Infidels Paradise

Stumbled across two pieces (of course) well-worth the reads at Big Hollywood. Now, I’m NOT a big TV watcher anymore. Haven’t been for s few years now. Have Fox News on in the background most of the day, and will tune into Cold Case in first runs on Sunday nights (CBS), and in reruns on various stations. Usually I have the case solved before the end of the first half hour.

The first analogy involves an episode of CSI: Miami, in which an anti-ObamaCare businessman is demonized. Was is so odd, as Michael S. Rulle Jr. @ Big Hollywood points out in ‘CSI: Miami’ Attacks ObamaCare Apostate is the show’s writers make no effort to really “change the names to protect the real life subjects … any similarity to an actual person or event is coincidential … blah-blah-blah” we over the years have heard such shows point out:

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Not all television shows have blatant straw men capitalists cast as Beelzebub incarnate. In fact, many stay away from this topic. Although I have not done a count, there are still too many of these shows. One of the more bizarre depictions of a CEO as a “murder for profit” Satanic imp was presented in the “CSI: Miami” episode “Bad Seed” last Monday. If capitalists were really this evil, mankind would not have made it out of the stone ages, as all their customers would have been killed soon after each new advancement in technology. Of course, in these shows it is only the capitalists who are evil. Not government employees, local farmers, truck drivers, police officers, medical professionals, illegal migrant workers, distributors or really any other human being. Just owners of businesses are evil, because they care about profits. These characters are people who willfully engage in conspiratorial confiscatory practices and also play “God” by determining how many people it is okay to kill in order to sell a product and make a profit.

“Bad Seed” features a venal CEO of “Bixton Whole Foods” whose name caused me to pause the show on my DVR to check what I heard. CEO Beelzebub, in “CSI: Miami”, has the name “Jerry Mackey.” As someone who follows the health-care legislation wars pretty closely I could not believe what I heard. As you may know, the CEO of the real life company “Whole Foods” is named “John Mackey.” Mackey used to be viewed as a liberal icon, “a third way” capitalist so to speak. His employment practices conformed to all liberal-approved ways. His product offering is first class. Now, as one who does not believe in the efficacy of “organic foods” etc., I also have no problem with people who wish to spend more on their food for aesthetic or any other reasons. Whole Foods apparently serves a niche market of well-off urban and ex-urban yuppies quite well. I occasionally shop there myself, as their presentation is very good. The First Lady made quite a stir herself in support of organic foods which I chronicled in “Let Them Eat Arugula.”

But, even the real Mackey’s third way organic capitalism could not save him from attack when he came out against the Obama/Democratic approved health-care plan last August. As an individual who is economically literate, he just could not stand idly by and let these proposals be put forth uncontested. This caused his stores to be boycotted and for him to be demonized by the Democrats. It seems almost impossible that “CSI: Miami” was not purposely looking to subliminally equate their comic book Satan with the real life Whole Foods CEO. “CSI’s” Bixton Whole Foods CEO Jerry Mackey was purposely making statistical trade offs guaranteed to create unnecessary deaths – willfully permitting E-coli to be genetically inserted into corn to make it more “digestible,” while increasing the odds of creating a killer strain of bacteria.

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Then there is the continuing saga of “Law and Order”, and their growing political nastiness seeping through their episode writing. However, by Guy Benson @ Big Hollywood in his article ‘Law and Order’ Tackles Abortion finds a bit of change of leftist agenda pace in the episode’s voicing the other side of the abortion debate which is most always demonized in these liberal/left reclining and spread-eagle shows:

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It did not begin auspiciously. The opening sequence set the stage for yet another warmed-over episode wherein an abortionist is murdered, and the rest of the program consists of detectives trying to determine which anti-abortion nutter did the deed. The show’s writers usually permit one character to utter a single token pro-life line (”Just because you might disagree with abortion doesn’t justify this violence!”), while the oh-so-reasonable pro-choice characters get the last word. Having seen this template before, I almost flipped channels. It seems as though at least one of the L&O spinoff series airs a “new” abortion-doctor-murder episode every year. One wonders if more abortionists have been slain on this fictional television franchise over the past 20 years than in real life.

But last week’s episode marked a dramatic departure from the familiar, biased trope. After detective Bernard makes a few forceful pro-life points in an impromptu squad car debate with his partner, ADA Cutter jumps into the fray. He professes his pro-life views and refutes a condescending response from his pro-choice colleague (Rubirosa) by citing the “turning tide” of public opinion and mentioning that most Americans now consider themselves pro-life. Apparently Mr. Cutter’s been checking the latest Gallup stats. Rubirosa replies by pointedly referring to those who share Cutter’s views as “anti-choice,” at which point the reliably liberal District Attorney, Jack McCoy, mentions his own daughter’s change of heart on the issue. She was staunchly pro-choice, he explains, prior to seeing the image of her unborn child in an ultrasound. End of scene.

Jaw-dropping stuff.

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I will add this about my chosen TV crime show, Cold Case, there is a constant anti-conservative thread in each episode … from remarks such as “That’s a ‘Red State’, isn’t it … count me out.” remarks, to Amnesty International posters hanging on the squad room wall, to snide ‘you voted for Reagan’ remarks, to the characters off-handed remarks about guns, religions, Catholic priests, the military … and in more than one instance individual lead characters either threatening to take the law into their own hands, or getting just to the point of doing so before finally stepping back. The viewer is just supposed to assume the characters’ (and the wirters’ for that matter) political/ideological/social views are the unquestionable correct ones, and perhaps should be adopted. That a conservative criminal can and is continually stereotyped and taken out of context AND is a prime representative of the entire ‘group’ … when THAT is never permitted when it is some leftist radical who is the criminal. Personal responsibility is seldom stressed.

Unless of course, you’re GE and own the worst rated TV network today, and don’t give a rat’s ass about doing anything constructive about it to correct the bottom of the toilet position.