For the past year I have been saying the current President is one of the biggest megalomaniacs in history.  And Tuesday night he proved it again.  While the state of New Jersey, which is one of the bluest, was falling and the State of Virginia was being swept by Republicans (which has not happened since Reconstruction), the President refused to acknowledge any of it mattered. I wonder if he was wearing his lucky tie. 

However, we all know who definitely was not:  Doug Hoffman.  This is the man who ran on the Conservative ticket in NY-23, a district in Upstate New York that has been Republican since the Civil War.  Well, in the immortal words of Jacques Clouseau, “Not Anymore!”  Doug Hoffman was defeated garnering only 46% of the vote.  The projected winner, the Democrat Bill Owens, garnered 49% and the liberal Republican who withdrew last week received 5%.  She proved to be the spoiler. 

I find this race in NY-23 to be very disturbing.  It is a race that garnered national attention when Sarah Palin, the Queen of the Far Right, decided to support the Conservative Candidate and not the Republican.  Before that, the race was hardly being looked at. NY-23 is a district which borders on Canada and Vermont.  It is more than 90% white and skews Republican by a margin of more than five percentage points.  The area has been Republican for as far as anyone can remember.  But, last night, it elected a Democrat.  Why? 

The Republican Party nominated Dede Scozzafava to run without a primary.  Ms. Scozzafava is one of the most liberal Republicans in the history of the Party.  She is not pro-life, supports same-sex marriage and has strong ties to Labor — positions which are opposed by the majority of the Party.  She does support the Bush tax cuts and is against Cap-and-Trade.  It was rumored during the election that she hinted she might caucus with the Democrats if elected. 

Obviously the nomination of Ms. Scozzafava was a big mistake.  By nominating her, the Party allowed a three way race to occur thereby guaranteeing a Democrat victory.  Of course, it did not help, that upon quitting the race five days ago, Ms. Scozzafava gave her support, not to the Conservative Hoffman, but to the Democrat Owens.  The Party should have run a primary before nominating Scozzafava or, at the least, seen the power of the conservative movement and nominated someone more in line with the mainstream Republican platform. 

But, that is not really what disturbs me about the race in NY-23.  What disturbs me is the ramification of what happened there to the rest of the country and to the 2010 election  The Republican Party seems to be splintering into two halves, the conservatives and the moderates.  The Conservatives are being supported by Ms. Palin and a large group of right-wing pundits.  They are represented by the Tea Party organizations and the States’ Rights Groups.  I am probably one of them. 

However, without the moderates; the center of the political spectrum, the Party will not regain control of the Federal Government.  There is simply not enough on the Far Right to support a majority anywhere in the country.  The moderates and independents win elections.  And, boy was that clear last night. 

All of the exit polling shows that McDonnell and Christie won because there was a major swing in the independent voter to the Republicans.  These swing voters stated they were against huge government spending, the failed stimulus package and were in fear for the future of their children.  The majority of these independents voted for Obama in the last election. 

We need them, these independents.  We must do whatever is necessary to maintain their support.  We cannot swing to the far right and expect to do anything in 2010.  If we do, there will be a lot of Democrats wearing their lucky ties.  If we continue to attract the moderates and independents as happened Tuesday, it will be a large group of Republicans wearing theirs.

For eight very long minutes Jon Stewart spoofs Glenn Beck. Good luck slogging through the last half. As my mind wandered near the end two questions suddenly came to me: Why won’t Michelle Pfeiffer take my calls and other than Keith Olbermann, who’s more spoof-able nowadays than Jon Stewart? Consider how much comedy gold there is to grab hold of:

1. He’s desperately in love with himself.

2. His audience will laugh at anything (as this overlong skit proves).

3. Whenever the show’s energy starts to die, Stewart reliably resorts to Plan B: Much VOLUME followed by Funny Face.

4. He’s a coward who hides his Leftist in-the-tankness behind that tired ”I’m just a clown” schtick. Hell, even Olbermann has the guts to step in the arena and take a hit. As does Glenn Beck, for that matter.

5. When he does do a serious interview and the guest gets the better of him, Stewart goes for the cheap joke to win the audience back.

