Happy New Year! It sure looks a lot like the old year, doesn't it? The Religious Right still doing their utmost to keep Americans from viewing (or reading, thinking, or saying) what they want, intense turmoil in the Middle East, and terrorism emanating from the streets of Baghdad to the corridors of the White House.
And yet, you can still turn on the tube in most places in the US and get a plethora of stuff from the sleazy to the sublime, idiots to geniuses and a lot of fun in-between. We've caught some great stuff in the past week (like a fascinating interview on PBS' Charlie Rose with author E.L. Doctorow, which you can catch online at pbs.org). The news remains the bleakest part of the TV landscape, so we'll come back to that and go right to the fun stuff.
NBC's hilarious, biting and poignant new envelope-pushing dramedy The Book of Daniel premiered January 6. You can't beat Epiphany for the debut of a series about a dysfunctional Christian family which definitely gave many viewers an epiphany of their own.
Here's what NBC says about BoD: "NBC is promoting The Book of Daniel as a serious drama about Christian people and the Christian faith. The main character is Daniel Webster, a drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her midday martinis.
"Webster regularly sees and talks with a very unconventional white-robed, bearded Jesus. The Webster family is rounded out by a 23-year-old homosexual Republican son, a 16-year-old daughter who is a drug-dealer, and a 16-year-old adopted son who is having sex with the bishop's daughter. At the office, his lesbian secretary is sleeping with his sister-in-law."
Not surprisingly, the debut caused a stir. Several affiliates along the Bible Belt (Terre Haute, Indiana; Meridian, Mississippi; several Texas and Florida affiliates, and others) even refused to air it. Immediately following the first two-hour episode, many NBC affiliates led with the controversy on their 10 and 11 p.m. newscasts.
BoD is very good and does push the envelope, to a degree — but not more than many other drama series on the tube.
The always anti-gay American Family Association (AFA) led the efforts to boycott and ban the show, stating unequivocally that it "mocks Christianity." Like the war-on-Christmas-that-wasn't, this is another evangelical tempest in a tea-bag. Far from mocking Christianity, BoD has a clear underlying message that is positive about Christianity. Christ may be a very cool character on the show, but he is also a clear moral character. This isn't Dan Brown's swinger Jesus. This is Jesus Christ Superstar meets Oprah. He's got lots of good advice, as befits the Son of God. But apparently his attire — straight out of the Bible-school pix of yore, or from the Webber musical — is distressing to the evangelicals who, one presumes, think Jesus would be dressed in a suit and tie, have a crewcut and be selling something that guzzles oil.
As for the dysfunction of the family — uh, remember 7th Heaven? The longest-running family drama in TV history, Aaron Spelling's WB show ran for 10 seasons and will end in May (but is currently and will remain in syndication). 7th Heaven features a Protestant minister and his wife, their seven children and his alcoholic sister. Admittedly, 7th Heaven was more tame in some respects than BoD, but one sibling had a boyfriend with an illegitimate child, another had a friend who self-mutilated, Rev. Camden's sister had myriad problems with alcohol and other addictions, and there were often dysfunctional issues in the household. Yet 7th Heaven has been lauded by Christian groups as a superb example of family viewing. Of course, no one in the family itself was gay, and Jesus never appeared, although Camden (Stephen Collins) did speak directly to God on a regular basis.
Pat down
Not to digress too much, but on The 700 Club last week, Rev. Pat Robertson (a real-life TV preacher, not a fictional one) stated baldly that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke was punishment from God for giving part of Gaza back to the Palestinians. (Robertson's rant prompted Geraldo Rivera on his Fox spot to give a rant of his own against Robertson, meaning there's a little brain left in the once-serious journalist.) This follows Robertson's previous rants calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and stating that God had punished New Orleans with Katrina for abortion and homosexuality.
So when the AFA is damning NBC for BoD, perhaps they should look to their own? Whether or not BoD continues to be a top drama worth watching by a diverse viewership remains to be seen. But those folks who are always equating God and Country need to remember that this country is still a democracy, not a theocracy. Boo-hiss to those NBC affiliates who bowed to theocratic stridency. The Taliban awaits you with open arms and 72 virgins.
