Donald Trump! So all-powerful that he can infect the minds of liberals 24/7. Much as they try, they just can't stop thinking about him.
A case in point is poor Jeffrey Toobin. He wrote a review of The Americans in the April 2 New Yorker that took place in a time frame of no later than a quarter century ago. Yet guess who came seeping into the review by the second paragraph? Toobin delivered what sounded like a normal review in the first paragraph until you-know-who popped up right after that.
So let us join Jeffrey in that first review paragraph before the deranged obsession set in right after that:
Even the weather was starting to turn Russian in Washington last week, as the creators and cast of “The Americans” rolled into town to celebrate the launch of the show’s final season on FX. When the series, a period piece about a family of spies from the Soviet Union living under deep cover as ordinary suburbanites, premièred, five years ago, it had the cheery glow of the eighties—the cars were boxy, the computers clunky, and it was always morning in America. “The computers are so old that we can’t get any of them to work anymore,” Matthew Rhys, who stars as the husband, Philip Jennings, said during a reception at the Newseum. “Anything you see on the screens is put on during post-production.”
Very good, Jeffrey. You went one whole paragraph sounding actually normal. We are so proud of you. Unfortunately it was too much to expect that he has been cured since he suffered a quick relapse by the second paragraph:
The real surprise from “The Americans” has been how topical the show turned out to be, notwithstanding its primitive mobile phones and references to Robert Bork’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Five years ago, the notion of Russians trying to dictate what goes on in Washington looked merely quaint. Joe Weisberg, the creator of the series (and a former C.I.A. operative), insists that he wasn’t anticipating the controversies surrounding the 2016 election when he came up with the idea for the show. (The story is loosely based on several families of Soviet sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010 after having lived in the United States for many years.)
Give me that old time obsession! Give me that old time obsession! And that old time obsession kicks into higher gear by the third paragraph:
“The idea behind the series was to look at the whole concept of ‘the enemy,’ ” Weisberg said at the première. “Let’s look at the worst of them—the K.G.B.—and humanize them. That depended on the show taking place in a time removed from the thick of the Cold War. The fact that the Cold War is back actually complicates the story for us. People ask us how we were so prescient. We weren’t prescient. We were the opposite of prescient.” As Joel Fields, who is a co-showrunner with Weisberg, put it, “There was a point when the world seemed to be moving toward unity and understanding after the Cold War. Everyone was going to join in the shared pursuit of the capitalist ideal. That was the perspective when we started.” But now, the scale of the current scandals engulfing the Trump administration dwarfs the individual efforts of the Jennings family. “Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube make Philip and Elizabeth look small-time,” Fields said.
Yes, all roads lead back to...Trump. At least in Toobin's mind.
