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TV tonight: Jeff Ashton on HLN; winter finale on ‘The Closer’; Monday Night Football

Jeff Ashton spoke at the Orlando Public Library last month about his book 'Imperfect Justice.' Photo credit: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

The day after Christmas offers a surprisingly heavy menu of new programming.

The night’s most-watched program is likely to be ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” with the Atlanta Falcons playing the New Orleans Saints at 8:30.

“The Closer” offers its winter finale at 9 on TNT, and the focus is on the federal lawsuit against Brenda (Kyra Sedgwick) over Turell Baylor’s death. The drama offers the Baylor family lawyer (Curtis Armstrong) and Brenda’s lawyer (Mark Pellegrino) having a showdown in court. “The Closer” will be back in the summer to conclude its seven-season run.

Jacqueline Bisset is back for the season finale of “Rizzoli & Isles” at 10 on TNT. Our heroines investigate a warehouse fire that killed a firefighter.

Regis Philbin will be Brian Williams guest on “Rock Center” at 10 on NBC. In one report, Sara James tells the unusual story of how a sleeping pill was used to wake up a person in a vegetative state.

On the game-show front, there are new episodes of “Who’s Still Standing?” at 8 on NBC and ”You Deserve It” at 9 on ABC. It’s the season finale for the latter. “The Bachelor” will return next week.

The Casey Anthony trial will come in for more scrutiny on HLN “Prime News.” Former prosecutor Jeff Ashton will be Vinnie Politan’s guest on the program at 6 p.m. today and Tuesday. Ashton will have another chance to promote his best-selling book, “Imperfect Justice,” about the Anthony trial.

“Prime News” is doing a best-of trial recap as the year winds down, an HLN spokeswoman said. In July, Anthony was acquitted of murder in the 2008 death of her daughter, Caylee. She is serving a year’s probation somewhere in Florida for check fraud.

Bob Schieffer: How heaven is like Orlando airport

Bob Schieffer's commentaries connect with viewers of 'Face the Nation.' Photo credit: Craig Blankenhorn/CBS

CBS’ Bob Schieffer supplied a wonderful Christmas morning commentary today. His inspiration? Waiting on a plane at the Orlando airport, and I’m always looking for the local angles.

The commentary reflected Schieffer’s down-to-earth style, which has connected with viewers for decades. His style has bolstered “Face the Nation,” which will expand to an hour next year.

In concluding “Face the Nation” this morning, Schieffer said he dreamed that heaven’s gate was a lot like boarding a plane (the Orlando connection).

He recounted the dream: “The pearly gates had two lanes, first class to the left, everyone else on the right. In that first-class lane, some I hadn’t seen before … some downright poor, like the widow who gave her last might to one who needed it more. Oh, they waved her right through the first-class door with a man who turned the other cheek and the woman who forgave a thief and the fellow who stooped to help a child who had no food to eat. I didn’t see a bold-faced name or those that hunger after fame, but the gatekeeper knew all their faces. He was on a first-name basis with those he waved through heaven’s door.”

And Schieffer added: “The second line was mighty long, cheaters, schemers, lying lovers, those who write down the faults of others … A creep, a con, an operator with BlackBerry set on vibrator. He’s waiting now to get the call to find out if it is his fate to be stuck forever outside the gate. Only He who rules the streets of gold knows for sure, but I’ve been told they’re all dead right to have those fears. Cause I hear their line hasn’t moved in years.”

Schieffer concluded with his ability to talk directly to viewers: “Do you think they’ll know your name up there in heaven? Do you think you’ll be a big celebrity? Will you be a VIP or have to show I.D.? Do you think they’ll know your name way up there?”

China Beat On Break

Happy holidays to all our readers and contributors from the China Beat editorial team. We’ll be taking a short holiday break, returning with new content on January 10. We wish all the China Beatniks out there a happy and healthy 2012—thank you for another year of enthusiastic support for the site!

