This past weekend I finished watching the History Channel’s Sons of Liberty. While watching it I had the same feeling I had while watching The Patriot with Mel Gibson: queasy. The docudrama was not billed as a documentary so I expected some artistic license, but it turned out to be more drama than “docu.” I suppose it was entertaining in a B movie sort of way! The story, for the most part, was an idealized patriotic version without the profound and revolutionary thought behind it. A young and handsome (unlike the real one) Samuel Adams (played by Ben Barnes) was the protagonist, who almost singlehandedly drug his fellow revolutionaries to independence. In reality Samuel did play a major role in driving the Revolution, but he was not the only major player. And the beer-drinking man of action portrayed in the series leaves out Samuel’s major contribution as a polemical writer.  Continue reading →