Jon Stewart is a Palace Guard not a satirist.

In my book, that makes him fair game.

“Close-ups, affectionate or noble, are held at leisure; long shots are sustained long after their narrative role has been performed. A marginal figure is suddenly dwelt on, lovingly enlarged to fill the center of the screen. Informed with heightened emotion, a single shot, unexpectedly interposed — a ragged line of men marching into nowhere, one of them playing a bugle-call on his harmonica — assumes a deeper significance than is given by its function in the story. This is one of the properties of poetry. They Were Expendable is a heroic poem.” – Lindsay Anderson

The wondrous shots about which Mr. Anderson writes were masterminded by John Ford, but they were brought to life on film by Joseph H. August (1890-1947), one of the great cinematographers of the age. It was August who memorably crafted the hauntingly beautiful images of night-fog and shadows for Ford’s The Informer (1935), which won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director. He also lensed now-classic movies like Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both 1939), and during the war served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves.

Joe August was a twenty-one-year-old wayward cowpuncher from Colorado when he migrated west to work as a ranch hand at Inceville, the vast silent-era movie studio created by film pioneer Thomas Ince on what is now modern-day Santa Monica. But it wasn’t long before he drifted away from horses and lariats and lost himself in the shiny, futuristic world of cameras, lenses, and light. August’s cinematographic mentor was the director Ray Smallwood (1887-1964), who not only taught him the intricacies of camerawork but impressed upon him the need to become an instinctive artist, one capable of using light and chemicals and film emulsion to emotionally transform a film composition the same way a symphonic conductor can transform a well-known piece of music with different orchestrations and the wave of a baton.

Even something as innocuous and seemingly necessary as a light meter (a handheld instrument that allows you to measure the intensity of light at various points in a composition, so that you can be sure you are not over- or under-exposing — and hence potentially ruining — a shot) was verboten on a Smallwood set. Decades later, and now a veteran cinematographer in his own right, Joe August had not forgotten the hard lessons of his apprenticeship. “I am not against meters by any means,” he said in a 1939 interview. “They just don’t fit into my plan of taking pictures. The meters I lean on are my eyes. When I first started in this business twenty-eight years ago, I had a preceptor I then thought sort of tough because he was insistent on my learning what could be accomplished by a pair of eyes, and a man with scant patience for any devices that aimed to make those organs secondary to any human intervention.”

This sort of approach to cinematography often results in images that are, by strict measurable standards, too dark, too light, too grainy, too blurry — in a word, not perfect in the way we’ve come to expect from Hollywood fare. But in August’s determination, rigid standards of slick perfection were beside the point. He felt that the emotional spectrum of a cinematographer’s image counted as much as the physical, just as a painter hardly feels the need to portray everything with strict photographic realism. “Frequently,” he said, “I choose to make an exposure that — well, we will call it an unorthodox exposure, one aimed to produce a certain effect that may be desirable. For instance, the negative might be overexposed and underdeveloped — or the procedure might be reversed.”

The video I posted above is filled with examples of these “unorthodox exposures”: haggard faces swathed in shadow and smoke, men and planes reduced to silhouettes against dim panoramas of swaying palms and setting suns, two figures dancing together in an almost total darkness which serves to enhance the intimacy of the moment. There were no video screens back then to give guys like August instant feedback on their lighting setups. With every shot they guessed, they experimented, they checked the camera’s film gate for stray hairs. And if they were very skilled and a bit lucky, a few days later the film would come back from the lab with something magical burned into it.

There are two recurring visual motifs in They Were Expendable: the long-shot goodbye and the luminous close-up. Throughout the film we see faces swathed in shadow, almost lovingly, with only their eyes aglow in the gloom, like feral ghosts. The quality of light mirrors the content of their souls, flickering and guttering like fragile candles amidst the harsh winds of war. Water, too, is used to great effect. Fearsome waves and bomb-created geysers batter men as they struggle to keep afloat, their tattered battle flag fluttering madly. At one point, the destruction of John Wayne’s beloved boat casts up a mournful veil of artificial rain that falls down upon him like heavenly tears.

