Better Late Than Never: Welcome to Chippendale's

 

 

One of the problems with Peak TV has been, obviously, that there is far too much good stuff for any reasonable viewer to try and keep up with all of it. This very series was in fact established out of recognition of the fact that a lot of great television does slip under my radar and that it is usually only awards recognition that gets it back there in the first place.

Trying to play catch up with what would be some of the greatest TV in history is, to state the obvious, difficult. It’s easiest with comedy because so much of it is episodic. I was able to get involved with Parks and Recreation after nearly three full seasons and with Veep after two. (I still think the latter is vastly overrated.) The shortness of the seasons has helped many times in recent years: I was able to get fully caught up with Fleabag before its triumph at the Emmys in 2019 and similarly with Ramy and Dead to Me by the time of the 2020 Emmys. There have, however, been as many classic comedies I never did get caught up with, perhaps most regrettably Schitt’s Creek.

With dramas this is more difficult but not necessarily impossible. I missed the first seasons of Damages, Justified and The Americans but by the time all three series had aired their second seasons I was aware of what masterpieces they were and stuck with them to the end. Other dramas have not been as easy: I made a good faith effort to try to get involved with Westworld after seeing the first season finale but five episodes into Season 2 I threw up my hands and gave up. (I don’t regret that decision, for the record.) I do regret never following up after watching the first few episodes of Killing Eve and while I spent so much time raging against Succession, the final season has made it clear that was my largest error. I do not, however, regret never watching any of Game of Thrones or The Handmaid’s Tale even after they broke on to the scene.

But by far the hardest needle to thread has always been the limited series ever since it exploded in 2016. I did a very good job keeping up with almost every major nominee in 2016 and 2017, but its been a struggle all the way ever since and I have made my share of blunders. I never watched Godless which managed quite a few Emmys in 2018; I never got around to The Act even after Patricia Arquette managed to double dip, and I was very rigid in so many of my viewing choices in 2020, refusing to watch, among others, Normal People, Unorthodox or Hollywood even after the Emmy nominations came out. My major argument in the last two years was that in neither case were any of those series nominated for Best Limited Series, and I should focus my energy elsewhere.

The decision to watch series nominated for Best Series rather than those that receive acting and other directing nominees has been a decision of necessity even though I was almost intention leaving out more than my usual work. This is, of course, a flawed idea because many nominated dramas and comedies don’t get nominated for either in the first year, even though they will get acting and other nods. (I’ve learned from this flaw and am going to eventually start watching Bad Sisters, The Diplomat and Shrinking.) Limited Series has always been a more subjective decision and my own prejudices have impacted that fact: I refused on general principle to watch Inventing Anna last year and I don’t have any true desire to see Monster.

But sometimes other sources will intervene to make you realize your errors. FX has, in recent years, begun rerunning several of his shows that have aired on Hulu. Last year I finally got around to watching most of Under the Banner of Heaven and admit it was probably worth the attention. And I know for certain I would never have finished The Patient had FX not rerun over much of April and May. In both cases, I had to admit my errors.

This year has put up a different issue. There is far less correlation between the acting nominees and the nominated series. The biggest dissonance by far was with Welcome to Chippendales which was nominated for six Emmys, including four acting nominations but was not nominated for Best Limited Series. I figured at the very least I owed it to myself to watch the first couple of episodes to see if it merited so many of those nominations, particularly at the expense of those in The Patient and White House Plumbers.

Well, I’ve now seen the first two episodes and am prepared to say that not only were those actors worthy of the nominations but in my opinion, it deserved to be nominated over Fleishmann is in Trouble (though my opinion on the latter has improved after five episodes). It certainly succeeds where the latter didn’t, by telling a more compelling story and drawing you in with both its atmosphere and characters (something it took three episodes to do with Fleishmann).

At the center of the series is Steve Banerjee and I have to say after just ten minutes of the first episode, I fully agree the Emmys were right to nominate Kumail Nanjiani for Best Actor. We first meet Banerjee as a meticulous immigrant who has used his life savings to invest in a club. His modest idea is to create a backgammon club for sophisticates but it’s clear just from the idea it’s a failure. He would no doubt have quietly gone broke had his life not intersected with playmate Dorothy Stratton and her boyfriend Paul Schneider. Schneider, who is desperate for something, convinces Steve that he can get playmates in her but Banerjee quickly realizes his superficial nature. They engage in a series of quickly failing enterprises before they go to a gay bar and Banerjee realizes that there is a business opportunity in male strippers. Schneider thinks it’s a bad idea; Stratton sees the genius.

In a matter of weeks they have created Chippendale’s and it is clearly an immense success. However, at a critical moment, Banerjee’s life intersects with Nick De Nola. I’ll be honest I didn’t recognize Murray Bartlett even after I knew that he was playing De Nola, and I guarantee you those of you who, like me, first met him as Armond in The White Lotus will be just as astonished. It’s not just the flawless American accent, it’s that De Nola seems nothing like Armond.

De Nola is clearly a hanger on who can inspire confidence and ability without actually having any. When he walks into Chippendales he admonishes everything about the dancing and says that he can bring class to it. He convinces Banerjee that he is an Emmy winning choreographer even though the show he won his Emmys for – Unicorn Tales – is so obscure that everyone has to be told what it was. (I consider myself a TV afficionado and I’d never heard of it.) But Banerjee has heard the magic word – class – and because he wants acceptance as much De Nola does, he hires him as a choreographer.

The new Chippendale’s becomes an instant success after the first week, and there is no sign that this might have been anything other than a temporary gig for either, except on that night Schneider kills Stratton and then himself. This is clearly an omen telling Banerjee that from the start his success will be bathed in blood.

De Nola, who has just divorced his wife and is very much in the closet, is desperate when Banerjee comes back to him asking for help. Again De Nola runs a bluff and manages to persuade Banerjee to hire him full-time. It’s also clear that De Nola is punching above his weight even then: the only thing he can contribute to Chippendale’s is the choreography and he is very possessive of the dancers.

During this period Banerjee, who clearly wants success but is not comfortable with the ostentatious of this is drinking a soft drink at a bar when he meets a shy woman. They each confess to the other this isn’t real their scene. The woman tells Steve that he is losing money by the serving of drinks and when she runs the math in her head, they come to the figure at the same time. This is how Steve meets Irene, played by Annaleigh Ashford. For Ashford, this is a revelatory performance. In her most famous roles in Masters of Sex and B Positive, Ashford has played women who are boisterous and unfettered in every aspect of their appearance. Irene is a complete introvert, which makes a perfect match for Steve: for the two of them, math is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Their courtship is actually one of the sweetest things in the second episode. Steve takes Irene to an Indian restaurant and the two of them shyly discuss their humble origins. Steve came from four generations of printers: Irene from three generations of aluminum siding. When she became an accountant her greatest ambition was to work for Hollywood and she landed a job at Warner Brothers. The comic highlight of their date is when both of them express their awe at how Irene helped Lynda Carter find the bathroom. Irene becomes the accountant at Chippendale’s and its pretty clear her guidance is one of the things the business needs.

Nick, who is completely jealous of anything usurping his authority, spends much of the second episode stewing. It is not until a woman who has been coming to the bar on several occasions finally talks to him about expanding the business that he actually listens to her: she spent several previous occasions trying to get near. This is Denise (Juliette Lewis). Denise is clearly ambitious when it comes to expanding the brand but its clear that Nick does not take her seriously. It is only when she shows him her breakthrough idea – breakaway pants – that he takes her up to see Steve. Even then, its clear that he’s using this solely to try and increase his own negotiating place at Chippendale’s and has no respect for Denise as a human being. Irene manages to talk Steve into hiring Denise, both as an economic decision and as to get another girl around. It’s telling that when they start celebrating Denise embraces Steve and Irene but basically ignores Nick. It is a clear precursor of the storms to come.

