Posted on 05/22/2005 5:28:34 AM PDT by L.N. Smithee
WARNING: This thread contains spoilers.
Back in 2004, singer Linda Ronstadt, who was romantically linked in the seventies with Democratic then-California Governor Jerry Brown but had never previously displayed any signs of traditional celebrity political activism, began ending her concerts by dedicating the song "Desperado" to Michael Moore, the blame-America-first filmmaker/author. When she did so at the Aladdin hotel in Las Vegas, a mini-riot ensued, and she and her band was escorted from the premises shortly afterward by the hotel's miffed manager.
Less than a week later, Ronstadt was interviewed before an upcoming concert in San Diego about whether she would continue honor Moore after witnessing the anger of hundreds of her own fans. According to WorldNetDaily, she told the San Diego Union-Tribune:
This was an unusual announcement from a performer whose work isn't overtly political. If Ronstadt had the reputation of, say, Billy Bragg (communist), Audioslave (ditto) or Chumbawamba (anarchist), such grumblings about Christians and Republicans would have been par for the course. But Ronstadt was previously innocuous politically. Now, fundamentalists and Republicans who saw her in concert know that when Ronstadt sang "You're No Good," she meant it personally.
"This is an election year, and I think we're in desperate trouble and it's time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know."
Now that there are so many performers who are not shy about the way they feel about right-of-center Americans (or Americans in general, even if they are Americans themselves), consumers have to make a choice: Should I sponsor and support people who have made it crystal clear they would just as soon insult me as entertain me?
Recent events made it necessary for me to ask that question regarding one of my favorite remaining TV shows, CBS' Cold Case. A detective show that relies heavily on vivid flashbacks of witnesses to unsolved crimes, Cold Case was one of the few cop shows that I have been able to see through an entire episode. I had outgrown the Spelling-Goldberg shows (The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch, T.J. Hooker, etc.) years before, and Quinn Martin (Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, etc.) and Jack Webb (Dragnet, Adam-12) are long gone. I hadn't bothered with the genre since the Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue) and Dick Wolf (the Law & Order franchise) redefined it.
With the exception of 24, there doesn't seem to be a dramatic or comedic program that I know of that gives anything resembling fair and equal treatment to fictional characters who aren't liberals. Knowing that, I don't eschew every program that has a homosexual character or takes a moment to gratuitously bash Bush or Christians or the GOP. That would make it difficult to turn the set on at all. So the reason for dumping an enjoyable and ostensibly decent program would have to be heavier than isolated incidents of discomfort with the writers' biases.
For example: many years ago, I cut The Cosby Show loose from my life after the writers apparently decided that there should be a feminist undercurrent in every single episode. It was unbearable; there would be a bit of dialogue in each show in which one of the male characters would thoughtlessly mouth classic Male Chauvinist Pig dogma, and Clair Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) or one of the Huxtable daughters -- even little Rudy -- would put him in his place posthaste. It was as reliable as watching an automatic pinsetter at a bowling alley, setting up the male ego for a noisy toppling over. If I had wanted to see that, I would have watched reruns of Maude.
My problems with Cold Case weren't that consistent, but they were increasing in frequency exponentially. The show's first season contained an episode about a young boy whose body was found on the grounds of an orphanage run by a sadistic Catholic headmistress (SPOILER: She wasn't the kid's killer.) That episode was well-written and touching, and although it revisited well-worn stereotypes about Catholics, it wasn’t a video dart board with the pope at the center, as many TV dramas have been in recent years.
Near the end of the second season, things turned a little unusual – some would say strange. An episode began with a late 70’s flashback about a slender Latina teenage runaway girl who looked like a streetwalker. She was picked up by two rowdy teenage boys, and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to her head. Fast forwarding to today, the case was re-opened as a woman who was divorcing her husband implicated her soon-to-be ex for the murder, and presented as evidence what appeared to be a snuff film, showing the girl being assaulted, restrained, and begging for her life at gunpoint, before the film ends.
Indeed, that was the girl, but the ex-husband -- one of the teens in the car, and the owner of the film – didn’t kill her. In fact, the other guy in the car ended up apologizing to her, and subsequently fell in love with her. She and The Other Guy had plans of going to New York City to chase her dreams, but there was an intimacy problem between the two of them – she kept pushing him away. Finally, she told her deep, dark secret – she wasn’t really a girl.
This, surprisingly, turned out not to be a deal-breaker to The Other Guy, who was still in love with "her," until his mean ol' abusive bigoted father found out about their plans to run away together, and The Other Guy reluctantly abandoned “her.” Losing "her" only chance at love, she shot "her"self in the head. There was no murder.
