Putin's Revenge on America

Frontline will be running a two-part documentary “Putin’s Revenge,” that will debut on PBS member stations on two consecutive Wednesdays, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, at 10 p.m.  The program will look not only at Putin's rise to power in Russia - he is a former KGB operative - and his long simmering hatred towards the United States.  It also looks at Putin's plan to use cyber-warfare against his international foes, a list that has America at the top followed by other western nations, with resentments that stretch all the way back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush.  With American democracy in disarray and civil discourse trending downward even as Donald Trump - Putin's favored presidential candidate - strives to roil the western alliances, Putin must be smiling.  As American retrenches, Russia and China move into the void. All of these events, of course, are contrary to the interest of America and its citizens - even those embracing Trumps calls to racism and bigotry - and make up part of Putin's revenge on America.  A piece in Salon looks at the program and the message Americans need to hear.  Here are article excerpts:

Outwardly the purpose of “Putin’s Revenge” is to walk viewers through the political rise of Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin, which the documentary dutifully does by building its narrative around interviews with Russian journalists and dissidents as well as expert contributions from journalists and biographers covering Putin for such publications as The Atlantic and the New York Times.

But Kirk and his co-writer Mike Wiser inform their biographical map by filtering Putin’s hardline autocratic methods through a psychological profile that draws more than a few parallels — Trump. Putin’s history as a former KGB officer is as common knowledge as that photo of him riding a horse shirtless.

Diluted into a meme long ago, that photo is a small part of a long campaign that began with Boris Yeltsin unwisely handing the presidency over to him in 1999. In part one of “Putin’s Revenge,” which airs Wednesday, Kirk and Wiser expediently trace his campaign to consolidate power to the opening days of what was initially his interim leadership, when he sold himself as a reform and a democrat — with the help of his public relations coach.

Even then, a former Putin advisor tells the interviewer, Putin understood that “everything could be manipulated. Any kind of press, any TV program is all about manipulation. It was decided what TV channels would show what news.”

Viewers who have been keeping up with current events are likely familiar with much of this timeline, starting with demolishing of independently run television studios and Putin’s move to bring broadcast media under government control.

That in itself is telling, as is the familiarity of exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen and opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, whose claim to fame among American viewers is that he survived two assassination attempts by poisoning. Gessen and Kara-Murza have appeared on a number of American news programs as well as night-time talk shows such as “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “The Daily Show.”

But as “Putin’s Revenge” spells out, they are guest stars in a reality show produced by a man obsessed with image and pathologically concerned about how the world sees him. If the similarity to our thin-skinned president is alarming, it should be.

Kirk and Wiser expand upon this idea in the second half, which frames Putin’s animosity toward the united states as a product of a resentment over a lifetime’s worth of perceived humiliations. The title’s “Revenge” refers to his seething over the actions of a number of American presidents, dating back to George H.W. Bush’s celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall (when a young Putin was a counter-intelligence agent stationed in Dresden, Germany, which Gessen refers to as “a backwater”).

From there, many moments in recent history were seen by Putin as one slight upon another. Bush’s post- 9/11 and the subsequent topping of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as well as uprisings brewing in former Soviet countries were seen as existential threats. As he centralized power, restoring Joseph Stalin’s national anthem with new words in the process, his quest to make Russia great again became just as much about elevating his standing in the world and deteriorating America’s.

By innovating tactics in cyber warfare and enabling the viral spreading of misinformation via social media, “Putin’s Revenge” posits that Russian interference with American democracy was only a matter of time. Clinton, the latest in a line of old foes, had a questionable reputation among America’s electorate that made her a ripe target. The media’s obsession with the headline-grabbing salaciousness of Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape drowned out the government’s warning about the hack in October — a warning handled and presented with insufficient urgency, Kirk and Wiser point out.

Frontline’s consistently fulfills its purpose of lining up recent news with history to put current events in a context that’s simple to comprehend. And I suppose “Putin’s Revenge” would be chilling if we weren’t already drowning in apprehensiveness over the dangerous ignorance and instability of our own president, a handy gift to Putin whose thoughtless words enabled and encouraged hackers to attack and exploit our cultural divisions.

“Putin’s Revenge” paints Putin as a spiteful malevolence to sharpen the warning of what we could be facing in the coming campaign cycle. But it also arrives at time when Western media is questioning whether we’re assigning too much power to Putin, as the world’s attention starts to turn toward Russia’s upcoming presidential election.

The only Kremlin- approved challenger so far is a reality TV star and former Russian Playboy model, the daughter of a deceased former St. Petersburg mayor who was one of Putin’s early allies. Everybody understands that election is a sham, and unless Putin somehow decides to relinquish power, he’ll become the second longest-ruler in Moscow, outdone only by Joseph Stalin’s 29 years in power.

Life After Downton Abbey

"Lady Mary" who bears an great resemblance to my late sister

Enough of politics for the moment!  The husband and I are huge fans of Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece Theater series that ended earlier this year.  In fact, one of the items being debated is whether we do another trip to Paris (one of our wealthy widow travel mates from the 2015 trip wants to go back) or, instead go to Great Britain and see London and, of course, make a pilgrimage to Highclere Castle, where much of Downton Abbey was filmed.  The verdict is still out, but my vote s for Great Britain since the husband has never been.  Both our widowed friend and I have been - I traveled to London in my in-house counsel days and stayed at hotels where we'd never think to stay. But I digress from the subject of this post, a piece in Vanity Fair where Downton creator, Julian Fellowes has kindly looked into his Downton Abbey crystal ball and offered fans a glimpse into several characters’ futures.  Here are highlights:

This past March, Downton Abbey ended its television run with the Love Actually of series finales—a joyously light-hearted affair for most characters involved, especially the long-tortured Lady Edith, who closed out the show by finally locking down a man, a better title than her sister, and a cushy career. (Respect.) Since the finale aired, there have been rumors that the ensemble cast might re-unite for a big-screen spin-off. (God knows at least one butler would welcome the work.) But in the event that a spin-off film never happens, series creator Julian Fellowes has kindly looked into his Downton Abbey crystal ball and offered fans a glimpse into several characters’ futures.