In hindsight the decision of the Emmys to nominate all four leads for acting awards is one of their better ones of this year. In two episodes, all four actors show great range and talent that, with the exception of Lewis, is much against type. By far the most arresting performance is that of Nanjiani. I have admired his ability over the years, particularly in such work as Silicon Valley and The Big Sick but his work as Banerjee is a revelation. Banerjee spends most of the series in a three-piece suit, utterly stiff and uncomfortable, determined to find a place in the world, looking upon Hugh Hefner as the idea of class. He is clearly a brilliant business man and an outsider who wants in. But even in the first two episodes, we can sense a certain coldness in him. We see in the premiere when he realizes Schneider is all talk and cuts his percentage in the club; we see it when he talks in favor of De Nola over Schneider, and we see it when an African-American dancer is hired and his first reaction to De Nola is “he’s black?”  It’s clear Banerjee has a lack of confidence which he makes up for by being cold.

Bartlett was the only actor who received nominations for this from other awards show and its clear why. De Nola is pure ego with nothing to back it up, and as Irene wins more of Steve’s ear, he clearly begins to stumble. We know even in the early episodes that this will become a battle between them. Of the two women, I am not entirely sold yet on Lewis’ deserving the nomination but it’s early and I have little doubt in her ability.

I don’t know the story behind Welcome to Chippendales any more than I did The Dropout, but I know enough from the reviews that there’s a far deeper tragedy on the horizon; no doubt one that is just as horrible as the one that started the series. I can understand why Nanjiani, who helped co-produce the story with his wife Emily V. Gordon (the two received several awards for writing The Big Sick) would be drawn to the project for more reasons than a great role for him: he no doubt saw the struggle Banerjee had to overcome and having worked in Hollywood, he knows how easily you can fall. In the first two episodes, Banerjee is drinking nothing but soda; trailers for future ones show him snorting cocaine off his desk, and we know by that point, he has fundamentally begun his downfall.

And I also know that the Emmys made a huge mistake when they chose not to nominate Chippendales for Best Drama but nominated Obi- Wan Kenobi instead. I’m also more inclined to think that it is the better Hulu project than Fleishman, and certainly tells a far more compelling and intriguing story with characters who grab you from the moment you see them. It’s also a big sign that I have made misjudgment with the kind of limited series I watch based on their nominations. Hopefully, I’ll get to Tiny Beautiful Things too.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Lost Rewatch: The Cost of Living

 

Lost fanbase dropped. Nearly two decades, we’re still not sure what to make of the ending and that’s in part we will never know for sure why Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje left Lost.

According to the writers at the time,  they had originally planned for him to leave at the end of season 3 under these circumstances. Later on, it was revealed that this was not the case: the writers had planned for Eko to stay until Season Five but Akinnouye-Agbaje asked to be written out after Season 2. It was revealed that he did not like living in Hawaii. Recent stories have now thrown that part of the story into question: given revelations about the often toxic atmosphere on the set, perhaps it wasn’t the only reason he wanted to leave the show.

What is undoubtedly clear is that  unlike with so many other characters on the series, Eko’s final act is set in such a way that the viewer is left thinking there is a closing of the circle in a way that is unlike the deaths of most of the major characters in the first half of the series. One of the popular fan theories for much of the show  - one that the writers did everything in their power to disabused the fanbase of but never truly went away - was that the island was purgatory and that once the characters made peace with who they were, they would die. Boone had accepted that Shannon was holding him back and died soon after. Shannon had finally found someone to believe in her, and she died immediately afterwards. Ana Lucia had realized that she could not solve all her problems with a gun and was killed moments later. That this theory did not fit Libby’s character at all did not disabuse fans of it and it continued throughout Season 3 and well beyond that.

Much of The Cost of Living actually seems like it is being set up to prove that this exact theory is true. Eko, who is still recovering from his wounds, starts having visions of Yemi, who tells him that it is time to confess and that “you will know where to find me,” Eko then lumbers into the jungle, wounded and clearly delirious (that’s why we think he is seeing visions of the past), headed towards the plane where his brother’s body was. This has disturbed Eko in a way we have not seen on the show. Throughout Season 2, he was taciturn and peaceful, and while he could be violent on the island, he rarely showed anger.

Now when he encounters Locke, who is on his way to the Pearl Station, we find that the two have once again reversed both their roles and attitudes. Locke is now at peace in a way he was throughout Season 1, sure of himself in a way he rarely was after the hatch was opened in Season 2. When he quotes Eko’s line: “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate” to Desmond, it is now clear that he means it in the opposite context Eko used when they were splicing the orientation strip together. He is now firmly on the side of destiny again. The viewer thinks that Locke is back to his old self, but we have yet to realize the repercussions of this new faith.

Indeed, it’s hard to tell that now because Locke seems more willing to embrace leadership in a way he hasn’t in a while. He takes responsibility when Eko’s tent is set on fire, takes Desmond into his confidence and vouches for him with Sayid, and leads a party to the Pearl to find the next step. The only time he seems to lose his cool is when Hurley compares his leadership style to Jack unfavorably and he says: “Well, I’m not Jack.”  Considering that up to this point on the series, Locke has been far more right about everything than Jack has been, it says a lot about the castaways respective opinions of both men that everyone still prefers how Jack did things. What does it says that Locke’s flexible style, inviting everybody to come along is compared unfavorably by Hurley to Jack’s rigid style of doing everything by himself and not trusting anyone?

Interestingly even though Locke’s actions could have killed everybody and have clearly hurt at least three people, no one ever chooses to take John to task for what he has done. This may very well be a flaw in the writing. Now that we’re done with the hatch, the writers seem determined to put in the rear view mirror; we don’t even see the hatch again until Season 5.

Eko is angry when he sees Locke, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with being wrong about the button and more about the fact that he is dealing with what he is seeing. What we see in the jungle is perhaps the clearest connection so far that the island – and most tellingly, the smoke monster – clearly have a connection with the dead. The men Eko sees in the jungle are linked to one of the darkest moments in his life not because it was any worse than things he did before, but because he did in his brother’s name.

The flashbacks in ‘The Cost of Living’ take place immediately after Eko has been mistaken for a priest and given a second chance. He returns to Yemi’s village and when he mistaken for a priest again, he decides to live for his brother and take on his charge. The problem is not long after, he is faced with a dark reminder of who he is when a group of militia men come to take the vaccine. Eko, of course, has every reason to bear any army with more hostility than fear, and there is an argument that his actions are done for that very reason. In this sense, he is not only defending his brother’s name but bringing down a sort of revenge on the men who caused him to damn himself to save his brother.

But there is no more gratitude for his actions from the village then there was from Yemi after Eko saved him. The God in Eko’s world only sees things in black and white. Stealing is wrong, even if you are starving. Giving vaccines to help the sick is wrong if you have to kill to do it, and even if the men you kill are killers themselves. When Amina’s son asks Eko if he is a bad man, he tells him: “Only God knows.” The God that Yemi knew had made that decision already; Eko never believed in that.

God and ritual come up in a different context in the other major storyline. Ben comes to Jack so that he can see Colleen’s funeral rites. The funeral has a distinctly Eastern flavor: everyone dons white robes and walks out to the beach. Colleen is placed on a raft, which is set fire to as it is carried out to sea. (The fact that the Others are disposing of Colleen’s body in this fashion are, in hindsight, the first real sign we’ve had that there is a link between the monster and the bodies of the dead – and that the Others are aware of it.)

Jack looks at this with detachment because before this he has put Ben on his heels for the first time. When he casually asks Ben: “Does it hurt?” in the first act, for the first time this season – maybe in all our encounters with him so far – Ben is momentarily unsettled. When Jack begins to probe Ben about his X-rays and makes it crystal clear that he has a fatal tumor on his spine, Ben goes back to his act. Jack is fine going along with it because he’s figured out why he’s here and the card he has to play.