While NBC was quaking, CBS was having its own crisis of consciousness, if not conscience. The best moment on CBS so far this month was the January 3 episode of David Letterman's Late Show, where he skewered Fox's Bill O'Reilly right and proper, in Edward II fashion. (We have come to expect anti-Bush skewering from CBS' fabulous late-night host Craig Ferguson, but Letterman tends to be less over-the-top than Ferguson.) This Dave was the Dave of yore: irreverent to the nth degree, and taking no prisoners with Mr. O'Lie-ly.
Last month, when Letterman interviewed Oprah, she kept remarking at his seriousness. But Letterman has always been serious and smart, he's just forced to dumb down for his time-slot and network. The O'Reilly interview was vintage Letterman: O'Reilly was given little opportunity to defend himself from Letterman's clear Bush-bashing agenda.
Letterman noted, his voice laden with scorn, "The President himself, less than a month ago, said we are there [Iraq] because of a mistake made in intelligence. Well, whose intelligence? Did somebody just get off a bus and hand it to him?" Before O'Reilly could get his defense mode in gear, Letterman was back at him: "Why the hell are we there to begin with?"
The big moment, however, was when Letterman said, "I'm very concerned about people like yourself who don't have anything but endless sympathy for a woman like Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ. Honest to Christ."
In keeping with his knee-jerk ideology, O'Reilly was quick to respond: "No way a terrorist who blows up women and children is going to be called a 'freedom fighter' on my program," which, alas, drew cheers from the audience.
But Letterman got the last dig when he noted, "I'm not smart enough to debate you point for point, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap."
This is the kind of incisive querying over the war that belongs on the Sunday-morning and evening news shows. More's the pity that we have to depend on our late-night comedians like Letterman (bravo!), Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart to do the work our pundits and newscasters should be doing.
Speaking of which, NBC's veteran senior correspondent Andrea Mitchell has never been one to back down from a story, and she seemed to have one up her sleeve as she queried last week if President Bush specifically wiretapped CNN's Christiane Amanpour. That the question was asked so publicly and so specifically means that Mitchell knows something.
If you are wondering why this matters, consider that anyone Amanpour has conversed with in the past four years, at least by phone or e-mail, could have had their conversation taped by the US government. Oh, and her husband is former Clinton Administration senior official Jamie Rubin, who was spokesman for the State Department. Rubin was also chief foreign policy adviser to General Wesley Clark's Presidential campaign, then worked as senior national security adviser to John Kerry's Presidential campaign.
Think Rubin ever used his wife's phone to make a call to, say, Clinton, Clark, Kerry, or anyone else he was connected with on Capitol Hill? All of which just may make this a variation on Plamegate.
Wrong again
Remember that game "whisper down the lane" that we played as kids? You repeat something to a line of people one at a time, and see how convoluted or accurate it is by the time it gets to the end. Well, two Time reporters misrepresented Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, on Spygate. Instead of investigating the source, Fox and CBS just repeated the inaccuracy.
For the record: all those reports you heard on Fox and CBS about Harman supporting Bush's warrantless spying were false. So much for the honesty of CBS' The Early Show, and apparently what Fox means when they say "fair and balanced" is making stuff up to make it look like there's bi-partisan backing for Bush's lies and deception, when there isn't. Remember when CBS excoriated Dan Rather and put him out to pasture because he didn't check his sources carefully enough about Bush's National Guard records? Uh, isn't this the same thing?
Harman's remarks explicitly expressed concern that the surveillance program "goes far beyond the measures to target Al Qaeda about which I was briefed." Harman was a signator on a letter to House Speaker Hastert stating concerns about the spying, and had written her own letter voicing her personal concerns to the President as well. Both letters were written days before Time, then CBS and Fox, claimed she supported Bush on the spying. Worst disappointment: Thalia Assuras, CBS News' national correspondent, repeated Harman's alleged support for Bush's spying a full week after Harman's initial statement decrying it. The allegation is repeated in the January 9 issue of Time.
It's getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys. (One place to keep tabs, other than this column, is Media Matters for America.)
And we never even got to Abramoff.
VCR recommendations: BoD competes with ABC's new drama In Justice with Kyle McLachan. Tape one, watch the other. Both are worthy. And don't forget Craig Ferguson after Letterman on CBS. Since everyone else is taping. Stay tuned.