Guys Adams in The Independent:
After two seasons behind one of the nation’s most talked-about programmes and with two Golden Globes, four Emmys, and 10 million viewers under its belt, the musical drama’s creators are aiming their satirical howitzers at the choppy waters of electoral politics.
A third [season], which starts in the US on Tuesday, and in the UK shortly afterwards, will feature the storyline of an attempt by high school PE teacher Sue Sylvester to run for the US Congress. Controversially, given Sylvester’s pantomime villain status, Glee’s influential profile among young viewers and the impending 2012 election, her bid will be built on an exaggeratedly conservative platform, so satirising the Republican right.
Later in the same programme, she suffers an indignity that befell Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, two Republican presidential hopefuls: a “glitter bomb” attack, in which opponents video themselves throwing glitter at Sylvester, before uploading footage of the incident to YouTube.
So far, so cheeky, you might think. But given the polarised state of US politics, the public airwaves are no place for light-hearted satire. So news of the storylines has enraged right-leaning pundits.
“This is unbelievably typical of Glee, which has become the most subversive show in the history of network television,” said Ben Shapiro, an author whose recent book Primetime Propaganda highlighted what he describes as Hollywood’s leftist agenda. “They are using Sylvester’s character to mirror the rhetoric and policies of Michele Bachmann. When conservatives watch this show, it will be clear that the creators hate our guts.”
Full story here.