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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (37923)	4/4/2004 11:18:53 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793882

When I read this article in the "New York Times" two days ago, I couldn't believe the TV producers were being so open about slanting their entertainment shows. TV Shows Take On Bush, and Pull Few Punches By JIM RUTENBERG - nytimes.com Ranting Profs blog does a good "fisking" of them. WHERE THERE IS LIBERAL BIAS By Cori Dauber As I note in the post below, I don't like getting into the debate over whether the media has a liberal bias, if by "media" you mean "press." When we're talking about narrative, that is fictional media, I really don't think there's any debate to be had -- of course there's a liberal bias. I mean, if it's so obvious a liberal bias that even the New York Times has figured it out, it's a little hard to protest. Not that that stops several of the executive producers from trying just the same. I was particularly amused by the defense offered by the makers of the TV show Law and Order. The episode where they managed to crow bar in a discussion of WMD in Iraq was not only so forced, but what passed for a "debate" was so weak, I even mentioned it here at the time, despite the fact that I never mention fictional shows here. Just the same, they are committed to fighting the obvious. Some producers said they were simply raising important questions as part of a larger national debate. Dick Wolf, the executive producer of the troika of "Law & Order" series, said that his characters' critiques of Mr. Bush were in his programs' long tradition of equal-opportunity provocation. "Virtually everyone who lives in the lower 48 states at one time or another has been offended by `Law & Order,' " Mr. Wolf said in a statement. And, of course, the appeal to what regular readers know to be my very favorite argument of all time comes up: "Why does it have to become unpatriotic to do something that is our inherent right, which is to debate issues?" said Tom Fontana, the creator of shows like "Oz" and "Homicide." I'm sorry, who exactly made that argument or used that word to describe these shows? Why is that any criticism is always answered with "why is what I'm doing unpatriotic?" Really, since when did the words, unfair, stupid, biased, unevidenced, etc, etc, etc, all become synonyms for "unpatriotic"? Really, some of these guys need to buy a thesaurus. They are, after all, supposed to be writers. The show I'm looking forward to is this one: Mr. Fontana said he wrote a film for HBO called "Strip Search" to explore the merits of the USA Patriot Act. The film, which has not been shown yet, tracks the parallel experiences of an American woman being held for questioning by the authorities in China and a Muslim man being held for questioning in the United States, both on suspicions of terrorism. "The real question is, if it's wrong for a white American woman to be mistreated in a repressive country, is it O.K. for us to mistreat a Muslim male in this country?" he said. "I don't know the answer, but when does the humanity stop and the fear take over?" Oh yes, I'm sure their experiences are exactly parallel. The Chinese and American systems (and jails) being identical and all. Maybe you should consider the differences such as 1. we face a real threat from Islamist terrorism, while the Chinese don't face a real threat from us and 2. we have a real judicial system watching over all of this to make sure that either due process isn't violated or there's a damn good reason for it. What have the Chinese got? Oh, that's right. I don't get HBO. Damn.

To: LindyBill who wrote (37923)	4/4/2004 11:20:44 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793882

Ah, good, we've reached that wonderful land of agreeing to disagree. Again, I recommend the Coll book because much of the commission's report will go over the same ground he does. Though there's will be laden with more judgment calls. I'm still reading the library copy but I may well buy it to keep as a reference source for when the White House treated version of the commission's report finally makes it through what can only be called a redaction process with a small smirk on the face. Ah, well, just couldn't resist. Got my Ipod running; got the downstairs stereo system fixed; got my daughter a new Toshiba laptop she loves; so there's good music and better family computing in my immediate future. I'm going to be out of touch during the middle of this week, from Tuesday morning through to Thursday afternoon. Gonna hang out in NYC--tickets for a play, the new Byzantium exhibit at the Met, some serious classical music cd purchasing at Tower's down the block from Lincoln Center and a hotel room on Central Park West in that neighborhood. My wife is on spring break next week so we're spending a little vacation money.