1. The War on Poverty. It was a two- or three-part documentary shown on PBS in the early 1990s, and it showed two things that Republicans hate to admit: 1) The War on Poverty actually reduced poverty while it was fully operational and 2) Ronald Reagan's claim that "poverty won" is untrue. It's rather that powerful business interests were fine with the War on Poverty as long as it seemed strictly charitable, but when aid workers began telling poor people that they had rights (to not have their land seized for strip mining without compensation, to safe working conditions, to apartments with heat and electricity, to the minimum wage, etc.) then the backlash began.
This series is not out on DVD, although there may still be a few VHS copies kicking around. I even wrote to the producers of the series, and all they said was "This series is no longer available."
I wonder if political pressure created a memory hole.
1. Victorian Values:This British series was shown on Discovery in 1987, when it still showed intelligent documentaries. It told what the Victorian middle and upper classes thought about various social issues, and it was fascinating, because I could already see those ideas (the poor are lazy, union members are thugs, women should be content to be different from men, prisons should be tougher) coming back into fashion. As far as I know, it was never put out on VHS and certainly not on DVD. In addition, the companion book has also disappeared.
Political pressure creating a memory hole again?
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