We all know people who say they don’t watch PBS because it’s too much like the lectures they used to sleep through in high school or college.
And sometimes it’s true. And sometimes that’s exactly what PBS needs to do, like with the American Experience documentary Oklahoma City that debuts Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings).
Oklahoma City isn’t about a season with the Thunder, entertaining as they would be. This is a methodical examination of the forces that preceded and propelled the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
One hundred sixty-eight people were killed that day, including children at the day care center, and 675 were injured (Field of Empty Chairs from the Memorial at left).
The immediate assumption, even though the bombing occurred six years before September 11, was that Middle East terrorists must have been responsible.
So it came as a second shock when the bomber turned out to be a regular old American kid, a former soldier from New York.
He had returned from Iraq to become a radical activist in the anti-government movement, sharing the fear that federal jackboots were methodically stripping Americans of their freedom and their guns, not necessarily in that order.
This American Experience, like previous documentaries, includes his own reflections on why he did it.
After he was arrested, tried, and convicted, he gave some 60 hours of interviews while he awaited his execution, and he seemed to rather enjoy his celebrity.
He called himself a freedom fighter, a moral dodge not uncommon among mass murderers.
We’ll omit his name here, as well his photo, as a small token gesture toward not promoting his delusion of fame.
In any case, he’s the second half of this two-hour production. The first hour traces the growth of the radical anti-government movement in the 1980s, particularly its twin flashpoints of Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco (left).
In both cases, government authorities – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI – tried to arrest separatist groups who were holed up in remote places with large stashes of firearms. In both cases, federal agents were killed during the initial attempt.
In each case, the targets hunkered down and resisted, until the feds finally decided the situation was untenable and moved in, with lethal results.
These became rallying cries and selling points for anti-government radicals. The man who went on to commit the Oklahoma City bombing had driven to Waco, hanging around the perimeter selling bumper stickers. After Waco, he vowed that next time his side would strike first.
The government does not come off as white-hat heroes at any stage here. In retrospect, agents could quite possibly have resolved both standoffs with less bloodshed.
The radicals, however, come off worse. While Oklahoma City (Gates of Time from the Memorial at left) notes that different groups had different agendas, those agendas coalesced into an angry jumble of conspiracy theories and self-righteous declarations about God’s plan for America.
In some cases, these radicals were relatively apolitical separatists who just wanted to build a cabin in the woods and be left alone. Others delivered big talk about armed revolution and “taking back the country” in the name of “the people,” despite the fact most actual people find their beliefs repulsive.
One of the tragic ironies underscored in Oklahoma City is that this makes America’s homegrown terrorists pretty much the same as all other terrorists. Any belief, however sensible, benign and admirable its origin, can be taken to tragic and lethal extremes.