This is just as clear when Ben interrupts Juliet and Jack’s most recent encounter – by now, it’s clear the two have a rapport – and Ben throws his weight around for a change. Ben has gone back to the fallback he had when his deception of Henry Gale was discovered – to tell the ‘truth’. Now I’m pretty sure this would have been Ben’s plan originally: that’s why he told Kate the next two weeks would be hard, and its clear that Juliet was part of that strategy. The problem is, Jack has actually told him the truth and he can’t afford to stall any more.

When Ben asks Jack if he believes in God, and Jack turns it around on him Ben gives him one of the most famous lines in the show’s history: “Two days after I found out I had a fatal tumor on my spine, a spinal surgeon falls out of the sky. And if that’s not proof of God, I don’t know what is.” At the time, many believed Ben had known the plane was going to fall out of the sky; we now know that not only is that not true, but Ben did believe in God already – and in a way the tumor on his spine was a sign that maybe God wasn’t on his side. It’s also clear, based on what we know of Jack, that posing this question in the first place was the exact wrong tone to take. I have little doubt Jack was thinking when he heard that: “The one good thing about being here is I don’t have to argue with that sort of person anymore.”

Harder to fathom is Juliet’s plan in the final scene we have on Hydra Island. Juliet arranges things so it sounds she is persuading Jack to save Ben, while putting on a dumb show saying that she the Others want Ben dead and this is the perfect excuse. Now we’re going to see very soon that while Ben’s standing with his people is low, they do not want him to die. So the question is: was this all Juliet? Based on what we will eventually learn about Juliet and Ben’s history, I think she really was hoping Jack would kill Ben, either to escape or out of pure revenge.

By this point Eko seems to be dealing with the fact that he has returned to the plane and his brother’s body is gone. In the final act of the episode, he follows Yemi out into the forest and is asked to offer his confession. And it is based on his response that I truly think that the purgatory argument is refuted here.

Because unlike all those that have gone before him, who accepted the flaw in their character, Eko looks at his life and says that he does nothing wrong. “I ask no forgiveness, for I have not sinned…I am not sorry for these things, I am proud of them. I did not ask for the life I was given, but it was given. And with it, I did my best.” Eko has been honest about who he was in a way that most of the passengers haven’t been (in ? he told Locke about so much of what made him who he was) and he does not hide from it here. ‘Yemi’ walks away and when Eko follows him demanding to know who he is, the monster appears.

We will hear at one point the monster is the island’s form of judgment and though the source is unreliable, this is the best example of it. Eko is unrepentant of his sins and the monster has judged him unworthy of living. That was the theory at the time, and while it may not bare up on scrutiny long term, how Eko ends up being killed would seem to argue in that favor. The monsters grabs him, takes the form of a hand and kills him in the pattern of a cross, essentially crucifying him. It is one of the most shocking moments in the series.

And it leads to a moving one. In Eko’s final moments, we see what he does: Eko and Yemi as boys, happily playing soccer. It is as if everything that has happened to Eko since them was a scenario that never played out and now he and Yemi are as innocent as they were before their lives were destroyed. Along among all the characters who would be killed off in the life of the series (and trust me, the blood hasn’t even begun to flow) Eko alone would never return in any form after this episode. Perhaps that was out of some act of selfishness by Akinnouye-Agbaje’s part; perhaps he just didn’t want to come back to a set that had brought him such hostility. But as much as I would have loved to see the character back again, maybe it’s for the best. So much of what we have seen among the characters on this series is that they are unable to move on. In this final moment, we see that Eko has truly found peace and has no need to work anything else. What return could surpass that last scene?

Underrated Series: Manhattan

 

In 2014 Netflix was not yet the phenomena it would become. Amazon was only gingerly stepping into the world of streaming that year and Hulu was basically only showing old series. At that point in TV history cable was king and one could find some gems of TV in the most unlikely of places. In future articles I will go into detail on some of those series but in this entry, I intend to deal with one that was on a network that almost certainly may not exist any more but whose moment in the sun led to one of the more undervalued – and now relevant – series of the 2010s.

WGN was initially a superstation that was based entirely out of Chicago well before it was inducted into the family of cable. Even then, it truly wasn’t much of a force in television, specializing mostly in reruns of procedurals and Cubs and White Sox games. In the middle of the 2010s, like so many other fledgling cable stations, it made an entry into original programming. Most of its series were more or less period dramas and some of them were very intriguing. Salem would be set in the seventeenth century during the Witch Trials. Underground, by far their most critically acclaimed series, took place just prior to the Civil War mainly through the world of slaves. In both series, they were able to find some fairly large names: in Underground, Aldis Hodge, Jurnee Smollett, Reed Diamond and Christopher Meloni had lead roles. In Salem, Shane West, Xander Berkeley and Lucy Lawless were among regulars. But the show I found by far the most compelling was Manhattan. And considering that Oppenheimer, one of the most anticipated film releases of 2023 is hitting theaters, I thought it worth exploring this show that in a much greater detail explored the critical era that the film will be studying.

To be clear,  while some of the real characters involved in Los Alamos are present in Manhattan, including Oppenheimer himself, they are essentially regulated to cameos. Almost all of the characters are fictional scientists and it is not clear who they are supposed to represent. Indeed, it is likely given the nature of the era that most of them did not even exist. However, when it came to both the atmosphere on what was happening at the time, Manhattan  more than picks up the aura of the times. It also had one of the best casts of any TV series during that decade, many of whom would become major fixtures in the subsequent decade.

At the center of Manhattan is Frank Winter, played by John Benjamin Hickey. Hickey has been one of the most consistent workers throughout the era of Peak TV, almost always in supporting roles, almost always as a gadfly of some kind. Prior to Manhattan, he had been known to me for his supporting role as Laura Linney’s psychologically disturbed brother on The Big C and a tech millionaire of a Facebook like search engine on The Good Wife. Hickey was rarely more riveting as Winter, pushing every member of his team towards the production of the bomb, determined to get this done as fast as possible. When the series begins in 1943, Winter’s drive is focused entirely on idealism: in the second episode, he breaks protocol to tell his wife that what they are working on: “will not just end this war. It’s going to end all wars.” At one point in Oppenheimer, this line of dialogue is uttered and a critic wonders how anyone could be this naïve: Manhattan makes it very clear this naivete was driving much of the project.

The other scientist drawn in Charlie Isaacs, who loathes Winter but has been brought in, still not aware why he has been so. Through the length of the series both men will always be in conflict. At first, Winter is trying to force Isaacs to go along with his plans; in the second season, he’s desperately trying to convince him to work against the use of the bomb. This was the first time I had ever encountered Ashley Zukerman, who since his role here has worked consistently in TV, first as a corrupt congressman in Designated Survivor, then constantly in limited series as diverse as A Teacher, The Lost Symbol and most recently City on Fire. Fans of Succession will no doubt remember him as Nate Sofrelli, one of the few characters in that series who had become rich on his two feet – and who Kendall Roy had no problem destroying. (We’re told by the creators that he got back up again. Good for him.) Zukerman came into the series with idealism; by the time the show ended he was completely corrupted.

Much of the story dealt with some of the conflict between the marriages of both Winter and Isaacs. Charlie’s wife was portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan in what was her first series role after she had broken to a level of stardom as Rachel, the prostitute whose life becomes tragically intermeshed with Doug Stamper in the first two seasons. In hindsight, Abby can be seen as a forerunner of Midge on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel but unlike Midge, Abby has even fewer options and has nowhere to go. Abby’s arc is by far the most tragic. At one point in the series, she begins a lesbian love affair with one of the other women on the base and when this is discovered, the other woman is imprisoned and her husband is repulsed. She makes constant efforts to leave Los Alamos but the military constantly refuse her. The Isaacs’ marriage becomes a shell by the second season, Abby suffers a miscarriage and one of the military uses her affairs to manipulate Charlie to his will. She manages to escape the base by the end of Season 2 (when the show was cancelled) but her fate is unknown.

