Piece Comment

Review of Taking Liberties


Timely. Well written, well delivered, well edited and polished. The documentary is easy to follow and has a comfortable rhythm. It is informative and takes advantage of multiple voices, people who are thoughtful and intelligent. I learned much over the course of this 58-minute documentary and relearned some important history that I had unfortunately forgotten.

Superlatives aside, I still found myself wanting to hear more. Example: I wanted to hear someone take issue with the segment about the para-military police work. As reprehensible as the Eugene, Oregon police action was, I wanted to hear it spoken of in terms of number of incidents. I wanted to hear a police voice explaining when, how and why that type of work might sometimes be justified. There were other segments that had me asking for other perspectives, too.

Heavy handed is too strong an expression to use to define the segment about the Carter-Reagan Presidential election but let's be mindful that it just wasn't the intelligence community which supported and elected Ronald Reagan.

This documenatry would be well served by a clock. Give stations the 20/40 local avail and provide a 5-minute news hole at :01.