I was wrong. “The Americans,” a period drama from the FX network, is not trite TV. I should not have fallen so fast into dismissive mode—but, then, can you blame me? Hollywood’s record of producing abysmally acted, amateurish, sub-intelligent scripts is solid. It speaks for itself.

In “The Americans,” Keri Russell kicks more than corporeal ass as a complex, introverted (now that’s novel), and most interesting character.

Matthew Rhys as her spook husband is magnificent; intense, authentic and manifestly conflicted.

The plot, script and attention to detail deserve high marks too.

And lo and behold, the Russian characters in the series are not just American extras with bad accents; they’re for real, accent and all.

So good is “The Americans” that Holly Taylor and her slightly less offensive brother, as the spy couples’ horrid kids, do not spoil the viewing experience. The children are straight out of 2013, down to their awful vernacular (lots of “like” to preface every sentence), and the staccato tart tones of Taylor’s voice.

“The Americans,” as I see it, is better entertainment than “Justified,” whose protagonist is well-acted (but I don’t like him one bit; I like the “Drew Thompson” outlaw and the prostitute he rescues from a sure death).

It’s all good TV courtesy of Sony Pictures Television and FX Productions.

UPDATE I: From the Facebook thread. “Nicki Fellenzer: Tell me more. I can’t get enough of this series. I’m a fan. Good, fun TV, harking back to a better time in our American history. The fact that Keri Russell looks so all-American works in her favor and with the script: Of course her Russian handlers would have chosen an American-looking Russian girl to be the spy next door. More Nicki.

UPDATED II: We were cheated out of the new episode tonight. Sorrows were duly drowned in the delights of the Sheldon Cooper character from The Big Bang Theory. Cooper is an animated, wonderful creation (which Wikipedia delights in maligning as a sicko. What’s new?).

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The following is from the current column, “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on LRC.COM:

“NO TO A ‘SUPERPOWER POPE.’ Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed.

Out of the papal conclave and into the limelight charged the vainglorious Dolan (who, it has to be said, harbored hopes of becoming pope). He then suctioned himself to the television cameras, American style. No other cardinal elector granted interviews on emerging from the Sistine Chapel; they were enjoined to secrecy.

Not the American cardinals. According to the Associated Press, these prolix self-promoters held daily press briefings near the Vatican to a room packed with reporters and television crews.

This was vulgarity, not transparency.

Not for nothing was the vow of silence once considered a test of character and spirituality in Christianity and in other faiths. This universal value has been inverted by American pop culture and pop religion. In the US, a deeply private person is considered defective; a blabbermouth who does and says anything on camera is canonized. …

… American public life is such that even our pick for pope (Dolan) struts his stuff like a “Jersey Shore” reality star.

MORE on why “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ON THE RACK,” in “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “The Pope and the Injustice of Social Justice” by Jack Kerwick:

…some initial reports of his views on “social justice” most definitely do not sound fine and good. …Whether used by so-called secular “progressives” or Catholic clerics, the call for social justice is the call for a larger, more powerful, more intrusive government. That is, it is the demand for a government that is capable of and willing to confiscate the legally owned resources of some citizens so as to “redistribute” them to others. When social justice is the order of the day, anything other than a robust, activist government is not an option.
It is crucial for everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to grasp this: social justice and liberty are mutually antithetical.

UPDATE II (15/3): Father Bob Kind of Agrees.

UPDATE III (3/16): Via a LewRockwell reader of “Spared the Sins of a ‘Superpower Pope’” comes this link to a smear of Pope Ratzinger, for opposing the “Injustice of on Social Justice” (see Update I above, for Jack Kerwick’s critique).

The new pope Francis I, it would appear, champions the evils of social justice theory and liberation theology.