Frank’s wife Liza is played by Olivia Williams. Liza is a British botanist who has already been on Los Alamos since the series began and has already become frustrated by her inability to exist there. She had a career before coming to the desert; now she has no idea what is going on and is infuriating by Frank’s continued hostility. Despite that she remains immensely supportive of him; when Frank is thrown in a military prison at the end of Season 1, she ends up going to Princeton to see a colleague of his to pull string to get him out. She is then equally infuriated when her stubborn husband demands to go back to the base in order to compel the truth to come forward.

Many actors who have been at the center of so much great television would appear on the series during its brief run: Daniel Stern, practically unrecognizable, played Glen, Frank’s mentor at the start of Season 1, who when Frank learns of his homosexuality ends up betraying him in order to get clearance for his project. Katja Herbers, who five years later finally managed to breakthrough for her incredible work on Evil, plays a female scientist struggling for equality and respect. (I am fairly certain that her character was entirely fictional; I don’t believe that the government or military’s in the 1940s would let any woman near any government project; much less the development of the Atomic bomb.)  Christopher Denham, who incidentally plays Klaus Fuchs in Oppenheimer,  was a regular as did Harry Lloyd, perhaps best known for his work to genre fans in the cult series Counterpart and Legion. And Michael Chernus, a Broadway actor who worked constantly in Peak TV (most recently as Ricken in Severance ) had perhaps the saddest role) as Fritz. At one point, he accidentally swallowed radiation chips and was given beer to try and urinate it. We know even without the series being cancelled he was likely doomed regardless (and indeed, what happens to him at the end of the series is tragic but saves him a far worse death). Other future stars would appear such as David Harbour, who was a regular in Season 1 and William Peterson who portrayed Col. Emmett Darrow, the god-loving martinet holding the military in Season 2. Petersen’s work in that season was infinitely superior to anything he ever did on CSI.

Were it merely for the level of the cast on Manhattan, the show would have earned a niche in TV history. But in its two season run, it very clearly managed to deal with all of the issues that were surrounding so much of World War II as well as the fears around the atomic bomb itself. Frank Winter spends all of Season 1 convinced of two things: that they are developing this bomb in a race against the Nazis, who as history revealed had the scientists but not enough material, and that when the bomb is developed, it will simply be tested on an empty island and that will convince the Japanese to surrender – and that the sheer awesomeness of the explosion will be enough to ensure world peace. Both of these ambitions die hard in Season 2, first when Winter learns there is no Nazi bomb and this knowledge does nothing to stop Isaacs – by now head of the project – to do anything to slow its work. He is essentially held as a military prisoner for the rest of the season – the series accelerates its pace dramatically in Season 2 – and then spends much of that time trying to convince the scientists on site to go along with it. He is thwarted on a legitimate front and in desperation tampers with the bomb before a vital test to try and convince Isaacs to go along with it. Isaacs has a role on the committee, but not long before a crucial meeting he learns of his wife’s betrayal and decides that the bomb should be used on a live target. In what would be the series finale, Frank does everything in his power to stop the actual test and is danger of being arrested by the military and possibly executed for treason.

Manhattan also deals with the very real fears of espionage. Throughout the first season of Manhattan, there is fear of a Soviet spy on the base who is leaking information to the Russians. When the spy is revealed at the end of Season 1, it is not who we think. Much of Season 2 deals with the arrival of another handler Nora (Mamie Gummer) Those of you familiar with her work on TV as flighty but humane characters on Emily Owens and The Good Wife (which is how I knew her at the time) will be stunned by the utter coldness and matter-of-factness in her work; in retrospect, her characters is clearly an ancestor of Elizabeth Jennings or may even grow up to be Margo Martindale’s character on The Americans. At one point, she makes a decision so cold that the mole is stunned and this tragedy has repercussions far darker than that.

By far the most telling story comes when Niels Bohr shows up on the base in Season 1 to try and serve as an inspiration. Isaacs and Winter keep trying to impress him with what they are doing and he keeps asking whether “Do you think it will be enough?” Finally at the end of the episode, he tells them that he has been in this position before – when chlorine gas was developed and then utilized horribly by Germans both in trench warfare – and though the world does not know it, in concentration camps. Bohr tells them point blank a quarter of a century ago that was supposed to stop war and that their project here is just the next natural step in the carnage that would become the 20^th century. He might as well have been drawing a line to the later horrors that have followed, not just from the arms race, but for biological and chemical weapons. The scientists in Manhattan still have the optimism to believe they are doing the right thing. Bohr knows better, and we would have done well to listen to him.

Manhattan ended up being cancelled after its second season, no doubt because the ratings were never high enough to meet the level of expenses. (Underground would end up getting canceled despite its popularity for the same reason two years later.) I will admit I was disappointed at the time, but honestly it’s unlikely it could have gone much further when it came to its end. The series comes to the first detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16^th 1945 and as the world does know the rest. There might have been some cliffhangers to resolve with some of the characters but I don’t know how much more even a shortened third season could have resolved things anyway. In retrospect the series finale – titled Jupiter – may have been the best ending the creators could have hoped for. The last shot of the episode is that of the first successful test. We really didn’t need an ending for Manhattan because we’re still living in the world it created.

Both seasons of Manhattan are available on Freevee, one of the streaming services of Amazon. And to be clear, it is for reasons like this that I am grateful for the streaming services that exist these days. I was very likely one of the few viewers of the show who watched it from beginning to end, who realized its clear greatness and mourned it when it was gone. I don’t know if in 2014 which cable packages even carried a fringe station like WGN, which indeed did stop making original series within a few years. But Manhattan is one of those shows that you could find on cable in the 2010s and consider yourself blessed. Perhaps, when filmgoers finish seeing Oppenheimer, they might search this series out as well. It will involve a longer investment, but if you’re willing to sit in a theater for three hours in July (and by the look of the early grosses, it looks like many people are) binge watching this over a weekend is just as worth your time, and I’m pretty sure as rewarding.

America Says That It Is On The Side of The Striking Talent...But Human Nature Says We Will Change

 

When I was twelve I remember being immensely worried during the leadup to what would be known as the first Gulf War. After George H.W. Bush spoke on television about the sending of troops into Kuwait to repel the forces of Saddam Hussein, I remember spending the next months in a state of alarm. When the war was over in a month later, I was immensely relieved.

When Bush’s son ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I was also upset – because when he went on TV to announce the coalition, the networks preempted an episode of the fourth season of Angel. By that point in my life I had become enough of a television watcher that I was more annoyed by Presidential address that ever caring about them in substance:  no matter which Party or President was speaking, they were inevitably postponing a series on network TV that I cared about more than current events. I realize that, given the state of the world, I should care about these things more and that given that we live in the age of streaming, nothing is lost forever. But for almost all of my adult of my life, I have always viewed so much of political and national discourse as to how it would effect how I watched television and anything else on a secondary level, if that.

Every time I read either a progressive blog or a conservative editorial,  one almost inevitably encounters one side making the same argument about the other: they are intrinsically selfish, they have no vision for the big picture, they don’t care how their actions affect the rest of the world. While I consider both sides hypocrites on their particular message, in the case they are both one hundred percent correct. But what neither side seems to truly get that this is not a flaw that is universal to Republicans or Democrats. At some level, everyone must care for their own needs first and everything else second. Both sides will no doubt argue that there are other factors to blame for this – social media, cable news, higher education, Zendaya (I expect that one to come any day given the level of our discourse) but I think it’s the nature of humanity. By design, there is a part of us that cares about our lives first and everything else second.

And it is for that reason that I am honestly inclined to believe that at least in this case, the progressives are the bigger hypocrites. They are all excellent at talking the talk, telling us about the ills of our society, how corporations, the patriarchy, white supremacy, Jim Caviezel (that’s going to happen soon too) are responsible for the imminent destruction of our society that I secretly think some are looking forward too. What they are honestly lacking are any true solutions. And it is for that reason I honestly wonder how truly committed they would be to fixing these problems if they had to actually do anything.