This week: Kennedy Center Honors, in top form, salute Meryl Streep, Neil Diamond, Barbara Cook

Meryl Streep appreciates the kudos at the Kennedy Center Honors. Yo-Yo Ma, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama are at her right. Photo credit: John Paul Filo/CBS

Merry Christmas!

Your best TV present this week arrives at 9 p.m. Tuesday when CBS presents the latest edition of the Kennedy Center Honors.

The event, taped Dec. 4, is another spectacular variety special. But even by the Kennedy Center’s high standards, this one is exceptional.

The honorees are saluted in this order: actress Meryl Streep, jazz musician Sonny Rollins, singer-actress Barbara Cook, singer Neil Diamond and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Each segment features tributes in word, on film and in music.

There are funny comments from Tracey Ullman, Robert De Niro and Kevin Kline about Streep; from Bill Cosby about Rollins; and from John Lithgow about Diamond. But the night’s most amusing moments belong to Stephen Colbert, who honors his friend Ma by sending up a famous musical legend.

Anne Hathaway throws herself into singing 'She's Me Pal' for Streep. Photo credit: Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS

Then there’s all that music. Anne Hathaway shows off her fine voice with a lusty rendition of “She’s Me Pal” for Streep. Jennifer Nettles delivers a touching “Hello” in the Diamond tribute, and Smokey Robinson leads a rousing “Sweet Caroline” that enlists host Caroline Kennedy.

For Rollins, a beautiful version of “In a Sentimental Mood” features pianist Herbie Hancock, trumpeter Roy Hargrove and guitarist Jim Hall. The Ma tribute reflects his interest in many musical styles beyond classical and concludes with James Taylor on ”Here Comes the Sun.”

But the Barbara Cook tribute, falling in the middle of the show, is the evening’s peak. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick talk about Cook’s legendary career. Cook was the original Marian the Librarian in “The Music Man” on Broadway, and I hope this tribute makes her better known to a wider audience.

Some of Broadway’s best singers salute Cook in a sensational medley. Laura Osnes starts with “This is All Very New to Me.” Rebecca Luker and Kelli O’Hara together deliver “Will I Ever Tell You” and “Will He Like Me.” Glenn Close displays her singing skill on “Losing My Mind.”

Audra McDonald sings a shimmering 'Till There Was You' to honor Barbara Cook. Photo credit: Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS

Sutton Foster struts through “Everybody Says Don’t,” and Patti LuPone rolls through “Come Rain or Come Shine” like a champ. Audra McDonald offers a gorgeous “Till There Was You,” and all the women join for a soaring “Make Our Garden Grow.”

It’s great fun to study the faces of the honorees and celebrities in the audience.

Pay special attention to Streep, who listens closely and reacts with contagious enthusiasm.

Not only is Streep the greatest actress in the world, she may be the best audience, too.

TV tonight: ‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ‘Auntie Mame’

Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer won millions of fans in 'The Sound of Music.' Photo credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

It’s a grand night for classic movies.

ABC presents “The Sound of Music,” the Oscar-winning best picture of 1965, at 7 p.m. Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and a talented cast deliver the Rodgers and Hammerstein music. They are aided by the scenery and  cinematography, which are spectacular.

NBC counters with “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which starts at 8 p.m. James Stewart plays George Bailey, who questions why he was born, and gets some startling answers in this 1946 fantasy from director Frank Capra. Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore co-star, memorably.

TCM unpacks “Meet Me in St. Louis” at 6 p.m. This glorious 1944 musical presents Judy Garland delivering “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” TCM follows that winner with “Miracle on 34th Street,” a beloved 1947 fantasy with Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn in his Oscar-winning role as Santa Claus.

Vanessa Williams takes the Scrooge role in “A Diva’s Christmas Carol,” an arresting twist on the Dickens classic. Lifetime presents the 2000 film at 10 o’clock.

NBC preempts ”Saturday Night Live” for Christmas Eve Mass from Rome at 11:30. 

While you’re waiting for Santa, you could spend time with “Auntie Mame,” which starts at midnight on TCM. Rosalind Russell had a huge hit with the 1958 movie in which she repeated her Broadway role. She could teach Santa a few things about exuberance.