August was in his mid-fifties when he shot Expendable, but he frequently pushed himself to the limits of endurance in his efforts to capture the shots Ford wanted:

When Ford and I did They Were Expendable for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the United States Navy, the keynote of the picture was realism. We used regular PT Boats manned by Navy crews off the Florida Coast. Equipped with a handheld 35mm Mitchell camera that weighed fourteen pounds, I reverted to old-time photographic technique, shooting the scenes myself. I was cushioned against a slack service belt attached to a boat by two lines as the craft hit speeds of 42 knots, sometimes taking drops of five feet while speeding across the water. For other action shots, I lay on the bow of a PT Boat shooting backward into the vessel. As in Ford’s The Battle of Midway, the camera often shook while photographing real explosions.

It’s interesting that he stresses realism. M-G-M tried forcing Ford to film a silly ending that would have shown MacArthur’s 1945 invasion force triumphantly returning to the Philippines, topped by Wayne’s character finding Donna Reed in a guerrilla hospital and giving her a glorious Hollywood kiss! To Ford’s everlasting credit, he doggedly fought for his original bittersweet denouement until the studio capitulated. The filmmakers were also hampered by the harsh dictates of the Breen Office, which strictly regulated what could and could not be displayed on screen. “In all of the scenes of wounded men and of men taking machine gun slugs,” one December 1944 letter from Breen warned, “restraint should be exercised to avoid any excessive gruesomeness, which might not be acceptable in the finished picture.” Numerous instances of words like “damn,” “hell,” and even “nuts” were ruthlessly excised from the script again and again, despite Ford’s multiple attempts to sneak them past the censors. We must allow for this artistic meddling before thoughtlessly damning our forefathers for the crime of papering over the true horrors of war.

Today we regularly are treated to heads exploding, blood splattering across the lens, and glistening intestines strewn in full color across the widescreen frame, all accompanied by explosions and screams delivered in ear-splitting surround sound. And yet realism is not the be-all, end-all of art, and oftentimes loses more than it gains. Contrary to popular belief, modern audiences needn’t be subjected to raw butchery and carnage for a war movie to have an impact, any more than they demand pornographic portrayals of sex scenes in romantic films. The relatively sanitary images created by Golden Age Hollywood are no different than a Shakespearean stage actor gamely taking a sword-thrust under the armpit and stiffening up in over-dramatic death-throes capable of being seen by the schlubs in the cheap seats. It’s a simplistic, unimaginative mind that routinely sanctifies realism at the expense of poetic impressionism. The next time you are watching an old movie and find yourself snickering at men reacting painfully to non-existent bullets, consider the possibility that it’s a blessing that your nervous system isn’t being overwhelmed with gore, that you are left with enough emotional distance to think and feel, not just recoil.

Like all of Ford’s best films, Expendable is filled to the brim not with visual horror but with what he called his “grace notes” — shots of spare simplicity and honest emotion that, while not absolutely necessary to the plot, served to powerfully convey his deepest feelings and themes. The cutaway we saw in the opening clip of this series — of a boy toasting his elder with a glass of milk — is a Fordian grace note. In the video above, the shot of the two young seamen praying at their friends’ graves is one, too. I would suggest to you that such images, then and now, are far more important to a movie than seeing yet another man’s guts spilling out.

If I had to pick a favorite grace note among the embarrassment of riches to be found in Expendable, I would chose the one that appears toward the very end. It ranks as perhaps the most subtle in Ford’s entire canon, one that comes and goes so fast you sense it more than see it. Throughout the film, Wayne’s impulsive character has been openly seething at having to retreat rather than take the fight to the enemy. Only now, at the end, does he realize that this brashness and anger has been a luxury denied to his commander, who is ever forced to stoically suppress his own agony so that others can draw strength from his leadership. In most modern films (and, to be sure, many older ones as well), Wayne would have had a good cry and made a pretentious speech about how he’s “changed” and “grown” as a human being. Ford, by contrast, has the Duke convey an entire universe of feeling with a single gesture, one so quiet and understated that most viewers miss it entirely:

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One look, one touch. Says It All. Pure visual poetry. That was the genius of men like John Ford and Joseph August. Modern-day Hollywood could learn a lot from their legacy.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we delve into the controversial war years of John Wayne, examine the foundations of his irreplaceable acting talent, and learn of the history and significance of a special song featured in They Were Expendable.

Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable”:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

“The Founding Fathers” by Robert S. Birchard: A fine article on the fifteen cameramen who started the American Society of Cinematographers, including They Were Expendable’s Joe August. Includes a picture of August taken during the very early years of Hollywood silents.

Big Hollywood’s own Schizoid Man wrote a great post a few months back about another movie lensed by cinematographer Joe August, Gunga Din (1939). If you missed it the first time, click here to check it out.

About John Ford by Lindsay Anderson: In an earlier post I mentioned that Joseph McBride’s Searching for John Ford is the bible among Ford fans. Well, About John Ford is the bible for Ford critics — simply the best book about Ford’s artistry ever written, or likely to be written. Anderson was a British magazine critic in the 1950s when he first met Ford, and later became a revered director in his own right (it was he who jump-started the career of actor Malcolm McDowell, who credits Anderson with much of his growth as an actor). But I feel Anderson deserves to be primarily remembered for this wonderful volume, wherein he absolutely nails the essentials of John Ford’s genius, his patriotism, and his love of family and country. In the key chapter, “Ford and His Critics: Auteur or Poet?”, he thoroughly dismantles the gaggle of clueless academics and pretentious critics that ever hover around Fordian cinema missing the forest for the trees. In the process, the ostensibly liberal Anderson also mounts the most convincing defense of classical (read: conservative) cinematic styles against post-modernism that I’ve ever read. Anderson’s sole blind spot was The Searchers (he found it a stylistically forced and emotionally bitter film, one at odds with Ford at his best), but even there his arguments are fascinating to ponder.

Illustrated with dozens of rare photographs and screenshots, and including interviews and correspondence with key people who worked with Ford (including They Were Expendable’s Robert Montgomery), About John Ford is all tied together with a relaxed erudition that is sheer poetry to read, an emotionally evocative mirroring of Ford’s films themselves. The praise he heaps on the great director — “such smiles, such tears, such restorative energy” — could just as easily apply to his own marvelous book. I can’t recommend it highly enough to conservatives — a masterwork.

“Independence Day” is one of the most profitable films in history — and after the original “Poseidon Adventure,” one of the greatest bad films ever — but there was no sure-fire, money-making blockbuster sequel because President Bush — The Abraham Lincoln of the Middle East — won the presidency:

“In Independence Day, it was about a king who leads his country into a fight against an outside invader. I didn’t want to make that movie during the Bush years. It was not thought that George W. Bush would have made a great king. Now with Obama, it’s another story.”

That’s straight from the director, the ball-less Roland Emmerich.

Sure, Hollywood is packed with the worst kind of greedy people who demand higher taxes as they shelter millions — who intend to hang on to their platinum health-care plans as they push rationed care – who demand Big Business pay their “fair share” as they beg for tax incentives… Sure, Leftist Hollywood wants to make money, bucketloads if possible, but…

….not at the expense of The Leftist Cause.  

If “G.I. Joe” and “Superman Return”s can make money, great! But if Americanism is necessary for them to make money, no way in hell.

Make a gajillion off an “Independence Day” sequel? Not if it helps Bush. In other words…

No Obama. No sequel. No gajillions.

Hollywood understands this is an ideological war. And if you look at their behavior through that lens, it all makes sense.

As we come down to the wire on Pelosi’s government-run health care bill, look for the left to trot out every possible relic of more prosperous times in a desperate attempt to pass this thing (or at a minimum avoid reading it).  Thus, it’s hardly a surprise Ex-President Josiah Bartlet, the greatest statesmen of our time, as well as Ex-First Lady Betty Rizzo decided to put their 100% approval ratings among likely voters who approve of Martin Sheen and Stockard Channing on the line to support the cause of rationed care.  Bartlett, like so many other Democrat ex-politicians, can’t seem to take the hint that a graceful exit is far preferable to wearing out your welcome.  