You believe that Vladimir Putin is a threat to the free world? Fine. But will you soldier guns and volunteer to fight in the Ukraine. The rights of African-Americans or women are in huge danger in Mississippi or Wyoming. We understand. Would you be willing to move from your walk up in the Bronx and go down there to march with them or help register voting drives? You believe that America doesn’t do anything to help the homeless. True. Will you let certain organization set up affordable housing for those people in your neighborhood? It is easy to have liberal and progressive values when you stand behind a keyboard. But when it comes to making any sacrifice at all, I see very little evidence that so many people would do so.

That is, in my opinion, an argument that corporations could easily make when the left decides to, as they inevitably have been, accuse them of destroying America in some way. This is an argument that is hard to refute when you consider the nature of so many Americans and around the world.

“Our companies could put together safety regulations that would guarantee that there would never be another plane crash. However, the departure and arrival times would double across the board. We could make automobiles completely fuel efficient and as safe as tanks. They’d cost as much as a house. We could grant the power of unions in Walmart, Amazon and Uber. But the products you buy there would double in cost, you would not get overnight shipping and it would be twice as hard to find a ride. This is the age of modern conveniences. How much of your personal convenience would you willingly sacrifice for someone else’s, most likely someone you will never know?”

(For the record, the left could make this same argument about immigration to the right, pointing out that without this supply of cheap labor,  we could not enjoy, say, our morning coffee. Then they would realize that this was an argument that could just as easily apply to the unionizing efforts at Starbucks and clam up.)

I expect a similar reaction from America as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA continue to strike. Progressive websites are angry because leaders of studios like Bob Iger seem tone-deaf and some sources in the industry have made it clear that their plan is to wait until so much of the talent stars falling behind in its rent or in danger of losing their houses and will except far less than they are entitled too. This is likely the strategy. What all of these websites are leaving out is that the studios have just as big a bargaining chip and that is the largest example of what I listed above.

The two most powerful unions in America today are the ones in Hollywood and professional sports. Both are the prime examples of how successful collective bargaining can be for an industry. But whenever there is a work stoppage of any kind in either – particularly professional sports – the public very quickly turns on the union’s members when their personal enjoyment is threatened. We do not care about whether they are being exploited by corporate overlords; all we care about is being able to turn on the game when we get home or to watch our favorite series over dinner. If that is impeded, our collective blame is almost invariably on the performers not their bosses.

We don’t even have to go back that far in time to look at the prime example of this for both. When everybody in society was in lockdown starting in the spring of 2020 after the initial shock, America started getting bored. And one of the things we wanted for a distraction was to know when professional sports were coming back. My mother is  a huge Yankee fan and she kept getting impatient as the summer progressed for baseball in whatever form to come back. She was hardly alone in that.

In case we forgot, thousands of people were sick and dying every day. America was going through so many legitimate crises both in policing, protests and the upcoming election and there was nothing resembling a cure in sight. Considering a professional athlete an essential worker should have been one of those things that boggled the mind of any true progressive. Yet starting with baseball, every professional sport put together a season. Sometimes in completely empty stadiums, sometimes in bubbles. Universal precautions were taken and there was a COVID list next to the injury one. All of was done so that America could have a distraction from being forced to shelter in place.

And did we ever express gratitude to these athletes, who very well could have died for the sole purpose of providing this distraction? These athletes, who in many cases were already rich, had nothing to gain and everything to lose for doing their jobs? Who did not have a crowd to react to when they managed to achieve athletic feats? Nope. But whenever an athlete chose not to get vaccinated, social media turned them into pariahs. They became rich and entitled and everything that they had done for us – for us – in 2020-2021 was basically thrown under the bus.

It was no different when it came to television during lockdown, though in this case I speak solely for myself. Like everyone else I was bored and kept finding ways to fill my time and watched a lot of television. However, I chose not to spend these months in relative isolation catching up on all of the series I had spent much of the past years ignoring.

There was no reason I couldn’t have watched all of Schitt’s Creek or The Handmaid’s Tale; seen all of Ozark or looked at Peaky Blinders; watched all of The Morning Show or even both seasons of Succession. But I did not want too. I wanted the series I liked to come back.

Perhaps it speaks to both my privilege and a certain defect in my character that while so many people were suffering and dying and my family managed to get away untouched by Covid until well after we all had been vaccinated that during this period of lockdown, my greatest source of frustration was that so many series I liked or wanted to see were being postponed. I was upset that the fourth season of Fargo, The Undoing and The Good Lord Bird were all pushed back until the fall rather than debuting in the spring and summer when they had been promised. I was aggravated that because of Covid I was likely going to have to wait at least a year for the final season of Better Call Saul. And I was incredibly pissed that the broadcast season of 2020 was so piecemeal because no one was able to film back then.

I mention my inherent selfishness to demonstrate that, even in the midst of what was essentially a watershed moment in global history, my greatest concerns were whether the fifth season of This is Us was going to air. I don’t pretend to be remotely proud of this fact; I mention only to demonstrate that, at a certain level, I’m willing to bet that more than a few of my readers were at a similar level of impatience and selfishness and like me, never gave the respect to so many of the actors and creative forces who, in the summer of 2020, would begin to reopen Hollywood so that the rest of America and the world would have something to entertain themselves with. I don’t know if I ever asked myself once during that period whether I should be grateful that so many people were putting their lives in danger so I could watch Big Sky  or Ted Lasso. Did any of us think to do that? I grant you the world was exploding well beyond that and there were far bigger problems to deal with, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves. We spent a lot of time taking for granted what a lot of actors were doing back then. Did we just think that they were all so wealthy that they didn’t deserve our gratitude?

 

That is the fundamental reason that I am relatively certain that the studios won’t have to work that hard to turn public sympathy against the writers and actors. This weekend, I was talking with some friends about the strike and one tole me they hoped it would end soon because they were tired of watching reruns of old shows. That’s what the studios are counting on. They know that in this era of instant gratification, where so many viewers can’t even wait a week to watch the next episode of a series, where they don’t want to pay for cable services, where they balk at the idea of sharing a password so they don’t have to pay for any streaming service at all, that the average American does not give a damn  what so many writers or actors are fighting for or that many of them are struggling to make ends meet the same way they do. They want new shows; they want new seasons of their favorite series; they want to see movies again.

Hell, the people who are currently in favor of supporting actors and writers don’t care that this will cause another major blow to the movie theater industry which has barely recovered from the lockdown. But these days no one wants to go a movie in a theater any way, so who cares about them?  Same as with all of the retail stores or the groceries stories or the restaurants that all went out of business during Covid? As long as we had Amazon or grubhub we didn’t give a damn? Of course if they were all to unionize, we’d be angry at that stoppage. We’re only pro-labor as long as the labor doesn’t effect us. I guarantee that if the prize of a Big Mac was effected, the pro-union people would want McDonalds to stamp out ‘agitators’.

 The studios know that Americans don’t care how much the creative forces end up getting exploited as long as they watch the next season of So Help Me Todd or 9-1-1 soon. And that’s just the ones on the left; the right hates Hollywood in principle, thinks everything they make has leftist messages and is responsible for the destruction of America.

So the corporate bosses will win. They might have to give up more than they want but they’ll still win. The conservative base will message it  as selfishness from the Hollywood elitists; the progressives will argue that this is a victory for organized labor. The average American will essentially blame the writers and actors for causing them to have to watch shows in syndication and forcing them to wait another few months to see the next season of The Last Of Us. And the workers who struggled for these rights and who did all of these battles will find themselves being ignored again and will have to wonder why they bothered to fight a battle that the public only really cared about because it temporarily bothered them. Most of the public will watch a rerun or an episode of the series and not even know that this battle was it was about. We don’t care because it’s not our fight until if affects us.

