History as Soap Opera

In 1492, Christopher Columbus was welcomed to the New World by scantily clad dancing girls. Gen. George Custer was court-martialed for his performance at the Little Big Horn. Wayne Williams did not commit the Atlanta Child Murders.

That is not, to paraphrase Walter Cronkite, the way it was. It is the world according to television's "docudramas."

In Hollywood, or at network headquarters in New York, somebody thought that Columbus's actual landfall in the Indies was a bit dull. General Custer's death alongside his men at the Little Big Horn was a historical inconvenience. The producer of The Atlanta Child Murders (1985) disagreed with both the jury that convicted Wayne Williams and the appellate court that upheld the verdict.

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