He and Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

What the Obamas imbibed from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ for the past 20 years was Black Liberation Theology. “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” reads a statement of “doxology” on the Church’s site. The church is proud of its separatist “Black Value System.”
Only just retired, Pastor Wright is as central to the Church as is Africa. His “Talking Points” are prominently plastered on Trinity United’s website. There, Wright states that this diverse “doxology” is of a piece with “Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.” (Spot the blanked-out Americans.) A black person in America, moreover, is deemed outside his traditional homeland.

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The Oscar’s self-aggrandizing crowd is too much for me to stand, not even for you the reader. There will be some unfunny shtick. A precocious crappy kid will make a debut. At least one aging actor will be honored (in 2011, the distinction was Kirk Douglas’) and retired—Hollywood performs professional geronticide on the old—and hackneyed scripts filled with loud-mouthed, humorless, self-referential hedonists will abound.

The closest I’ll come to watching the 85th Academy Awards ceremony is “Fashion Police,” a sartorial send-up by Joan Rivers. She’s the only comedian and great wit who can get men to watch a program about fashion. Like me, my husband hates all “estrogen oozing” TV programing, but greatly appreciates Rivers. And rightly so. She’s lethal.

Adel’s monotone will be G-d awful, and while we will be spared Jennifer Hudson’s primal screams, Barbra Streisand will more than make up for the reprieve.

Other than lessons lost, “Les Misérables” represents great literature reduced to schmaltzy jingles, belted out by Hollywood starlets. The lesson lost: The “Les Misérables” I read as a kid was about France’s unfathomably cruel and unjust penal system, and the prototypical obedient functionary who worked a lifetime to enforce the system’s depredations. A similar power (Uncle Sam) and its enforcers recently hounded Aaron Swartz to death.

For those who care, here are the predictions. I’ve watched none of them. I’m most likely to watch “Flight” with Denzel Washington. The film got bad reviews, but I like the “disaster film genre,” although nothing will ever come close to Airport (1970) and its sequels.

Restless—I caught it on the Sundance Channel—is a BBC One production directed by Edward Hall of “MI-5” fame. With all its faults, Restless makes you realize that any British film, even a mediocre mini-series, is better than the American equivalent, big-screen productions included. (Britain retains the edge in this department.)

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When Wolf Blitzer framed one of his upcoming news teases as “Watergate,” this morning, I thought he was being a Smart Alec about Carnival Triumph, the cruise liner whose “propulsion system” was “paralyzed” by a fire in the engine room.

The ocean liner was left “temporarily marooned in the Gulf of Mexico, subject to the whims of wind and sea currents.“

As to the delicate bouquet that is wafting from the Waste Liner:

“…the sanitary situation had already begun to deteriorate on board the Triumph. …the conditions have gotten so bad that they’re asking them to use the restroom in bags, and they were eating onion sandwiches …
Much of the ship’s electrical power went down in the fire, causing widespread malfunctions, including taking out sanitary systems.
Passengers have reported sewage sloshing around in hallways, flooded rooms and trouble getting enough to eat.
“It’s disgusting. It’s the worst thing ever,” passenger Ann Barlow told CNN.

But no. By “Watergate,” Wolf was “absurdly” and perfectly seriously wondering “if Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pausing his State of the Union response for a drink of water would ‘break’ his career. The CNN chyron flashed “Career-ender?”

“So can a drink of water make or break a political career?” Blitzer asked.”

Just as you think that the remaking of “news” had reached an all-time postmodern low …

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“A simple morality tale—and one conservatives should especially relish. … an unalloyed cheer for America … hagiography of the Gipper … Paranoid thriller … a staple of the Cold War and War on Terror life. …” That’s the left’s take on “The Americans,” a new “FX anti-Soviet drama.”