As is customary in these celeb health care PSAs, the fake ex-President and fake ex-First Lady don’t offer those of us with more modest incomes the reassurance that they will be accepting this “public insurance option” they so boldly tout over their cushy Screen Actors’ Guild (or comparably comprehensive) plans, rendering themselves, to quote on Holden Caulfield, “phonies.”

Consider this reason #2 trillion this bill needs to go down.

1) The Scorpions- hair metal popular in the 80s, approximately as good as Winger.

2) KMFDM- plodding industrial metal from the late 80s/early90s.

3) That Nena chick of ‘99 luftballons’ fame. 

In short, a roster of acts so unnecessary that we could safely consign them to the same dark abyss as Croatian thrash or Russian hip hop and the human race would be none the poorer for it. And yet fortunately for the glory of popular Deustche musik this is not the end of the story- for in the mid 90s what rough beast slouched towards Germany to be born? Breathing flames and reveling in death and all manner of deviancy, its name was Rammstein. 

Formed in the early 1990s by veterans of several crap East German groups, Rammstein consisted of six men in their 30s who had grown up under communism. They took their name from Ramstein, a US military base where a terrible disaster had occurred during an air show in 1988, adding an extra ‘m’ to dislocate it slightly. With the Berlin Wall fallen, the band was now liberated to steal as many sounds and ideas as they desired. These included elements of classic heavy metal, industrial metal and gothic synth pop such as Depeche Mode; not to mention liberal appropriations from Laibach, a Slovenian group fascinated by the links between mass culture, pop music and totalitarianism. (If you have a few minutes I recommend you watch Laibach’s reinterpretations of Queen’s One Vision and Opus’ Life is Life: the originals will never sound the same again.)

From Laibach, Rammstein also stole the cross as a symbol, a collectivist ethos, and a fondness for flirting with totalitarian imagery. Most strikingly of all Rammstein’s singer Till Lindemann’s vocal style ‘borrowed’ heavily from Milan Fras’ absurdly deep bass snarl. As Laibach did not believe in ‘originality’ they did not complain; and as Rammstein were a much better band, they did not compete either. 

But Rammstein also introduced elements hitherto absent from hard rock, such as lyrics informed by German romanticism (decadent and otherwise), and elements of martial music. Rammstein thoroughly embraced their national identity and this unabashed ‘Germanness’ became key to their success- disciplined, ultra precise drumming, grinding riffs played by two guitars in perfect synchronicity, futuristic synths, a surprising ear for melody and sturm und drang lyrics sung entirely in German, with every guttural sound emphasized, and every ‘R’ rolled almost to the point of parody. On the last tour two members even wore lederhosen. Rammstein had thus revealed that heavy metal in its ideal form was not Anglo-American but Germanic, and having done so built a massive fan base in Europe, Asia and Latin America.  

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Rammstein’s live shows are legendary. The band loves fire: walls of flame; fire-breathing; self-immolation, you name it. At the center of this grandiose spectacle however stands front-man Till Linemann wearing a look of profound suffering on his face, as if he is being martyred every night. When he’s not in pain he inflicts it, usually upon the keyboard player, Flake, who is as lanky and skinny as Lindemann is huge. On Rammstein’s last tour, Lindemann roasted Flake alive in a giant cauldron while singing an ode to the German cannibal Armen Meiwes. Flake was also Lindemann’s victim in simulated male rapes that took place on a nightly basis during the band’s tours of the late 90s and early 2000s (I shall spare you the link.) And yet however outrageous that sounds, Rammstein’s provocations are always informed by an ultra-dry, ultra-black German humor.  