Charitably, Fellowes shares the fate of Lady Mary, the snooty protagonist who closed out the series with a shock twist: she has a heart. The character demonstrated as much by re-uniting Lady Edith with Bertie, and then actually refraining from plundering their wedding day with news that she is expecting a second child. Well, in an interview with Deadline, Fellowes forecasts that Mary’s business acumen will help keep the Crawley estate afloat, now that she’s taken over the business reins from her bumbling father.

“My own belief is that Mary, whether you like her or dislike her, is a hard worker, and she’s practical,” Fellowes explains. “I think she will employ the kind of advice that she needs [to manage the estate]. She would probably have opened the house to the public in the 1960s, as so many of them did, and she’d have retreated to a wing, and maybe only occupied the whole house during the winters.” (Coincidentally, this is the same strategy Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, the son of the Earl of Shaftesbury, used to save his family’s estate—a story chronicled in a recent issue of Vanity Fair.)

As for the rest of the family and staff—Fellowes does not think they strayed far, and that future generations would still be inhabiting the same Yorkshire pile.

“My own belief is the Crawleys would still be there [in Downton Abbey], just as the Carnarvons are today [in the real Highclere Castle, where Downton was filmed],” says Fellowes. “George [Mary’s son] would have gone to the Second World War, and of course the fear is that he would be killed. We know that Mary is pregnant, so there’s going to be another child. As for the title, I don’t know where it would go beyond George, but let’s hope he gets through the war and has children of his own.”

Although Fellowes does not offer the fates of the other characters, he does offer up another great trivia note by revealing the inspiration behind Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess.

“One thing I very much enjoyed about Violet was that I had, in creating her, touched on an iconic figure of British families,” explains Fellowes. “There was a whole generation of women like Violet. My theory is that, when the men went off to war, the women had to keep the show on the road back home, and they did. As a result, during the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were these incredibly frightening matriarchs in all sorts of family situations, that everyone was half terrified of and half loved.”

“I modeled her on my grandfather’s older sister,” Fellowes continues. “And the thing about those women is that they were as tough on themselves as they were on everyone else, which is why you forgave them. They weren’t selfish in that way; they just had these incredibly high standards that everyone had to meet.”

Fellowes has previously said that he is keeping his fingers crossed for a film spin-off, so that audiences can re-unite with their beloved characters.

“I hope there will be a film,” Fellowes told IndieWire several months back. “I’d structure a narrative with lots of things happening, but we would need a kind of unity to make a feature, which is a challenge for me. 

There was much to like about the series and, as a British and Russian history major, I loved the historical detail that showed the societal transition from 1912 to 1926.  World War I set in motion so much more than just the crumbling of empires- i.e., Russian, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman - and monarchies.  Society went through its own revolution and made a stark change from the 19th century Edwardian society. 

"Downton Abbey" Breaks Ratings Records

I will make admission: the boyfriend and I are Downton Abbey addicts and had bought tickets to a Downton Abbey costume fundraiser for the our local PBS station but for the event being rescheduled due to bad weather last October (it was rescheduled to the day we sailed on our cruise last October).  As a history major with an emphasis in British and Russian history, the boyfriend teases me that I am an encyclopedia on trivia as we watch the show.  Happily, the series is doing well and the last season set new records for PBS, a constant target of anti-arts funding Republicans.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the show's success.  Here are excerpts:

24 million viewers tuned in to watch the third season of Downton Abbey.

Just think about that for a second: 24 million viewers. In an age of increasingly fragmented television viewing, those numbers are even more staggering when you compare those figures next to say, a recent episode of NBC's Smash, which garnered roughly a tenth of that audience. Those numbers are huge for broadcast and cable, but considering that they're associated with a costume drama airing on a public broadcaster, even the Dowager Countess might choke on her tea upon seeing them.

In fact, Season 3 of Downton Abbey, which wrapped up its run last month, broke all records among households, according to finalized national ratings obtained from PBS, making Downton the highest-rated PBS drama of all time.

The third season of the British costume drama—which airs Stateside as part of Masterpiece Classic—had a season average rating of 7.7 and an average audience of 11.5 million across the seven week run. Compared to the second season, those ratings are up a stunning 64 and 65 percent respectively.

In fact, the controversial third season finale of Downton, which aired on February 17, was the highest-rated show on any network that night, posting a 8.1 national rating and an average audience of 12.3 million, numbers that placed it well above any other show on broadcast or cable that evening.

As for whether the future ratings of Season 4 of Downton Abbey will be influenced by the departure of Dan Stevens (and the death of Matthew Crawley), Eaton was decidedly upbeat. "I think there's still plenty of romance and intrigue to go around in Season 4,” she wrote. “All of Downton springs from the fertile imagination of Julian Fellowes, and he is in fine writing fettle."

Having missed the fundraiser last October, I may just wear my Downton Abbey attire to the Equality Virginia Commonwealth Dinner on April 6th.