 

 

The Economic History of Baseball, Part 6: How Moneyball Helped Wreck the Game's Future and How The World Ignored Steroids Until They Couldn't - And Blamed The Players

 

 

When I began this series several months ago before being diverted to other things, I had every intention of making the next-to-last article entirely about steroids. However, in hindsight I think that something was eventually as damaging to the long-term health of baseball occurred around the same time the steroids scandal was coming to light and may have, in the long run, done just much damage. In both case, I think major league baseball allowed a false narrative to be told about both stories.

In an article I wrote on Aaron Sorkin’s Moneyball several months ago, I expressed several of my doubts about whether the system that had truly benefited anyone. There is one person is clearly benefited: Billy Beane. He got to be the hero of baseball executives because he came up with a winning strategy. He got to be the lead character of a best selling book and played by Brad Pitt in a film nominated for Best Picture. He helped dozen of statisticians earn jobs in major league baseball. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment, considering his strategy was a complete failure when he put into practice.

Because, lest we forget, Beane has never won the World Series in his tenure at Oakland. He has never even got the A’s to win an American League pennant. The strategy of Moneyball never got the A’s any closer to the World Series than when they were spending big money on free agents. The A’s attendance was never high even when they were doing well, and it has dropped to the bottom of the league. The A’s themselves are, as of this writing, on track to have one of the worst seasons in major league history and will leave Oakland for Las Vegas in three years. If the goal of baseball is to win the last game of the season, one truly wonders how Beane kept his job for twenty years because he is no closer to that than when he started.

What has become the myth of Moneyball’s success was that Theo Epstein used Beane’s methods to win the World Series with the Red Sox in 2004. That was hard for me to accept when I heard the story told in the film and I still don’t entirely buy it. The 2004 Red Sox were essentially the same team that they were when they lost Game 7 of the ALCS in 2003, with the exception of the free agent signing of Curt Schilling. Theo Epstein when he took over the management spent much of the off-season trying to hire big free agents: the Yankees and Red Sox got into a bidding war with Alex Rodriguez that the Yankees won after offering ten years and over a quarter of a billion dollars.

And the idea that somehow Billy Beene’s strategy when it came to buying and selling players was responsible for the great comeback in postseason history is actually kind of offensive. The post-season turned on a stolen base in the ninth inning of Game 4 by Dave Roberts that led to the Red Sox tying the game and winning it on Ortiz’s home run in extra innings. In case you’ve forgotten, the idea of the stolen base was essentially verboten in the idea of Moneyball, nearly as much as the sacrifice.

I watched almost every inning of the last four games of the 2004 ALCS with bated breath, at least until Game 7. Was there some hidden player or strategy involved that somehow proved Epstein’s – and by extension, Moneyball – was responsible for what happened? All members of Red Sox Nation, I’m not saying that Theo Epstein doesn’t deserve every bit of credit for breaking the Curse of the Bambino but does that mean Billy Beene gets credit by default?

I honestly think that professional baseball chose to design this narrative after the fact. Make no mistake, had the Red Sox been swept in four games in the ALCS Epstein would never have even tried to use Beene as a business model going forward: he would have been run out of Boston on a rail. The idea that somehow math could be a destiny that had been cursing the Red Sox for eighty six year is a nice idea, but that’s all it is and to think so, basically is a counternarrative to every argument the press, the players, the owners and baseball have been putting forth for its existence.

I think the truth is simpler. The owners did not want to pay millions of dollars for free agents. The idea of spending less money on specialists rather than superstars must have appealed to the greedy owners for several reasons. By saying that major statistics such as batting average, runs scored and stolen bases are irrelevant to the game, you take away the idea that one’s individual achievements are important. Therefore, a players superb stats – one of the key elements to negotiating a salary – are automatically diminished because management now has a ready made excuse to say that they don’t help the team win and just as much say that the player is not valuable because they didn’t contribute.

By having relief pitchers constantly come in, starting pitchers can’t have as many complete games, innings pitched, and are likely to have fewer wins. They have less room to negotiate they have value to a team. Similarly because for years, there were no stats for a reliever who held a lead, but neither won nor saved, management could argue that they didn’t contribute as much. Only in this form of baseball could you argue that wins matter more for your team in one breath but not for a pitcher in another.

So every team following Billy Beane Ball argued that they were following a successful business model even though there was no evidence. And because they all were, things that made the game more exciting – the stolen base, the bunt, the pitchers’ duel – all began to disappear. All games were more or less about hitting home runs and nothing else. Over the last decade, the game has fundamentally been suffering a crisis because much of baseball has become less interesting to young fans. Why should it be? When you’re basically just waiting around for players to hit home runs, when games go three to four hours and it seems to take forever for the pitcher to throw one ball, of course it’s less interesting. I am a huge baseball fan, but for the last decade the Moneyball driven version of baseball has become a huge drag. Hell, even Theo Epstein admitted as much in a recent article in The Atlantic.

But that is the problem with ownership. As long as they make as much money as possible they don’t care what kind of product they produce. That is, in a sense, what led to the other major crisis that had been unfolding for a while during this same period: steroids.

I have to say that, unlike practically every other scandal that baseball has dealt with during its existence, management’s handling of it was by far the most excusable and the eventual public reaction the most hypocritical. Indeed when Ken Burns revisited Baseball in 2009, I found his treatment of what happened remarkably nuanced and shed a light on it few fans and scholars want to consider.

Many writers and historians pointed out that cheating in baseball has always been tolerated on other levels, particularly things like sign stealing and trick pitches. They pointed that had steroids existed in the era of Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth, there is no doubt players would have used them, particularly if it might extend their career and make sure that they could support their family. Chris Rock perhaps summed it up the best when he said: “If you could take a pill that would make you do your job better, you’d take that pill.” Few would argue with any of that.

Furthermore, big league management’s decision to not take any direct action and indeed to try and punish writers and those who wanted to bring the truth to light is more understandable then in other cases given the fact that the rise in steroid use began not long after the 1994 Players strike. The game’s attendance and standing in the national mood was suffering and the home run chase of 1998, where both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were clearly juicing up, was the kind of thing the sport needed.

And let’s not kid ourselves: there is an unindicted co-conspirator for the entire era: the baseball fan. I was no different. I followed every moment of the chase in the summer of 1998 with the excitement of the devout fan, waiting to hear every night what had happened. Had someone told me at the time that two of the major participants were using performance enhancing drugs, not only would I have rejected the concept I would certainly have shot the messenger.

At its height, from the mid nineties until 2006, I think I like the rest of America, was in a state of denial. It was the kind of thing that was glaringly obvious to anyone who even looked at someone like Jason Giambi or Manny Ramirez between seasons but we all chose to ignore what was right in our faces. We didn’t want to know.

The Tenth Inning also goes out of its way to paint a very sympathetic picture of Barry Bonds during this period. Few people would dare argue that Bonds was the greatest player in baseball during the 1990s. He had won the MVP award three times in a four year period from 1990 to 1993. In 1996, he became the first National League hitter to drive in 150 runs in thirty four years; he drove in 145 the next year. In 1998, he became the first player in history to hit 400 home runs and steal 400 bases. Had he retired at the end of that season, no one would have argued his place in Cooperstown.

And yet that historic event brought him no press compared to the achievements of McGwire and Sosa, who were strictly one trick ponies. Bonds had suffered his entire career from a bad press and his surly reputation no doubt diminished America’s capacity to appreciate what was in front of their noses this whole time. His decision to start taking steroids was no doubt influenced by his determination to make sure the country could not ignore him.

And then when the Senate pronounced its findings Bonds became the face of all that was wrong with baseball. I remember the New York Post, never subtle, putting up the record numbers of homeruns he hit after 2005 in hypodermic syringes. (To be fair, they ended up doing the same with other players with questionable records such as Alex Rodriguez.)

And because baseball creates its heroes as much as its turns on them, we began to celebrate record holders that who, when they had set their marks, were the subject of national loathing. Roger Maris, who had been excoriated by the New York Press when he broke Babe Ruth’s single season record, became the subject of lionizing when the truth about McGwire and Bonds was publicly learned. Hank Aaron, whose achievements had been dismissed as little more than a statistical fluke even after he broke Babe Ruth’s lifetime mark, had been subject to racist threats and little respect in Aaron’s time at Atlanta, was deified by the public. Aaron’s decision not to publicly follow Bonds as he chased his own lifetime mark was celebrated by millions as a stand of integrity.