Unsurprisingly, Rammstein’s love of shock tactics has embroiled the band in numerous scandals. Their first album cover was an outrageous piece of totalitarian homoerotic camp, depicting the band as oiled, muscular Übermenschen stripped to the waist, standing in front of a giant flower (I remember wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake the day I bought it on cassette in Moscow’s Gorbushka market). German music critics accused them of being Nazis. Delighted, the band then used footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia in the video for their cover of Depeche Mode’s Stripped. Later however Rammstein would insist that they were perplexed by all the Nazi hullabaloo- was it not obvious that they were fervent leftists? After all on their 3^rd album ‘Mutter’ (the one with the dead baby on the cover) they had recorded a song entitled Links 234. Now admittedly this is simply the march ‘Left 2, 3, 4’ sung in German and the video showed thousands of ants stamping around in militaristic fashion, even saluting grainy black and white footage of the lead singer. But Rammstein insisted that it was a song of praise for left ideas, and really meant ‘forward with leftism’, or some other such nonsense. Whether the band’s members were being naïve, humorous or archly ironic, none of the other songs on the album were notably left in orientation (‘Zwitter’ was a song about a hermaphrodite in love with him/herself, ‘Rein Raus’ a spectacularly blatant metaphor for sexual intercourse). 

It was perhaps a different set of scandals that stung the band more. The Columbine massacre shooters were big Rammstein fans, and around the same time as that tragedy members of the band were arrested in Massachusetts when Lindemann prepared to rape Flake on stage with an ejaculating dildo. Clearly that experience left a bad taste in the mouth, because Rammstein have never returned stateside. Indeed the band has had a troubled history with the USA. On their second release Sensucht (Longing), they succumbed to record company pressure, recording some embarrassing English language versions of selected songs. Although Rammstein swore never to do this again, they have since played with the English language on tracks such as Amerika and Pussy (find that video yourself). Now however there is a political undercurrent to their use of English- admittedly it is a tedious, Coca Cola bashing, anti-globalization kind of undercurrent, but then, nobody’s perfect. 

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At the end of October Rammstein released their sixth record ‘Liebe ist fur alle da’ (Love is there for everyone). The record goes nowhere new, Rammstein choosing instead to elaborate upon the sonic and thematic realm they have made their own. However this lack of innovation is no weakness, and from the very first track ‘Rammlied’ all memories of Rosenrot, their wretched fifth album, are dispelled. ‘Liebe..’ is their heaviest release in years, faster, darker and more punishing, a brutal noise made by ageing men striving to prove they can still crush their peers, and succeeding. It is the sound of six Germans on the march, six Germans out to conquer, six Germans intent on proving that they reign supreme over the heavy metal reich. 

The plan seems to have worked. Liebe entered the charts at #1 in multiple countries; # 16 in the UK and most remarkably of all- #13 in the Billboard Hot 200. As a Briton, I am already accustomed to the fact that Rammstein have superseded the accomplishments of metal bands from the UK, in much the same way I know that Germany has a superior infrastructure, stronger industrial base and higher standard of living than my homeland. And now with Rammstein’s unprecedented assault on the American charts, will all you patriotic Americans begin to feel that you are living inside a Philip K. Dick style parallel universe? Are Slayer, Metallica, Mastodon et al about to surrender before the might of their Teutonic metal masters?  Is this the latest sign of what the perpetually grinning Fareed Zakaria- a man who looks as though he just swallowed a live hamster and is terribly pleased with himself for this achievement- calls ‘the Post- American World’? 

Ich don’t think so. But it might mean that Rammstein will come here on tour. And as someone who has seen the band live four times in three different countries I can reassure you that that would be a very good thing indeed. Unless you don’t like middle-aged East German provocateurs bludgeoning you to death with heavy music, that is. Then you might want to consider staying home, and play your Colbie Caillat records instead. I don’t know- whatever turns you on.  

Auf Wiedersehen!

The aliens are called “visitors,” shortened to “Vs,” thus the title of the program. They appear over major cities in large hovering spaceships that project messages in the local language. More than just the classic we-come-in-peace message, the messages say, “We’re here to help you.”

The opening episode makes it very clear, however, that they are not here to help. It turns out the Vs have planted many of their kind, who look human, prior to their dramatic arrival in spaceships. The alien plants have done their best to foul up life on earth in order to encourage a hunger for “change” (salvation). The Chicago Tribune draws a parallel to the Obama administration but, while many believe President Obama was not born in the United States, it’s unlikely he was born on another planet. Even so, it’s interesting that the evil aliens offer “universal health care” to all people. Thus, the first episode clearly seems to be saying that President Obama’s health care proposals, now making their way through the U.S. Congress, are a false hope that will lead to tyranny and slavery.