Merry Christmas!

Bow Before the Portrait: Sino-North Korean Relations Enter the Kim Jong Un Era

By Adam Cathcart

The pigs were being slaughtered in the streets when the news of Kim Jong Il’s death arrived in Dachuan, a small logging village in the mountains of western Sichuan province. Over the immense and extended cacophony of the blood-letting, the retired head of the local bank explained, with a bit of apologetic joy, that the villagers were getting ready for Spring Festival, then turned back to the news from Pyongyang, shaking his head at the retrograde tendencies of China’s Korean socialist brothers.

It was a fitting juxtaposition, watching events in North Korea amid the production of reams of red pork with rich peasants in China. Meat, after all, was the sine qua non of success for Kim Il Sung and his son, both of whom proclaimed their magnanimous desire to make good on the promise of “rice with meat soup” in every pot (and a tile roof for every rural house). Yet, as even a cursory read of virtually any analysis or short trip to the North Korean border with China can attest, the battle for higher living standards—as opposed to monuments—in essentially every place outside of the DPRK’s model capital has been lost. Mao Zedong said he could do without meat, making revolution with just grain and rifles, but North Korea has ample rifles but no grain, and the revolution is dead.

Amid the welter of random, confusing, instructive, and occasionally cruel responses to Kim Jong Il’s death among Chinese, Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 has been a touchstone. This particular parallel, encouraged by Chinese state media, is significant because it implicitly holds out the hope that a market-oriented North Korean Deng Xiaoping might yet emerge out of the factions assumed to be maneuvering in Pyongyang. But North Korea is hardly exiting the “fractured rebellion” of a Cultural Revolution. The DPRK remains instead in the thrall of a persistently centralized leadership system in which Kim Il Sung and his son had purged, jailed, exiled, or killed all the advocates of possible systemic alternatives. In Andrei Lankov’s phrase, the “blade of state of state remains sharp enough to cut off its diseased parts,” and gazing at the grizzled ranks of the Pyongyang senior elite, it seems unlikely that some wholesale adoption of Chinese-style market reforms is in the offing.

The Reluctant Embrace of Kim Jong Un
On December 21, Wen Jiabao went to the North Korean embassy in Beijing, bowed to Kim Jong Il’s portrait, and said: “We believe that with the Korean Workers’ Party under the leadership of comrade Kim Jong Un, the North Korean people will certainly powerfully pass through their grief, pushing forward to new successes in socialist construction.” It was a turn of events which but a few years earlier would have been seen as unlikely. Since Kim Jong Il’s stroke in 2008, and the rumors of Kim Jong Un’s existence as a viable successor to his father in early 2009, the CCP has gone through a number of stances toward the idea, ending in the acceptance of the successor. In the aftermath of the North Korean nuclear test of May 2009, Beijing loosened its grip on journalism about the DPRK in the Chinese media, using the new latitude to serve the Party’s foreign policy purposes. Publications about the North Korean role in starting the Korean War were suddenly acceptable, and, more importantly, a number of unflattering portrayals of the “weird” Kim family began to emerge. Chinese public intellectuals like Zhu Feng and Shen Dingli speculated about rapid changes in North Korea and the CCP made clear its desire, at the very least, for North Korea to transition to a more collective leadership centered in the Korean Workers’ Party rather than in the enfeebled Kim Jong Il or his relatively unknown successor.

However, after Kim Jong Un’s formal unveiling at the September 2010 KWP Congress in Pyongyang, the discourse shifted decisively toward a more supportive line toward the “young general.” Likenesses between Chinese and North Korean political cultures were emphasized; in mass magazine portrayals, CCP scholars encouraged Kim Jong Un to “make his mark via some achievements in writing about communist theory.”

