Loyal Amerikans

National Review, March 13, 1987

Loyal Amerikans

AMERIKANS ARE UP in arms about Amerika. ConsiderTed Turner, who likens the TV mini-series to Nazi propaganda. "Communism is fine with me,' he says, surprising no one. Never was there an apter symbol of capitalist crassness than this man who has suddenly taken to doing business with the Soviet ruling class while simultaneously emitting pro-Soviet noises that would strike Konstantin Chernenko as lacking in nuance. Turner announced a week of countering broadcasts, including one produced by the Soviet government.

For the younger set, Rolling Stone opines: "Amerikaproves we're just as sick in the head as ever.' Alexander Cockburn, in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, notes that Amerika overlooks such current realities as "a vibrant Soviet press rooting out corruption.' Good old vibrant Alex, following in the footsteps of his father, another vibrant journalist.

In the New York Times an editorial counsels sophisticatedviewers to "snicker,' and an Op-Ed piece by one John Mack (of something called the Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age) emits apprehensions about "stereotypes' of "the Russian character.' Note the familiar Hive ploy: Anti-Communism is reduced to anti-Russian bigotry, parallel to racism and anti-Semitism. (Of course on other occasions the deficiencies of the Soviet system are conveniently laid to the ancient residue of Russian autocracy: The only thing wrong with the Communists is that they're still Russians.)

Mack remarks: "The freedom accorded the massmedia must be accompanied by an assumption of responsibility for the consequences of programming and standards of taste. It is no longer acceptable overtly to devalue blacks, Jews, and other minorities, and the networks have boards of standards that are careful not to offend minorities or various interest groups.' Ah. So Soviet sensibilities are to be integrated into the fabric of pluralism, good taste and responsibility counseling us to give no offense. "In the nuclear age,' Mack says, "all mankind is an interest group.' Amerika, then, is a breach of nuclear etiquette. It's downright un-Amerikan.

The ratings exceeded ABC's expectations and appearto be holding. We have seen the first three parts, not bad: the plains states as a version of Bulgaria, shortages, hardship, political prisoners, nothing fantasized there, even though the film appears to have violated what might be called socialist manners.