I’ve noticed a lot of my brothers and sisters on the right are up in arms at Law & Order: SVU after last week’s episode. I did not see the whole episode in question but did see a clip where a character played by John Larroquette mentions three well know conservative talk show hosts and calls them a cancer on the land.
Before I get rolling, in the spirit of full disclosure I will admit to being a Law & Order junkie. My DVR is full of my favorite Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes, which is by far the strongest of the three series. I will also admit that in my mind Law & Order: SVU is to the Law & Order brand what Deep Space Nine was to the Star Trek brand. It is a weak cousin that may have been spreading the brand a little too thin.
I know I have said this before, as a conservative if you start watching and listening only to things you agree with politically then we are stuck with Magnum P.I. reruns, Ben Stein movies, The 700 Club and Toby Keith CDs. I was just about to type the word “records” but I remembered this is the 21st century. Not that there is anything wrong with any of those choices, I just want a wider selection.
So, back to Law & Order, a lot of the chatter I have been hearing is true. Yes, Dick Wolf and a lot of other Hollywood types are far left politically. Yes, they often put their politics into their work, many times without balance. Yes, it is unfair that they verbally smack Bill O’Reilly and others around and misrepresents their positions.
This week’s episode of the original Law & Order had some material that I found more offensive than a little name calling. The show which was a riff on the Big Government expose of ACORN. First the police use an unlawful search and seizure against a “conservative” guy because he doesn’t bow to their demands to be questioned. Later in the episode, every time Detective Lupo, played by Jeremy Sisto, asks him a question he mocks his political beliefs by pretending he is talking to “the government” on his cell phone. There is also a mocking reference to the “Tea Parties last summer.” When the “conservative’s” friends show up to protest his wrongful arrest they are depicted as a group of gun toting, flannel shirt wearing, poorly educated, rednecks. Yep, that’s me alright.
The question is this; how should conservatives react to this? I think we should take a page from the playbook of the far left and try to bring some economic pressure to bear on the advertisers of NBC. The left has started strong campaigns against both Dr. Michael Savage and Glenn Beck trying to silence them by hurting them economically. There was even the recent laughable “revelation” that Glenn Beck gets paid by his sponsor Goldline. So let’s try to do the same. Here are two big ad buyers on NBC; McDonald’s and American Express. Let’s start by dropping an e-mail to both companies politely asking them to stop buying ads on NBC and see what kind of response we get.