Global Cop Rock

FX’s ‘Over There’ is a cinema verité war drama from legendary television producer Steven Bochco, who we have to thank for such sacred American time-wasters as Hill Street Blues and Doogie Howser, MD. This new series about the Iraq conflict is supposed to be extra captivating, because of unique twists of modern warfare.

You know the drill. Prozac-laden lady soldiers in Mosul have their limbs blown off by IEDs while exchanging poignant text messages with their gay teenage offspring back home. The plots are drawn from a grab bag of what the writers (inevitably white people in Burbank or Connecticut) see as “issues”. And the story is told, of course, with lots of confusing, handheld camera shots.

So of course the right wing press gets wind of this – and hackles are raised. I caught a few moments of Bochco being subjected to Fox’s O’Reilly – who scolded him about how Hollywood better not do its usual number on the military, and make them out to be vicious, barking morons – or victims of the horror. So today, on cue, the right side of the ‘sphere is abuzz with the fact that those Liberal Hollywood jerks have indeed done it again, by screwing up the true nature of the military in combat.

(Not everyone agrees, of course. Nutter extraordinaire Jason Raimundo at Antiwar.com sees the whole thing as jingoistic propaganda. But then again, the White House could issue a statement asserting that “waffles are delicious” and ole J.R. would spray on for several heavily-linked pages about how waffles are an essentially fascist construct.)

One day, I hope, the honest stories will emerge from this conflict - long after the roar of partisan argument has lost it's brutal edge.