High life
Critical viewing
Taki
endy Cope is one lucky girl. Had she been confined to her bed in New York — as poor Taki was — she, too, would have come down with pleurisy, if that is all I'm suffering from after watching the kind of bullshit I have been all week.
My temperature began climbing as ABC put on a mini-series based on Shirley Maclaine's psychic exploration of her past lives, among them a suicide victim from Atlantis, an Egyptian concubine, and some other roles too ghastly to mention in an elegant publication. Maclaine's spiritual guide is a woman by the name of J.Z. Knight, who claims that she becomes Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old wise man from the lost island of Atlantis.
Ramtha has a lot of followers in Holly- wood, the land of phonies, almost as many followers, in fact, as she, or he, has con- tributors. Believers flock to hear Ramtha at $400 each, or $1,500 for weekend sessions. Ramtha makes around $200,000 a shot, which proves to me that anyone who does not make it in this country should be shot for sheer stupidity (and I will lead the way to the firing squad).
It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to discover the reasons why Ramtha's spirit asks followers to invest in businesses that profit Knight, but I would like to know what the honchos at ABC were thinking of when they put on five hours of such drivel. Watching Maclaine pretend she was re- incarnated was like seeing Jeff go on the wagon. Ludicrous, unnatural, and boring.
Not to be outdone, CBS, the network that makes the New York Times seem patriotic by comparison, came up with a two-hour, made-for-TV movie about a Catholic priest's love affair with a widow. Nice. Needless to say, it enraged a reli- gious group who called the show anti- Catholic and who picketed CBS offices in Chicago. The group was right. The show was anti-Catholic, anti-Christian really, and it was in worse taste than usual. A man called Schweitzer spoke on behalf of CBS and denied that the insult was intentional but, as we all know, Schweitzer would, wouldn't he?
The third network, NBC, also tried its best to insult the great American public's taste and intelligence, and did it successful- ly by bringing Oliver Tambo into our living-rooms, and in living colour to boot. Tambo is the man who defends the use of the necklace against anyone who doesn't agree with his politics of violence against innocents, women and children. He is also the nominal head of the criminal terrorist group, the African National Congress. When I saw him meeting the American Secretary of State, I had an idea — and sat right up and wrote it down, and if there's any justice I should make a small fortune from it. It is a mini-series called A Necklace for Tambo, by Taki, and perhaps some brave Afrikaner might get an idea or two from it.
The best, however, is yet to come. The priests, mind you have already started, and leading them are those nice people who run over pedestrians with impunity, park for free, and have even been known to rape and get away with it — the diplomats in the UN.
It seems that yet another mini-series, Amerika, is about to be shown, but this one is not the type of movie the New York Times, or the UN, are used to seeing and approving. Amerika depicts the United States ten years after a Soviet takeover. No sooner was the mini-series announced than every 'peace' group this side of Moscow began to demonstrate. Among the most vociferous is one Jeff Cohen, the self- described head of a 'progressive' media watchdog group. But again, as some of us know, Cohen would, wouldn't he?
The critics of the show charge that the portrayal of the Soviets is too harsh, and that it will needlessly aggravate them. Perhaps, says the one with pleurisy, but the protesters protest with forked tongues. This is the first film to show the Russkies the way they really are or — better yet the way the Berliners in '53, the Hunga- rians in '56, the Czechs in '68, and the Afghans in '79 know them to be. Just because the film is not totally anti- American and anti-West it seems to have scared our modern-day tycoons, too. The Big Lasagne, Lee Iacocca, was the first to fold. As chairman of Chrysler Corpora- tion, he pulled the $5 million sponsorship bf the show, claiming the subject to be too controversial. As some of us pasta lovers know, he would, wouldn't he?
Bravo, Iacocca. You showed the kind of spirit that carried the day for Italy against the Greeks during the second world war. I'll remember your courage the next time need a car.
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