Writes National Journal’s Matthew Cooper:

In The Americans, there’s none of that, just a celebration of American values. Phil considers defecting to America, which he lauds in cheeky but sincere tones. “The food’s pretty terrific. There’s plenty of closet space.” We like the Soviet spies only because they were created by a monstrous totalitarian system and are struggling to break out. (Elizabeth was not only programmed to be a spy but was raped during her training.) Keri Russell was given her start in the chick drama Felicity by J.J. Abrams, and he cast her Mission: Impossible III, where she showed her high-kick bona fides.
By contrast, the America of the Gipper is free, recognizes the Soviet threat, and is even progressive. Beeman has a minority FBI agent partner, Chris Amador (Maximiliano Hernandez), who offers proof that the FBI is dropping is crew-cut ways and becoming less cloistered, and the show notes that “there are only like two or three of them so they can’t get fired.”

As readers know, not for me are today’s chick-centric action dramas, where, “With enough will-power, an 80-pound waif will wallop a 200-pound gangster, sustaining no punctures to the silicone sacks. Her hulking cop partner is made to trot after the Great Woman obediently, stepping in to save the day only when crime and firefighting are impeded by stilettoes on the job, and a lack of physical prowess .. all in the tradition of the men-are-buffoons; women-are-brawny-and-brainy narrative…”

I am unable to become engrossed in such a parallel universe.

Hollywood had its Golden Age, back when well-written scripts reflected well-developed, multi-faceted characters. Today, Tinseltown is a monolithic, left-liberal automaton, marching in thematic unison, and subjecting the viewer to the same impoverished, error-riddled, preachy themes.
The evidence is in. Activism and abreaction have replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories in the repertoire of the pretty, pea-brained community.
A giant digit wagging above a captive audience: that’s Hollywood.

While, National Journal is correct that the series is “cartoony and a bit cheap,” and, “In its Manichaean view of the world, more like World War II movies than the nuanced thrillers of the postwar era”—it’ll hold the attention of conservatives, more so because it depicts a much happier America, one (oddly, apparently, to NJ) still dominated by the much-maligned (small “m”) moral majority.

However cute, Keri Russell, however, has an all-American look. She does not resemble a Russian beauty. The Slavic women—perhaps the most beautiful in the world—look nothing like the all-American Russell.

Milla Jovovich would have fit the mold.

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“The Rise of The Cr-ppy Chris Christie” is the current column, now on WND. Here is an excerpt:

“Chris Christie’s problem is not his weight, but his character. New Jersey’s popular Republican governor is the consummate backstabbing, slimy, opportunistic politician, who, for good measure, also preaches and practices the dirigiste economics of an Obama (and a “W”).

Gov. Christie is in the news a lot lately, which is just the way he likes it—and the way he has planned it. To say that Mr. Christie hungers for the plum post of US president is a redundancy on par with, “Is the Pope Catholic?”

The governor is no boob, but he knows how to handle boobs, a requirement of public office. And one crucial question Booboos Americanus asks himself when electing a president is whether he’d like to knock back a Guinness with the candidate. A doughnut is as good as a beer.

So on the “Late Night Show” went Christie for a cameo. There he squeezed into a studio seat too small for his girth and humored the hubris sitting opposite him, while scarfing down a doughnut.

Befitting a nation that considers wisdom and intellect as liabilities—cretin celebrities will carry the day in the 2016 presidential run, as they do today. Visibility on late night TV is a requirement of the highest office.

Launched by the Queen of Kitsch, day-time talker Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama has normalized the cultural carnival that sees a president cavorting with dummies like Dave Letterman and the ladies of “The View.” He now sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Chris Christie would dearly like to plunk his keister.

Like his predecessor, the next president will need the imprimatur of entertainers with canonical status. “The road to the White House goes through this chair,” a semi-serious David Letterman warned Republican presidential pick Mitt Romney. Romney had flouted the Letterman commandment. Where is he today? On the ash-heap of history.

Another chrysalis within which the American presidency takes shape is the liberal media. And it loves Chris Christie, holding him up as a paragon of the rudderless Republican the GOP ought to be running.

This wasn’t always the case…”

Read the complete column, “The Rise of The Cr-ppy Chris Christie,” now on WND.

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