OhhhhhK, I thought – I can’t ask all of the shows to reflect my values all the time. I continued watching the show.
Three weeks ago, the series focused on a serial killer played by Barry Bostwick, who is due for release from prison after serving a plea-bargained twenty-five year sentence. The detectives scramble to find another murder that he hasn’t been prosecuted for, and come up with the 1977 killing of a doorman whom the killer saw as the impediment to his relationship with a girl who participated in the infamous midnight performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the bizarre underground musical phenomenon that celebrates sexual obsession (the then-unknown Bostwick and Susan Sarandon co-starred in the film as a white-bread American couple that learn to love bisexuality and promiscuity).
By the way, the killer, who said that upon release he would continue to murder those upon whom God has marked for death with “his light,” is specifically identified as Mormon, and his middle name is Brigham. Flashbacks of his domineering and sanctimonious mother feature her calling him by his full name, as if we might have taken a bathroom break and missed the point that the crazy serial killer is a Mormon. Everybody got that? He’s a Mormon! Meanwhile, the Rocky Horror kids are portrayed – as always – as free-spirited and delightful.
By now, I am starting to notice a pattern. The girl impostor was strike one; this is strike two.
The episode that aired two weeks ago opened with the flashback of a plunge of a truck full of moonshine off a rickety bridge under repair. The skull of one of the passengers turned up in the truck, excavated after 70 years in the watery deep. The skull was that of a teenage black girl, who dressed up like a gangster complete with suspenders, slicked back hair and a fedora. Initially, it was thought that she was driving the truck, and struck by one of the bullets that didn’t end up piercing the truck, but as it turned out – hang on to something – she was the girlfriend of the little sister (teenage white girl) of the late teen/early twenties bootlegger who ran the operation.
See, it starts with the fascination the little sister had with the style and boldness of the black girl, which leads her to the speakeasy the black girl frequented. The Black Girl is reluctant to let the White Sister hang around because she thinks she’ll get in trouble with her lover, an adult black woman who is insanely jealous. Eventually, White Sister makes into the club where the black lesbos hang out, and is dancing with Black Girl when she runs into Big Brother Bootlegger delivering moonshine to the joint. Oops. After trying to drag White Sister out, the other lezzies physically threatens Big Brother Bootlegger. He backs down, of course, but makes it clear that she is not to return.
A subsequent flashback shows Black Girl being savagely beaten by local yokels, not so much for being black, but for dressing up in men’s clothes. Black Girl seeks White Sister for shelter, and in the midst of White Sister’s tending to the bruises on Black Girl’s head and upper torso, White Sister removes Black Girl’s jacket, and they declare their love for each other. They talk about running off together to the safety of New York (again with NYC?), but, says Black Girl, they don’t have any money. White Sister suggests they could appropriate some of Big Brother Bootlegger’s hooch to pay for their life together. At this point, with Black Girl already partially unclothed, she and White Sister begin what could accurately be described making out as the scene fades. That’s right; although their lips never touched, and there wasn’t any visible fondling, at about 8:30 pm on Sunday, during the so-called “family hour,” actresses portraying teenage girls were unmistakably going at it.
At this point, I know that this is the end of this series for me, but I wanted to know how far they were willing to go with this. So I continued watching, and taped the final ten minutes.
In other flashbacks: Big Brother Bootlegger catches Black Girl stealing the booze, and grabs her by the throat. White Sister begs him to let her go, because she loves her. BBB says, “You don’t know what she is!” White Girl says, “Yes, I do. I know her through and through.” BBB, sputtering about how he's failed to keep White Sister on the right track, tells her to get his shotgun because he’s going to “put [Black Girl] out of her misery.” White Sister gets his gun, and points it at BBB, who lets Black Girl go. White Sister and Black Girl get into the truck, and head for tolerant New York. Pursued by BBB once the gun is off him, he fires his revolver at his stolen truck. White Sister, not realizing the bridge is under repair, goes in the wrong direction. Black Girl says, “We ain’t gettin’ away from him now!” White Sister, realizing that Black Girl is good as dead once she gets out of the truck, says “He’s not taking you away from me!” Continuing toward the barricades closing off the bridge the conversation goes like this:
WS: “Do you love me?”BG: “Baby, what are you doing?”
WS: “I’m your girl, right?”
BG: You’re my girl, and I love you!”
WS: “How’d you like to love me forever?
BG: “Yes!”
WS: “OK…that’s what we’ll do!”
