1. No, Putin is not tall, charming, handsome, and linguistically gifted. He is 5’5, ugly, socially awkward, speaks very little English, and his Russian vocabulary is that of a lower-level small-time gang member.
2. No, there is no evidence that Putin killed a mujahid in Afghanistan with his bare hands. He wasn’t even in Afghanistan.
3. Yes, Putin is divorced and it is also rumored that he secretly married his long-time mistress and the mother of his two children Alina Kabaeva.
4. Yes, there is heavy persecution of gay people in Russia but they are fighting for their rights on their own, without any noticeable help from American activists.
5. Yes, Putin has been accused (by some quite reliable people) of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia as a pretext to starting the second war against Chechnya.
6. Yes, it is true that an opera house in Moscow was taken over by Chechen terrorists and Putin gave orders to gas everybody in the building, including hundreds of civilian hostages.
Clarissa's Blog 
Something is wrong with number 3…
LikeLike
The divorce is a fact but the secret second marriage is a rumor.
LikeLike
I meant this: “the mother of his two children Alina Kabaeva”
LikeLike
Of course the inaccuracies are less about Putin than about American tv conventions.
A big part of the population has never moved past the Henry James model of naive Americans being corrupted by cosmopolitan and decadent Europeans.
A foreign leader has to be depicted as having flawless English so they can dispense with the awkward real life presence of interpreters and/or the real kinds of language difficulties you get even with very fluent people.
It’s also why I dislike it when American TV tries to “internationalize” storylines or casts. They always get it hopelessly and hilariously wrong (the depiction of Americans in tv shows and movies from other countries is just as bad of course).
The whole Chinese business in season II of House of Cards was the major reason I liked it a little less than season one (despite some interesting stuff going on). A major Russian presence in season III would be a major drag* and get in the way of what I like about the show – the portrayal of domestic politics and American political archetypes (of which Frank Underwood is one).
*a realistic portrayal of Russians/Russian politics would be awesome but there’s no way that that would ever appear in any American cultural product.
LikeLike
I’m afraid you won’t like this season. No spoilers but the focus really shifts away from the American political process. The season is about something very different.
LikeLike
A big part of the population has never moved past the Henry James model of naive Americans being corrupted by cosmopolitan and decadent Europeans.
That explains why every single villain in a period piece has a British accent.
Cliff, I’m in the middle of season 2 right now. It’s ludicrous that two multilingual billionaires who aren’t depicted as naifs can’t figure out that Frank Underwood is a liar or a sociopath. He can’t be the first liar or sociopath they’ve come across. They could easily have an entire office devoted to intel as a matter of course, and Frank has one dude. Nobody uses their cell phone to record anything? Why is every single one of Frank’s antagonists cartoonishly stupid in the same ways?
LikeLike
I just don’t pay attention to much to that kind of technical detail and concentrate more on the … interpersonal aspects.
And I didn’t interpret the action as them not understanding what he was. It was more that they couldn’t go around him to get what they wanted and so they had to deal with him.
They thought of him like a corrupt customs official. They may despise him but they couldn’t get their stuff without dealing with him.
Where the Chinese guy (and Raymond Tusk) erred was in assuming that Frank was small time corrupt and Frank basically isn’t corrupt in any classical sense. He was playing a different game than they were and he knew it and they didn’t and that’s why they lost.
Also, it kind of amazes me that some people apparently thought Frank’s main rival in the second season was the President when it was clearly Tusk. The president is sort of collateral damage.
LikeLike
They thought of him like a corrupt customs official. They may despise him but they couldn’t get their stuff without dealing with him….Where the Chinese guy (and Raymond Tusk) erred was in assuming that Frank was small time corrupt and Frank basically isn’t corrupt in any classical sense.
They should have figured out much earlier given their resources, prior relationships, and written characters.
The president is a world class ninny, but also supposedly there was trust built up prior to the series’ beginning. He’s just blinking while everything Frank touches “magically” turns to shit. The billionaires, otoh, have no reason to have that initial trust or to make the same assumptions. I’m at the point where Tusk asks point blank about the Secretary of State nomination. Claire is a master of subtlety in comparison. :p
LikeLike