes way, way back, it's a long time brewing. And, what's so interesting is that it's -- lots of different people want it. They think it's the magic bullet. The panacea of it is going to cure society of all the ills. It has been hijacked by the Anti-Saloon League -- that is the single most effective lobbying organization in the history of the United States, it makes the NRA look like they're in short pants -- but, it's embraced by progressives as well as conservatives. By Democrats as well as Republicans, by the NAACP, and the Ku Klux Klan, by the Wobblies, the industrial workers of the world, the radical labor union, who think that -- you know, that alcohol must be a capitalist plot to destroy the working man. And Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, who think that alcohol, you know, cuts into productivity. So, everybody is buying it.
Then, they wake up to the biggest hangover ever. Because it’s prohibition for somebody else -- Mark Twain says "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
OLBERMANN: And, there really is -- just when you think you've had the entire story of this extraordinary build up and the 120 years before it happened, and the 13 years of its existence -- suddenly comes this story of its collapse.
BURNS: Yes.
OLBERMANN: Is there a lesson? The end of Prohibition does that contain a lesson to any one-party group -- the tea party is an easy example to use, but any one one-issue group.
BURNS: Absolutely.
OLBERMANN: About -- whether or not you moderate your position or you become the French Revolution. Everybody is not pure enough to survive, and there is nobody left to fight your side of the ball.
BURNS: That's right. There's lots of lessons here. I mean, we have unintended consequences, which we know -- organized crime, female alcoholism, it didn't work. It wasn't the magic bullet.
You know, Billy Sunday said "A hell will forever be for rent." Well, there was Standing Room Only to get into hell after they passed the amendment. But, yes, we -- it's a cautionary tale. We don't jump into -- when somebody says 'I've got this blankety blank amendment which will fix everything.' And, we don't jump into it that way, because we've been chastened. And, Prohibition is that long, simmering memory that tells us be careful.
OLBERMANN: And it’s Pete Hamill -- I think -- who says "This is the first time the constitution went out of its way to narrow freedom rather than expand it," right?
BURNS: Exactly right. And, this is the only amendment -- to our credit -- that's been repealed. We thought this would work. It didn't work, and we got rid of it faster than it came in. I mean, the actual ratification took almost no time -- surprise, the dries who were sure. 'We gave them 84 months, they'll never be able to ratify in 84 months.' They did it in 13. Well, this thing disappeared even shorter, because we realized it had been such a ridiculous, hypocritical folly.
OLBERMANN: The event -- it’s almost three weeks ago that we were at -- where you shared the stage with Terry Winter, and the folks from HBO on "Boardwalk Empire." Overlapping in time, and in an extraordinary thing, I'm sure for both of you -- Mr. Winter and yourself. You both struck gold with the same character. And he was -- I could tell how trepidatious he was that he'd gotten something wrong. But, you both seemed to have hit him perfectly. Tell -- tell --- explain who I'm talking about.
BURNS: Well, a guy named George Remus. I mean, we finished our film. We locked the film just about the time "Boardwalk Empire" premiered its first year. So, I've got my -- you know, accounting firm here. They'll tell you we had no idea. But, we came across this guy George Remus, who talked about himself in the third person, was this unbelievable bootlegger, with a story built for Hollywood. And, we just kept saying as we were making it "Somebody should make this as a film." And, he's now a lead character, in this, the second season of "Boardwalk Empire." And, when we were at this thing, we both shared, you know, coincidentally, clips on George Remus.
OLBERMANN: Right.
BURNS: We have Paul Giamatti reading him off camera, and he's just as funny in documentary as he is in a feature film.
OLBERMANN: And, to give away nothing of what it is -- when you watch this, and I hope you will, because it’s really one of Ken's best pieces -- when you watch this documentary, whatever you think you're hearing Mr. Remus say, you have no idea what the context is, and that is all revealed at the end. And, it’s worth waiting -- do not scoot forward.
BURNS: No, no, no. I keep trying.
OLBERMANN: Enjoy it.
BURNS: I sit on my hands, I do not give away the second half of the story. Suffice to say he's one of the greatest bootleggers ever. And then --
OLBERMANN: -- there's something else.
BURNS: -- The rest of the story.
OLBERMANN: Thank you, Paul. Lastly, about allegories and additional stories. Terry Winter saw -- from "Boardwalk Empire" -- said he saw Prohibition as an allegory relating to the criminalization of marijuana. I mean, there's another -- there's even another angle to take on this.
BURNS: I think there is a kind of obvious conversation to have about this. But, we've been drinking since there've been people. Drugs, marijuana, other things pop up in sub-cultural moments. And, you can't make a direct correlation. If you do, you'll end up with the same unintended consequences. Because, you may be able to tax it -- it's our largest cash crop. But, you may not cut down on the violence, which you hope would take place without inviting in cocaine and heroin.
OLBERMANN: Right.
BURNS: Are we ready to do that? Probably not.
OLBERMANN: "Prohibition," the documentary film by Ken Burns, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of next week on PBS, right? And it is great work, and you also, on top of everything else get to find out about the actual origin of phrases like "teetotaler," and "Skid Row." Or "Skid Road," I think might be the origin.
BURNS: "Skid Road."
OLBERMANN: Always a pleasure, and --
BURNS: Thank you.
OLBERMANN: -- my condolences about the Red Sox.
BURNS: Oh, I knew you'd bring that up.
OLBERMANN: That's "Countdown," for this, the 57th day since the Republican's debt ceiling blackmail worked. Speaker Boehner, where are the jobs, where's our credit rating? By the way, I'm rooting for the Red Sox. All of my friends work for the Red Sox.
BURNS: I hope so.
OLBERMANN: And of course, the good friends who own the Braves. I'm a mess. It's the Yankees I'm not rooting for.
I'm Keith Olbermann. Good night, and good luck.