White Sister floors the truck, it crashes through the barricade, and plunges into the water. Seconds later, White Sister emerges, calling out for Black Girl. But, of course, Black Girl is dead, trapped in the truck where her remains would be discovered seven decades later.
White Sister, now pushing 90 and feeling guilty that she survived the crash, never admitted to the Cold Case crew that she was a lesbian until she was confronted with poetry she had written about Black Girl’s tragic loss. Old White Sister moaned softly to Det. Lilly Rush (series star Kathryn Morris): “I wondered if it was wrong, the feelings that I had for her.” Lilly replied, “No...it was just...the wrong time.”
Cold Case’s trademark ending, where the younger versions of the figures in the deaths reemerge in a symbolic, dreamlike sequence, finishes this episode with BG’s insanely jealous girlfriend, old and gray, waving approvingly at a couple of black girls walking hand in hand. Old White Sister, sitting on a park bench, sees Black Girl’s hand extended to her. As Old White Sister stands, she is transformed into Young White Sister, and she and Black Girl walk arm-in-arm.
Steeeerike three! You’re OUT (Pun not intended)!
If the producers and writers of Cold Case had let their personal biases and political leanings show every so often in little, almost inperceptable ways, I might consider continuing to give them the favor of my viewership. But they have become so aggressive, excessive, and obsessive about spitting all over traditional sexual mores that it damages their show's entertainment value. They have, like Linda Ronstadt, made themselves perfectly clear: they don’t like me. They don’t care if I am offended by their blatant promotion of transgenderism and homosexuality, and their contempt for those who don’t approve of them on religious grounds. They would rather not know that I am out there.
Well, you don't have to worry anymore, Executive Producer and writer Meredith Stiehm, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. I won't be out there anymore. As far as I am concerned, Cold Case the series is just like the cold cases in the show -- stored away in a dark room in a forgotten cardboard box, never to be looked at again.
But I digress. What I really want to say is that any proclamations that Sith is an anti-Bush screed are based in ignorance and/or wishful thinking. Christiansen, contradicting Lucas' denial that the script targeted W, suggested that French audiences would love Sith because it was so obviously anti-Bush. Maybe so, who knows -- but if the Jedi were French, Episode III would have been the final chapter; there would never have been a resistance.
Cold Case? never heard of it.....
Your ping is served.
I kept thinking "Son of Sam", or maybe "Erik Dahmer".
Recalling his childhood as a slave, the fact that he ended up as an adult sociopath should not be surprising.
BTW, was the actor really acting ~ I got the idea he wasn't. Definitely a man to be watched, eh?!
Oh, and the French are going to be very upset with this since they will realize that the Emperor follows Napoleon's script.
Seems I haven't missed a thing.
Wow I thought Cold Case was based on real cases.
My bad, I was thinking of cold case files.
I used to watch Cold Case until it became a piece of liberal proproganda
That's what it took to get this thing cancelled, not the cr** acting?? Pardon me if my outrage meter didn't quite make it up high enough here.
Leni
So the cr** acting will be allowed to continue ... along with the rat's nest hair do. Such is American pop culture.
Except for NFL Football and MLB Baseball (and even they are staring to push my tolerance levels), NO NETWORK TELEVISION SHOWS are viewed in my home.
I actually think Kathryn Morris is pretty good. But see my note about Hayden Christiansen.
My expectations about Sith were set so low after Attack of the Clones sucked like a Hoover, I can deal with Christiansen's worthlessness just to get a decent set-up for Episode IV.
It was only canceled on the author's TV. I think it's still on.
Ignore my #14
Cold case WAS one of my favorites also, but, I saw where it was going about the same time and decided after last weeks episode I had had enough.
I watched 2 or 3 early episodes of Cold Case, but I didn't care for the washed out bluish colors, the neurasthenic acting of the lead actress, and those ghost music videos at the end of each show.
I've never been a big fan of Cold Case. I think I may have seen 5 episodes at most. The show irritates me on a technical level rather than political (though I agree with your points).
Don't know if you've ever watched it, but if you're looking for a (relatively) Conservative show, you might consider giving CSI: NY a chance. The lead character played by Gary Sinise is a patriotic ex-Marine, an honest cop and an all-around good guy. He even has a framed photo of President Reagan hanging in his office and he goes out of his way to defend the honor of anyone that wears a uniform. Good show.
During the election, there were numerous, snide, little asides about the evil republicans. They were gone as quickly as they arrived, but they were nasty little barbs.
TOO BAD...I, too, like Cold Case.
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