creators.com opinion web
Liberal Opinion Conservative Opinion
Brent Bozell
L. Brent Bozell
17 Feb 2012
Grammy Stupidity Meter off the Charts

The shocking death of pop star Whitney Houston built a massive audience for the Grammy Awards telecast Sunday … Read More.

15 Feb 2012
The Kennedy Has No Clothes

Valentine's Day is probably not the day most people would pick to remember the marriage of John and … Read More.

10 Feb 2012
Another Fleeting Failure For NBC

Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented,… Read More.

NBC's Special Victims

Share Comment

NBC's "Law & Order" programs are long established and all over the schedule. But the sex-obsessed vice cops of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" are a breed apart. They exist to be socially provocative, which is to say, to rattle, to disturb. Viewers at home probably weren't ready for the plot that aired on NBC on March 3. These scriptwriters are so revolting that they become almost comical.

As you read what follows, you decided how closely this mirrors anything resembling the world of reality.

Someone was strangling prostitutes to death and leaving prayer cards behind. The first suspect was a perverted man whose wife proclaimed he had converted to Christianity and overcome his sinful ways. The cops quickly discovered the man dismissed his wife as a "prude," and he was cheating on her with a variety of young girls because "it's not a crime to want a little variety" in his sex life, including "toys, role play, and threesomes." Despite his ardor for sexual gunplay as well, this so-called Christian was not the strangler.

Unsurprisingly, the killer was a Bible-quoting minister. During an interrogation by the male lead detective on "SVU," he claimed, "There is a better life waiting for girls like her (a murdered prostitute) in Heaven," that "God put me on this earth to fight Satan's grip on these girls' souls!" And: "Sometimes dying is better than living."

This minister's religious creepiness was off the charts: "Whoever did this wasn't a murderer. Whoever did this sent these girls to Heaven out of love." When he was inserted into a line of suspects, he walked right up to the mirrored windows and yelled like a prophet from the Old Testament: "They shall fall by the sword, their infants dashed to pieces, and their women with child ripped open!"

The prostitute who was brought in to identify him ran down the hall and fell down a flight of stairs, damaging — surprise — her unborn baby. When she later identifies the killer and he is convicted in court, the Christian killer screams more Bible verses at the judge. "He who sitteth on high, upon the wicked, he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: This shall be the portion of their cup!"

Now let's try to turn this around, or make it less upside-down.

Instead of Christian minister villains and saintly prostitutes, reverse it. Let's say the innocent victims are nuns, and the vicious assailant is an atheist. How would this plot sound to Hollywood?

A string of nuns are being strangled to death, and left behind at the crime scene are tracts from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One young nun narrowly escapes death, and is called into the station to identify her assailant.

The killer is a stark-raving atheist. When the cops bring him in, he's shown grisly pictures of strangled nuns, and he creepily proclaimed, "Someone needs to fight the noxious idea of God and its grip on these women!" and "Sometimes dying is better than living."

When the nun who escaped came back to see a police lineup, the creepy atheist walked right up to the mirrored window and yelled "Praise Darwin! Evolve beyond belief!" And: "Stop telling pious lies to trusting children! It's abuse, plain and simple!" The young nun was so frightened that she ran out into a stairwell and fell down a flight of steps.

Later, when the atheist goes on trial, the nun identifies him as her assailant. He responds by verbally attacking the judge: "Uphold the separation of Church and State. These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death!"

This plot would create unholy havoc in Hollywood, which would reject this scenario as outrageous, defamatory and even immoral. But reverse the characters, and they're the actual outrageous, defamatory propaganda plots that NBC airs without a second thought.

Most Americans would vote for a plot where the nuns and the ministers were on the side of Good. That's the way it used to be, before the sexual revolution and the wholesale rejection of religion as a positive force in society. But in today's Hollywood, these characters are quite easily (and literally) demonized.

Many millions of Americans believe in a religious worldview and traditional moral values. They love their churches and hate their sins, and they don't see the Bible as a dangerous fiction book that inspires killers. The fact that NBC chose the tradition-bashing set of cultural talking points on "SVU" shows the vast moral disconnect between Hollywood and the rest of America.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM


Comments

4 Comments | Post Comment
Well, maybe Atheists don't prostletize the way you describe so that would be far too fictional for a TV show premise.

Or maybe, there are psycho's in the world of every ilk, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, Wiccan, Buddhist, etc.

And maybe, just maybe L&O is an extremely liberal viewpoint, having been so just about since day one, and someone who's ideals are offended by this latest installment is choosing to watch something they know will probably offend them.

THAT my friend, is the problem with society today. That people seek out things to offend themselves; and then complain about being offended.


It is TV. Not reality. TV.
Comment: #1
Posted by: vscott519
Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:40 AM
Re: vscott519. Maybe you missed Bozell's point. Yes, L&O is "liberal." So what? It airs in prime time on a major network, and it seems a little silly to him (and to me) that it apparently goes out of its way to mock and ridicule Christians. (Incidentally, I notice this seems to be the only faith that it's still OK to make fun of, apparently. No one dares do this to Jews or Muslims anymore.) Bozell was trying to illustrate the way people of faith (again, especially Christians) are consistently portrayed as haters, lunatics, bigots, and dangerous crazies. And it's bull that atheists don't proselytize. Pardon the pun, but the hell they don't. Evidently you've never run across someone - on a college campus, on the street, at work, on an Internet message board, any number of other public places - who verbally assaults you and/or tells how you stupid and superstitious you are for daring to believe in God or some other deity, or simply urges you to rely on "science" and that you should "let reason prevail." You've never run across anyone who treated you like that? I sure as heck have, and by this late date in history, I'm plenty tired of the smugness, the air of superiority, and (at times) outright bigotry I experience from these people. If all that doesn't count as proselytizing, I don't know what does. No, atheists don't knock on front doors and bother people at dinnertime, but then, neither do most faiths.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Matt
Sat Mar 13, 2010 1:20 AM
And Vscott, your post highlights another problem. It's not good enough to simply respond with "don't watch it" when someone is talking about entertainment that he/she finds offensive - and L&O is no exception. Very often, the offending program is simply the proverbial tip of the iceberg - merely one example of a pervasive problem found in many places throughout popular culture. It's like saying, "Oh, you don't like bad drivers? Stay off the roads, then." Uhm, no. It's not that simple, and very few of us go without TV entirely. For most of us, it's our primary form of entertainment, especially considering that, again, the program we're talking about is on one of the major alphabet-soup networks and during a time when millions of Americans are usually watching. We're not talking about something from a pay-per-view or premium cable channel that airs very late at night. Bozell is saying that the NBC network ought to be more sensitive to its viewers' values. He actually gave them some pretty good advice.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Matt
Sat Mar 13, 2010 1:27 AM
(sigh). Peace, people.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Therren Dunham
Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:33 PM
Already have an account? Log in.
New Account  
Your Name:
Your E-mail:
Your Password:
Confirm Your Password:

Please allow a few minutes for your comment to be posted.

Enter the numbers to the right:  
Creators.com comments policy
More
L. Brent Bozell
Feb. `12
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
29 30 31 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 1 2 3
About the author About the author
Write the author Write the author
Printer friendly format Printer friendly format
Email to friend Email to friend
View by Month
Author’s Podcast
Michelle Malkin
Michelle MalkinUpdated 27 Feb 2012
Marc Dion
Marc DionUpdated 20 Feb 2012
Mark Levy
Mark LevyUpdated 18 Feb 2012

10 Dec 2008 Inauguration Impatience Syndrome

23 Mar 2011 Flunking the Citizenship Test

27 Apr 2011 Obama Unloved, Here and Abroad