Homeland

In its early seasons, the Showtime series, Homeland, was critically acclaimed. It provided an unvarnished view of CIA operations (with all their warts) and honestly depicted the clear and present threat of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East and worldwide. The writers were brave, penning plot lines that were complex and often unpleasant. Their writing was not politically correct.

The series was criticized by the pro-Hezballah advocacy group, CAIR, for encouraging "Islamophobia," (absolute nonsense!) but the producers held their ground. That was then.

This is now. Although I can't know for sure, my best bet is that the show's writers have been replaced by a more "evolved" crew. Written and filmed before last year's election, the writers sort of assumed a different election result and therefore a different political viewpoint emanating from Washington. They tailored this season's story line to be sure it was P.C., to define the correct bad guys (from the left-wing point of view), and to suggest that a continuation the past administration's disastrous soft power approach is the only way forward.

In this year's Homeland story line, a female president-elect, we'll call her "Hillary," is grappling with her desire to make nicey-nice with Iran, reign in the CIA and the U.S. military, and otherwise peacefully control the unpleasantness in the Middle East. She's anti-interventionist, very suspicious of the military and our intelligence services, hard-nosed (of course), and a true leader (double of course). The story revolves around a evil CIA-Israeli plot to convince "Hillary" that Iran is violating her ptedecessor's Iran deal. Of course, Iran is pure as the wind-driven snow and would never violate any deal—ever! BTW, there no mention in the script of the tens of billions of dollars that her predecessor gave to the Iranians to buy weapons and foment Islamic terrorism around the globe, but that's inconvenient information for both the story's "Hillary" and the screen writers.

The show's female lead, Cary Matheson, is ex-CIA operative who (in the last season) thwarted a vicious Islamic terrorist attack in Berlin. The attack was intended to use WMD nerve gas to kill thousands. But now Cary inexplicably has decided to join an activist group in New York. The group defends American Muslims from unfair persecution (this is, after all, Hollywood). Within the CIA Cary has an ex-colleague, Sol Berenson, a complex character who believes that the Iran deal is being upheld by Iran (in the real world, I suspect he would be the only person at Langley who believes this, but this is Hollywood, where Iran never cheats or lies and is just misunderstood when its leaders chant "Death To America).

The plot thickens when the Israeli intelligence service (the Hollywood bad guy to Iran's misunderstood regime) plots with a truly sinister CIA operative, Dar Dahl, to convince "Hillary" that Iran is developing nuclear weapons in violation of the deal. Of course, in the fevered minds of the Hollywood writers who have hijacked Homeland, Iran would never do this because Barack Obama and John Kerry told us they wouldn't. So evil are the CIA and the Israelis that they stage a terrorist attack in NYC that kills dozens—all to convince Hillary that she must be more aggressive toward Iran.

I could go on, but nausea would follow.

Homeland has made the transition from a thoughtful, textured treatment of the real-world challenges Western intelligence services face to formulaic, grossly biased, intelligence-insulting Hollywood garbage.

Too bad.