That Ain’t Jazz

Late winter, 2000. A posh co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Too regal for a freelance writer, but I’m a guest worker, here to tape a talking-head interview for Ken Burns.

Yeah, that Ken Burns. Superproducer, who leaped the War Between the States with a single bound, bent baseball with his bare hands, and, disguised as a mild-mannered boyish, bowl-cut documentary filmmaker, fights a never-ending battle for truth, multiculturalism, and airtime on PBS.