Even Kim Jong Un’s foreign experience was highlighted in Chinese media as beneficial. It seemed that in some important ways, Kim Jong Un could be used to send home the message to China’s unreceptive youth: It may be fine to spend a few years studying abroad and fall in love with Michael Jordan, but when you come home, it’s all about the Young Pioneers and Party building. More importantly, the junior Kim’s probable role in North Korean attacks on the South Korean vessel “Cheonan” in March 2010 and on Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010 was downplayed in the PRC. South Korean stories which asserted that Kim Jong Un had assumed control over North Korea’s northern border security, like most narratives focused on refugees, did not enter the public discourse in China.

The CCP’s evident nervousness about stability in North Korea, and its protective stance toward the DPRK, means that no loud public doubts about Kim Jong Un’s inexperience are presently welcome. Suggestions that the successor is incapable of leading, when allowed at all, are placed in the mouths of foreign experts like the International Crisis Group’s Daniel Pinkston, and qualified with some implication that South Korean media reports could all be false anyway.

North Korea appears to have made only a minor rhetorical concession to Chinese pressure by referring to the idea of “uniting around the Korean Workers’ Party and Comrade Kim Jong Un,” a phrase codified in the DPRK’s official response to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s initial statement of regret at Kim Jong Il’s death.

Economic and Cultural Exchanges
The legacy of Kim Jong Il’s rapid—one might almost say rushed—advancement of cooperation with China in 2010 and 2011 hangs in the balance, and the CCP will be eager for cross-border trade and tourism to resume. A rather explicit December 20 editorial in the Huanqiu Shibao, entitled “China is the Reliable Friend Upon Which North Korea Can Rely during Transition,” stated: “We suggest that as soon as it is appropriate, Chinese high-level leaders go to North Korea, where they will intimately communicate with North Korea’s new leaders at this special time that Pyongyang can send a distinct signal to the world [by taking the Chinese path].”

In the weeks prior to Kim Jong Il’s death, China had been pressing for more clarification and motion on the two new island trade zones in the Yalu River near Sinuiju. While the Chinese side has been investing an immense amount of money in construction of what is essentially a new city outside of Dandong and a large new super-highway worthy bridge to the DPRK, the North Pyong’an leadership has been everything that privately infuriates Chinese partners: uncommunicative, inaccessible, and (according to the Daily NK) suddenly purged.

Far more promising is the development at Rason, on the far northeastern edge of the Korean peninsula, where China has brought in an old Korea hand named Tian Baozhu, a Kim Il Sung University graduate and former Consul-General in Pusan, to set conditions for further Chinese investment in this highly-desired port which finally offers eastern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces access to the sea and cheaper means of shipping coal to ports like Shanghai. Rason remains a source of rumors from South Korea and the active advocates of immediate North Korean collapse, who often imply that China is not simply constructing the port but has secured it with a few thousand PLA troops. Such impressions are unlikely to slow the CCP in its push for more access and faster development of Chinese business interests, particularly in the minerals sector, in North Korea.

Chinese cultural exchanges with North Korea have been, in the DPRK context, incredibly extensive. The oft-maligned Korean Central News Agency has opened up exchanges with Xinhua, performing arts delegations tour across the Chinese mainland, and a Confucius Institute is open in Pyongyang with some 800 students. Tourism to the DPRK, another area of possible peril—seven Chinese tourists and businessmen were killed in a mysterious crash outside of Pyongyang on Thanksgiving Day—is an area where the Chinese side puts a great deal of stock and aims to develop further from even remote cities like Qiqihar and Mudanjiang. The extent to which the North Korean side remains committed to the speed and intensity of these relationships is something which the Chinese government is particularly keen to observe.

Border security on the northern frontier remains a complex and sensitive issue, as well as military-to-military relations. The fact that eight North Korean border guards were reputed to have run headlong into the Liaoning hills in late November is not to be forgotten; the fact that China was hosting the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Navy in Qingdao (of all places) from December 19-23 is another area which under normal conditions might cause strain on Sino-North Korean relations.

Kim Jong Il’s death does not alter the fundamentals of the bilateral relationship, but it does offer an opportunity to take stock of this most fraught and significant relationship. The speed and intimacy with which it continues is of interest to us all.

Adam Cathcart is Assistant Professor History at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington and the editor of SinoNK.com.