Today, ‘The Americans’ Would Be Ordinary In Their Un-Americanness

Aesthetics, Communism, Feminism, Film, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture

“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.

The Rise of The Cr-ppy Chris Christie

Ann Coulter, Celebrity, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Morality, Pop-Culture, Private Property, Republicans

“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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Sen. Graham: ‘Not Fair to Let President Get Hit.’ But What About The Drone’s Victims?

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, Justice, Law, Technology, The Courts, War, WMD

Bloodthirsty neoconservative Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican Senator, supports President Obama’s drone policy, which, as I noted on 02.05.13, is being debated only because of the very public confirmation hearings for John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Sen. Graham says it’s not fair to leave the president out there on his own while he’s getting hit from libertarians and the left,” reports MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

I guess it’s fair to leave kids like little Shakira to brave the cowardice of Uncle Sam’s Assassin. As you see, not much remains of the child’s small, charred face.

The Los Angeles Times concedes that it is time “to press the architect of the administration’s policy of targeted killings about its legal rationale and practical application.”

…the document espouses a “broader concept of imminence” in which a suspect can be killed even when the U.S. government lacks “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” Another passage suggests that the determination of whether there is an “imminent” threat can take account of the fact that certain Al Qaeda members are “continually plotting attacks against the United States.”

Despite the horror of the concept of “Targeted killings”—and the violation of 4th and 5h amendment safeguards—the LA Times posits the need only to “limit” rather than “eliminate” this barbarism.

Fear Not: Uncle Sam Can Kill You, But Likely Won’t

Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Law, Military, Terrorism

You just know that the information has been fully accessible through “The Freedom of Information Act,” but that the scurrilous US media have chosen to let sleeping dogs lie, because Barack Obama is their favorite top-dog.

Libertarians have been on the issue from day one. On rare occasions, left-liberals like Rachel Maddow have galvanized to protest B. Hussein’s drone program—the en masse, extrajudicial, long-distance killing of foreigners and Americans without due process (the latter being a farce too).

You must realize that “the media mollusk are not for peace; they’re for Barack Obama. They’ve continued to depict this war president as your good kind of killer; a thoughtful, great leader who agonizes over his kill lists with excruciating care.”

What more can a moronic people want, right? Naturally, America’s leaders are entitled to their Kill Lists. It’s all a matter of how they mange and execute the grave “responsibility,” not so? No! Not so! Wrong you knuckleheads!!!

In the fifth year of the “Killer Drone’s” faith-based outreach abroad, media watchdogs are finally reporting on a “Justice Department memo” that says “it’s legal to use drone strikes against Americans.”

MSNBC discloses that,

“A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.
The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.
The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director. Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”
But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.
“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Were the “White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign,” not scheduled for a confirmation hearing for the position of CIA director—you’d be none the wiser.

Note the broad definition of “imminent danger,” subject to which YOU and I could become targets for elimination.