AMERIKA : For This Critic, at Least, K Is for Kan We Send All This Koverage to Siberia?

Confessions of a TV critic who wants to stop writing about ABC’s “Amerika” but can’t. . . .

Help!

“I won’t keep you long,” a friend said on the phone Monday. “You must be busy writing about ‘Amerika.’ ”

“Are you kidding?” I snapped, indignantly. “The public is tired of hearing and reading about ‘Amerika’ and I’m tired of writing about ‘Amerika.’ A real Soviet takeover of the United States wouldn’t get this much coverage. I promise: not another word from me about this sucker!”

So here I am, writing another column about “Amerika.”

It seems impossible to stop. So much has been said and written about “Amerika” (whose fourth of seven episodes airs at 9 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) that it just has to be a big story, right? And if it’s a big story, I should be writing about it. And if I write about it, others may write about it. And if they write about it, then I’ll have to write about it again to keep pace. That’s how snowballs and big stories are made.

I didn’t attend journalism school for nothing.

The orgy of reportage on “Amerika” is classic media mania, a case of the emperor wearing no clothes, a primer on the nutty way we sometimes go about our business.

As a man protested Monday during the syndicated “Donahue” show on KNBC Channel 4: “I just want to say that this whole series, ‘Amerika,’ has been blown out of proportion.” Exploded is more like it, sending up a mushroom cloud of free publicity for ABC.

Here’s the way the process works:

Several months ago, some major newspapers began printing stories about objections to this miniseries depicting a 1997 America under Soviet rule. So far, so good. Critics on the left thought it was right-wing propaganda. Critics on the right later would label it too soft on the Kremlin. The United Nations was upset because the brutal occupation troops in “Amerika” appeared to be U.N. peacekeeping forces. And so it went.

The momentum grew. The first newspaper stories were followed by stories in other newspapers that were followed by national magazine stories that were followed by national TV stories, and then the process was repeated again and again. All of this cumulatively gave the erroneous impression that “Amerika” was being debated in every American home. Or should have been.

The essential story hadn’t grown, but the coverage had, even though the nearly 15-hour miniseries hadn’t even aired.

Soon the “Amerika” coverage took on a life of its own, to the extent that it was no longer possible to separate the coverage from the story.

This bizarre episode echoes what happens when the networks cover candidate intrigues at the Republican and Democratic conventions. On-air speculations by TV reporters are heard on the convention floor by key delegates and kingmakers, who then pass on what they heard on TV to those same TV reporters, who then repeat on the air what they heard from the delegates and the kingmakers, thus validating their own speculation.

Concerning “Amerika,” the media say to themselves: “This must be a big story because we and everyone else are covering it. So we have to keep covering it to stay abreast of the competition.” Which is exactly what the competition is saying. Hence, you end up with something like the nuclear-arms race, with the competition reacting, and then you reacting to the competition, and then the competition reacting to your reaction, or vice versa.

It’s almost unheard of for one network to air a news story about a program on another network during a critical ratings sweep month like February, for example. Yet there was CBS News on Sunday, airing a story about ABC’s “Amerika.”

Even an opposing network was sucked in.

Meanwhile, if there’s anyone whose stature in all of this has been elevated by the media this week, it’s “Amerika” star Kris Kristofferson.

What an irony. An avowed liberal, Kristofferson had been asked repeatedly by the media and others to justify his appearance in a story about Soviets enslaving the United States. Many “Amerika” critics accused him of hypocrisy.

But now, due to his appearance with other celebrities at a peace forum in the Soviet Union this week, Kristofferson has been designated by some of the media as an expert on East-West relations.

A thudding, fumbling expert, at best.

He was pathetic while inarticulately trying to defend the pro-Sandinista, anti-Nicaraguan rebel position in a satellite appearance from the Soviet Union on Monday’s “Donahue” episode devoted to “Amerika.”

He sounded like a naive Soviet apologist while being destroyed in a mini-debate with that faster-talking right-wing demagogue Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media (AIM). Even those who share Kristofferson’s politics must have shuddered to see him cast as their spokesman on national TV.

There he was again Tuesday, on the telephone from Moscow during ABC’s “Good Morning America,” being interviewed by David Hartman, who was in New York with William G. Hyland, editor of the journal Foreign Affairs.

Asked Hartman: “What do you think you’ve accomplished while you’re over there, Kris?”

Oh, puleeeeeeze. Kristofferson is an activist who speaks in bumper stickerese and a singer/songwriter/actor who happens to have a heroic role in a miniseries with political overtones. Let’s leave it--and him--at that.

So here I am, as I said, writing yet another column on “Amerika.” But this one is my last. Unequivocally. Absolutely. Bank on it. The string is out. Finis. Period.

Maybe.