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February 10, 2005
Bias on Law & Order? Never!
I see I'm not the only one to immediately pick up on last night's "Bill O'Reilly," "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law & Order.
I immediately said to my husband when it started that they were playing off of the Bill O'Reilly story. The show began with O'Reilly's character, Larry Shea spouting off some typical over the top right wing opinions, and answering a woman's question about how to protect children from bad influences on TV and the internet with "well, you can start by buying my book." Then some bookstore employees talk derisively about the contrast between his family values and his sexual harassment suit, as well as the fact that even though they live in a blue state, there are still plenty of idiots buying his book. My husband said, "That can't be O'Reilly because his opinions are nothing like that." Ha! Right. To liberals, anyone on a radio station other than NPR or Air America thinks exactly like that. Especially if they are also on the Fox News channel. Nevermind that, for instance, Bill O'Reilly and Shawn Hannity have very different views, it's all the same right wing crap to them.
Of course I have never found the fact-checking of Law & Order to be particularly good. I got very annoyed during the last season of Law & Order: CI when an overweight woman mentioned that she had rheumatoid arthritis in her knees "you know, because of my weight." Nevermind the fact that rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that mostly affects the hands and feet and has little or nothing to do with weight, whereas OSTEOarthritis is caused by the wearing away of joint cushioning and is usually worsened by weight. Two minutes on the internet would have fixed that one. I wouldn't imagine they'd be any more thorough in this case.
This is hardly the first time a "ripped from the headlines" episode has completely misrepresented a conservative person or idea.
There was that one where a person who wrote books on getting back to biblical ideals in marriage murdered his daughter in law because she wanted to get a divorce from his son. Then there was the one about the outspoken critic of homosexuality that had a gay son who was so very depressed. But the one that really annoyed me was where they took that story that came out last year about the family that had been starving their children and made it into a horrifying glimpse into the dangers of homeschooling.
Law & Order has always done controversial episodes like this, but they used to have more believable discussion between the officers and prosecutors that came pretty close to fairly debating the issue. Lately they barely even seem to try. There were only a few pathetic opinions offered up in defense of the Shea character, and they were both completely shot down. It's too bad, too, because it's always been my favorite show.
This just goes to show the fact that a lot of people really don't know anything about what conservative ideals are really about or what conservative people are really like. It's annoying, but on the other hand, ignorance is the biggest chink in their armour. I used to be a big liberal myself, until I actually started researching things.
Posted by illuminaria at February 10, 2005 02:46 PM
Comments
To clarify, I was referring mostly to their claims that the Bill-like character espouses biblical/1950's style opinion on a "Woman's Place".
Anyone who's ever listened to him knows that he espouses nothing of the sort...
Posted by: Thistledowne at February 10, 2005 05:18 PM