The initial episode does a good job of setting up several threads to keep audiences interested. A young priest bucks the judgment of the Vatican that the Vs were sent by God to help. He warns his congregation to be wary. An FBI agent uncovers the truth about the planted V cell groups even while her son signs up to be a stooge for the Vs. A news anchorman compromises and is used by the Vs for propaganda purposes. Finally, a V plant turns out to be a renegade V opposing the V leadership’s plans.

The production quality here is high for television, and the acting is excellent. There is moderate violence in a battle between the Vs and an underground resistance. However, unlike “Flash-Forward,” “V” is not tainted by babysitters sleeping with their boyfriends and the threat of a family falling apart due to infidelity. The potential exists for this program to be truly outstanding, but, as with many other series, it’s difficult to say if it will stray into murky waters down the road.

The theme of being wary of false saviors is very biblical as well as politically and culturally astute (see my book co-written with legendary entertainer Pat Boone, “The Culture-Wise Family”). Jesus said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

This is a message Americans really need to consider, not just in regard to big government but also such things as environmentalism and the humanism so prevalent in our government-run public schools. All the isms claiming to save you from belief in a “repressive” God promise freedom but often lead to bondage instead. Real freedom is freedom from sin. That can only be provided by the world’s true Savior, Jesus Christ.

“V” could actually go in that direction, but will it? We shall see.

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In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Republicans, George W. Bush, CNN, Latino Employees, John Podesta, Marijuana, Snoop Dogg, Babies, Soul Train Awards, and Natalie Portman.

In the program, Cox’s character Jules Cobb is a real estate agent who has recently started dating men in their twenties who are only a few years older than her son. Her dalliances with these men and her coming to grips with her age compose the overall plot of the program. In her daily life, Cobb is surrounded by an offbeat set of characters including her neighbor across the street, her young assistant at work and her ex-husband.

Grayson Ellis, Cobb’s neighbor across the street, is a male cougar, who courts women half his age (and presumably younger). In the second episode, he states matter-of-factly that “When women get older, it’s icky. When men get older, it’s adorable. It’s actually my favorite double standard.” The show seems to be exploring that double standard in presenting this male neighbor who is open about his relationships with younger women and Cobb, who is self-conscious about her behavior and who unsuccessfully tries to shield her son, who is more mature than both of his parents, from knowing about her new dating habits.

Although I like Courteney Cox in the lead, her dating adventures and boyfriends are not as amusing or as interesting as the friends and family members she finds herself surrounded with. For example, her recent boyfriend Josh was not developed as well as some of the other characters on the program and seemed to exist only as an accessory to the program’s lead. You could argue that the character was written that way for a reason but compared to the other characters and their eccentricities, he seemed rather boring.

Also, another major weakness of the show is its focus on crassness and vulgarity. While some critics may like that aspect of the program, the coarse jokes are often unfunny and unnecessary. From the overuse of swear words to the jokes about the process that Jules needs to go through in getting ready for her first night sleeping with Josh, the show pushes the boundaries of taste when it doesn’t need to. The show could be much better as an ensemble comedy about an older woman trying to bring fun back into her life without deviating into tasteless jokes.

As I noted earlier, some of the secondary characters on the program are strong and very funny. Cobb’s ex-husband, for instance, plays a goofy golf instructor who lives in a boat in a parking lot and who often drives around in a golf cart, much to the embarrassment of his son. Additionally, Cobb’s “male cougar” neighbor is an interesting side character. He generally dislikes people, even though he works at a bar, and he likes to torment Cobb about everything from the weight of her purse to the fact that she finds him attractive. On the other hand, Cobb zealously considers him her paper buddy (she likes to talk to him when they are both getting their morning newspapers) even though he often tries to avoid her. In the future, the show would be better if it focused more on the side characters in the program and Cobb’s quirky personality traits and it focused less on the crude aspects of her sex life.

Overall, the weak main storyline and the vulgarity hurt the program. Although some characters on the show have potential, the show has not found its solid footing yet. One day, “Cougar Town” may be a nice place for viewers to check out but for now, “Cougar Town” is not yet a place worth visiting.