But it was Bud Selig’s decision to not follow Bonds from park to park that I consider truly hypocritical. As Commissioner of Baseball Selig had to have aware of what was going on in front of his eyes. He and his fellow owners were clearly willing to let this phenomenon to go on as long as it didn’t effect their balance sheets. They did everything in their power to stomp down every rumor that came out: when Jose Canseco published a tell-all about this subject, they did everything to call him a liar. It was not until the truth of this reached Congress that they finally reacted. And to be clear, their drug testing laws were strict enough to punish the players but to this day, we have no idea how strongly they are being enforced.

Furthermore, when it comes to how the Hall of Fame should regard so many of the players who were either guilty or might well have been using steroids, Selig remained equally silent. No players were judged ineligible for the Hall of Fame or ever officially punished. The Sportswriters have been forced every year to make their own judgments, something that many of them openly resent. There is much outrage that Selig left the Commissioners Office and let the cup pass to their lips.

As to how we deal with so many of these players as regards to Cooperstown, I have no clear opinion. But I have much clearer attitude about something Cooperstown should do, kick Bud Selig out. Selig was voted in to the Hall in 2017 and I have been angry about it ever since. As I said, I don’t blame the players for what they did or baseball for letting it happen. But to decide that Selig – who spent years at best being willfully blind to what was happening and at worst was an unindicted co-conspirator, and whose only reaction when the truth came out was akin to “I’m shocked – shocked! – that gambling is going on in this establishment” – is worthy of Hall of Fame induction and that players like Bonds, who followed the example he and his fellow owners celebrated, are stained and unworthy, is one of the great hypocrisies in the history of a sport full of them.  In his time as Commissioner Selig did more to hurt the integrity and reputation of the sport than any single player ever could. He doesn’t deserve to have a plaque within a hundred miles of Henry Aaron.

 

 

 

 

Historical Figures Series: The Truth and Myths About Reagan, Part 1: The Republican Legend and Democratic Loathing of Him Are Both Based in Numbers

 

 

I intend to spend the bulk of this series on Ronald Reagan dealing with a theory I’ve had on him for the last several years: that Reagan’s path to the Presidency was not inevitable, that several outside factors intervened and that he could not have won the White House at any other time then he did.

However, before I begin this series in earnest, as a student of historian I am intrigued by how both sides view Reagan. For the record, along with JFK, I believe he is one of the most overrated Presidents in history. Recent studies have ranked him among the ten best Presidents of all time: I think that’s too high by far. At best, he deserves an above average mark and should not be ranked higher that Cleveland or Eisenhower as some studies have.

But I do believe that at least one of the reasons that Reagan is lionized by the right does not hold up to close to historical scrutiny. And I think that Reagan receives far too much credit for bringing about the end of the Cold War.

Let’s start with some basic facts that have been proven by this historical record. Yes, the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime that was one of the most repressive in history. Everything we learn about live in the USSR, from the reign of the KGB to the existence of the gulag system to how they stamped down anything resembling dissidents bares that out. That they extended to level of dictatorship throughout Eastern Europe and help seed much of it with equally oppressive and horrific strongmen cannot be questioned either. There is  a certain truth when Reagan referred to them as the Evil Empire.

However, we have also learned that while they were a gross violator of human right wherever they held court, their threat to world peace during the nuclear age was grossly overrated by their side.  Almost from the beginning of the 1950s until very close to the end, the United States always had an advantage when it came to nuclear weapons. Furthermore while they worked hard to stamp out many attempts to overthrow their rule in the post-WWII era, there was very little expansion of their regime after Mao helped take over China in 1949. The belief of the ‘domino theory’ –  that essentially led to the Vietnam War – was basically a myth.

There is an argument that so much of what happened in the Cold War was driven by two beliefs that American politicians and military never could get around. The first was Stalin’s betrayal at Yalta, and the fact that after he died, no one in leadership could ever accept that any Soviet Leader – indeed, any leader who wore the banner of Communism – was not Stalin. I believe that was the fundamental driving force of foreign policy from the Truman Doctrine until the middle of the 1980s. And because of that fundamental belief, it justified by far some of the worst actions in American history.

I don’t tend to agree with ‘the People’s History’ in all things but in this case I do have a certain alignment with them and I also agree that it was a bipartisan affair from 1948 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. No official running for elected office in either Congress or President could hope to have a chance of winning with the accusation of being ‘soft on Communism’. In a sense, that was very much the reason for so much bipartisan accord in domestic policy as well as foreign policy in Congress: we didn’t want to look weak to the Commies. This also essentially led to our government’s agencies – sometimes with the President’s open approval; sometimes with them looking the other way – overthrowing democratically elected officials throughout the world who might have been openly Marxist (such as Salvador Allende in Chile) or could be replaced with someone we could use as an ally against Communism (the installation of the Shah of Iran). That this led to us installing more repressive regimes in their place was considered a consequence that members of both parties were fine with: we had to defeat the Communist, and any ally we had was one they didn’t. The citizens of those regimes were more or less collateral damage to either side. Reagan was, in that sense, the inevitable extension of half a century of those beliefs.

Yet somehow we have always given too much credit to Reagan for causing the Soviet Union to help collapse, which makes little sense according to certain parts of the calendar.

One of the leading causes in the collapse of the U.S.S.R was the decision of the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. This happened in the last years of the Carter administration. In his last state of the Union in 1980, Carter asked Congress to approve a 5 percent increase in the defense budget. This was a level that the Soviet Union could not match. He also called on European nations to meet the aggressive Soviet Threat and for Congress to send military aid to Pakistan. In addition he formally ended the policy of détente (which I’ll get into detail on later on) Conservatives such as Robert Gates would later agree that these policies had a significant effect on the collapse of the Soviet Union. But because their full effect was not felt until Carter had lost reelection, Reagan would claim credit for them.

Those who try argue that Reagan’s memorable speech lend to the Berlin Wall coming down ignore that it did not fall until November of 1989, a year after George H.W. Bush had been elected President. The collapse of the Soviet Union until Christmas of 1991. It is hard to find a way to argue that Reagan can take credit for that considering that Bush senior was doing most of the negotiations. The reason Bush receives less credit than he deserves is mainly because the conservative moment (and as we shall see, Reagan in particular) loathed him and never truly considered him one of them.

And of course the great irony the man responsible for the Soviet Union falling, mainly against his will, was Mikhail Gorbachev. I have often wondered how Gorbachev must have considered the rest of his life after resigning in Christmas of 1991. Not merely as to how his country would, little more than a decade after the Soviet collapse become a dictatorship led by one of the men who very likely led a coup against him but of how so many of the conservatives in America chose to view his country’s collapse.

The narrative for the past thirty years from the neo-con wing has almost always painted Reagan (and by British Historians, Margaret Thatcher) as the Cold Warriors who brought down the Soviet Union. What did they have to lose by negotiating? Gorbachev knew full well what could happen behind closed doors; he very nearly lost his life by making his stand in the first place. He was trying to do what he did to save his country from the evils of his regime, it ended up collapsing and the Americans who had spent so much time and energy fighting it had no interest in helping in the aftermath but basically chose to regard it as a lesser focus in comparison to the Middle East. Reagan and Thatcher spent their last years being idolized in their home countries by a large portion of their populace and around the world; Gorbachev more or less died a pariah in his. History is supposed to be written by the winners and by the standard of American history, Gorbachev should have been one. Why does our society essentially view him as little more than a footnote?

While the right in part lionizes Reagan despite the calendar, the left chooses to excoriate him because of what they say he was. To do so, they have to also ignore math, which considering how much they worship statistics is very bizarre. It is also the real reasons that the left has spent the last forty years loathing him and the right has spent just as long lionizing him.

