TV REVIEW : America--Through a Rosy Lens

Make no mistake about it, Ben Wattenberg is one man seriously in love with America.

And, like many lovers, the social-political commentator is looking at the real world with rose-colored glasses. (One of his past books is “The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong.”) His opener for PBS’ “Trends in the Nineties” series is titled with religious flourish, “The First Universal Nation” and combines a sober, progressive view of immigration with a cheerleading attitude toward the global dominance of American pop culture.

It airs Sunday, 3 p.m. on KPBS Channel 15; Monday, 8 p.m., KCET Channel 28.

Wattenberg’s repeated (and repeated) thesis is that the United States contains and reflects an international universalism because of three key factors: A historical influx of immigrants; intermarriage across ethnic groups breaking down race barriers; and a pop culture produced by this mix that transcends borders and languages. The result, for Wattenberg, is a kind of second wave of Pax Americana, replacing NATO and the Cold War with Madonna and The Arnold.

In fact, Wattenberg might have framed his whole show around Arnold Schwarzenegger, who emigrated from Austria to the United States, married into the Kennedy clan (the model here of the formerly “pure” family turning multicultural) and is now making the definitive globally popular action movies. Wattenberg views all of this as a national strength, and a kind of gift to the world.

But “The First Universal Nation” is gravely lacking a real critical overview. It intrigues with bar graphs tracking every kind of trend from U.S. ethnic makeup to European moviegoing habits, but virtually ignores crises that might muddy the bright picture. Racial disharmony and spite for recent emigres helped spread the flames in South Los Angeles weeks ago (and after this report was completed). And, the political rancor in California over illegal immigration is only getting noisier, not quieter.

Wattenberg falls shortest, though, in the pop culture department. A staunch free market advocate, he presumes that because American movies utterly dominate worldwide box office, they must be good. Or, at least, they are good purveyors of American values. But the complaints of Europeans, such as French producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, that the swamp of Hollywood product is drowning out the work of international film artists, aren’t mere whinings. If this new Pax Americana means the killing off of other countries’ film industries, we might begin to call it Pox Americana instead.