Reagan’s electoral victories are the most impressive for any two term President in American History. There was actually a Jeopardy clue on it: Reagan outscored his Democrats opponents by a combined total of 1014 to 63. Reagan is one of only three Presidents to win an election with more than 500 electoral votes. The other two were FDR in 1936 and Richard Nixon in 1972. In 1984, Reagan received more electoral votes than any Presidential candidate in history 525, which were forty-nine of fifty states. He didn’t do that poorly in 1980 either, carrying forty five of fifty states. In the 1984 election, for the record, he came within 3800 votes of carrying Minnesota and received 58.8 percent of the popular vote, which amounted to more than 54.5 million votes.

The left can spin this as much as they like; some of it justifiably. They will point out that in both elections the turnout was historically low and there is truth to that; in both 1980 and 1984, the total voter turnout was not much more than fifty percent. They will argue that Carter was historically unpopular at the time of the 1980 election, which is hard to debate and that Mondale was not a particularly inspiring candidate. (That undercuts the contributions Walter Mondale made in his life in politics to be sure, but they’ll make that argument.) They’ll argue that the post-Vietnam politics had fundamentally weakened the Democratic party. All true.

None of this can defeat the underlying factor of Reagan’s massive popular and electoral wins. Nor does it do much to argue the fact that from the beginning of Reagan’s career, much of his electoral success was built on appealing to Democrats. (This will become particularly obvious when we come to his 1976 campaign.) As much as one wants to argue that Reagan’s popularity was based in the South (and by unspoken extension, racists) it does not change the fact that Reagan essentially carried in both elections every other region of the country as well, in forty five of fifty cases, twice over. Considering that most of those states were blue before Reagan and after, what does that say about his popularity?

The left, of course, can’t make a real argument about this. So they will make up straw man ones. Here are some of the biggest myths:

Reagan never talked to the press and when he did, he was lying to them. There are so many ways to ridicule this argument its not even funny, so I’m just going to take the most pertinent one. Reagan held forty-seven press conferences in eight years. Jimmy Carter held fifty-nine in four. It’s worth noting the Georgetown elite never liked him from the start; they could not adjust to the Southerner in the White House, they fundamentally thought he was too upright for them and they spent as much time creating false scandals for him rather than pay attention to his actual policies. The left can argue Reagan ignored the media, but there is no evidence – certainly in the post-Watergate era – that being a friend to the media makes you a better President. Indeed, JFK was warm and open to the media – and spent much of his administration lying to them about every aspect of his public and personal life.

Reagan spent his career inventing stories. When Jimmy Carter began his campaign one of the first lines he said was: “I’ll never tell a lie.” The media immediately reacted with just as much cynicism as they did Reagan’s false stories, even when they did correct them. The fact that the press and so much of the public did not believe in Carter’s fundamental decency any more than Reagan’s fables just goes to prove that politicians are essentially damned if they do and damned if they don’t. What the left doesn’t like is that the public liked hearing these stories and wanted to believe in them just as so many wanted to believe in Carter’s honesty.

Reagan was all style, using a message of positivity to his voters while actually being as corrupt as the rest of the right was. Here I will do a case study, and I hope some of you will see the pattern.

1920: In the aftermath of World War I, Warren Harding the unknown Senator from Ohio is the Republican nominee for President. Considering intellectually vacant and corrupt (even though he was personally honest) his good looks and affability appealed to many. His campaign was based, in the aftermath of the last decade on one of the most famous slogans of all time: “A Return to Normalcy”

Harding won with 60% of the popular vote, beating his Democratic rival by a margin of two to one. He also became the first Republican President to win more than 400 electoral votes.

1928: Herbert Hoover is the Republican nominee. While an ugly campaign against the Catholic Democrat Al Smith is waged, the general prosperity of the roaring 1920s is still on Hoover’s side. His campaign slogan reflects that: “A Chicken in Every Pot and A Car in Every Garage.”

Hoover wins with more than 58 percent of the popular vote and with 444 electoral votes, the most any Presidential candidate has received in history so far.

1932: As the Depression worsens and Hoover is incapable of effecting change, he  runs a dour and doom-trodden campaign, claiming if FDR is elected, grass will grow on the sidewalks. FDR runs a campaign filled with light and humor and his campaign anthem is ‘Happy Days are Here Again’.

FDR wins with 472 electoral votes. His optimistic tone  and humor carry him through three separate electoral landslides, each with at least 432 electoral votes.

1952: After a quagmire in Korea, Communism affecting American policy at home and abroad, the GOP nominates Dwight Eisenhower for President. Eisenhower has been the most popular man in America since the invasion of Normandy and both parties have tried to recruit him to be their standard bearer. Irving Berlin writes a campaign song reflecting one of the most famous electoral slogans in history: “I Like Ike.”

Eisenhower wins in a landslide with more than fifty-five percent of the popular vote and 442 electoral votes. He is reelected with 57 percent of the popular vote and 457 electoral votes.

Historians and the media have wanted the America and the world to believe that driving force for the electorate are policy issues that affect them and candidates that best reflect these issues. The cynical part of me has always believes that’s just not true for most voters.

I truly believe that most voters choose candidates who they either like in some way or who reflects a positive attitude. The fact that in the twentieth century the most significant electoral landslides have been for the candidate who is either more likable or reflects a positive message bears that out. It would also explain the LBJ landslide in 1964 and the Nixon was in 1972; Goldwater was considered frightening and campaigned as a jeremiad; McGovern was considered a radical even by his own party.

So why wouldn’t voters want to elect a candidate who was not only immensely affable and likeable but familiar? Why wouldn’t voters flock to a candidate whose attitude was positive? In 1984, the theme of Reagan’s campaign was ‘It’s Morning Again in America’, which told them everything was finally getting better and things would stay that way. It might not have been true, but based on the numbers, it was clearly a message that voters responded too.

And why are progressives so upset about that as an idea? Need I remind them that in 2008 they celebrated a candidate whose message was ‘Yes We Can’ and whose campaign slogan was simply ‘Hope’. That didn’t have quite the electoral landslide as before but Barack Obama did manage to get 365 electoral votes. Kind of makes you think that optimism and endless cheerfulness is a strategy that gets you elected. Why is that being cheerful and pitching a message of optimism is something that is only believable when Democrats do it but when a Republican does it, it’s clear another false flag? Speaking strictly for myself, I’m now at the point in my life where I’d prefer a campaign where both sides don’t endlessly use variations of ‘the battle for the soul of the republic’ or “the other side will completely destroy you.” Reagan’s reelection campaign is arguably the last truly positive campaign theme in political history and it was clearly the most successful. I would love to have one candidate on either side run a campaign this way.

But of course optimism is completely the 20^th century. Now the only argument either party has is some variation of the other side must never come back into power. That’s the other reason Reagan could never be elected today. I imagine the right would come up with a variation of “we don’t like these Hollywood types” and “how dare you reach across the aisle.”  The Democratic party had control of the House throughout Reagan’s Presidency and the Senate in much of it. These days the left would not have been happy unless Tip O’Neill (Speaker during the early stages of the Reagan Presidency) or Robert Byrd (Senate Minority leader after 1981) had not called a press conference in their first year and said: “Our first legislative goal is to make Ronald Reagan a one-term President” and spent every day of the legislative session excoriating the Republicans and everything he stood for on the House and Senate floor where the newly installed TV cameras were.

One of the jokes so many Democrats made in the 1980s about Reagan was: “Everyone you know hates him. Everyone you don’t know loves him.” That’s the thing the left is never going to accept: that the circle that they traveled in was apparently much smaller than they would admit.

In my first official article on the series, I will deal with Reagan’s first attempt at the Presidency in 1968: how he delayed his possibility of a run until it was too late, how his fight for the nomination could very well have been won – and how it is likely if he had gotten the Republican nomination for President in 1968, his ambitions for national office could have collapsed right then.