Posted on 12/26/2002 12:23:10 PM PST by mrustow
Toogood Reports [Christmas Weekender, December 29, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
My previous column detailed a number of network TV series' campaign to demonize white men and romanticize black men, in the depiction of crime. But without a doubt, TV's champion white-baiter is persistent felony offender Dick Wolf, the producer of Law & Order, two Law & Order Lite spin-offs, and a pseudo-documentary crime show. This column has previously detailed a fraction of Wolf's offenses against decency and verisimilitude, and will no doubt return to him; criminals are creatures of habit, and Wolf has a long-term contract with NBC through the 2004-2005 season.
In one episode this season, Wolf re-created the May 10, 2001, execution-style, Carnegie Deli Murders ("Tragedy on Rye"). In the real case, Sean Salley and Andre Smith robbed genteel drug dealer Jennifer Stahl, who lived in an apartment above Midtown Manhattan's Carnegie Deli, and murdered Stahl, Stephen King, and Charles Helliwell. Salley and Smith also shot Rosemond Dane and Anthony Veader, both of whom survived. In June, Salley and Smith were convicted on multiple counts of murder, robbery, and weapons charges; in July, they were both sentenced to 120 years to life.
In the L & O version, the black suspects who were slated to be up for the death penalty for the killings, turned out to be innocent. The killer was white. This episode, written by William N. Fordes, was set up to be an object lesson on the dangers of racial profiling, via the "conscience" of the character of black NYPD "Lt. Joyce Van Buren" (S. Epatha Merkerson), but was actually a shameless exercise in propaganda: The real Carnegie Deli killers WERE black men!
Taking real crimes committed by blacks, and giving them the "ripped from the headlines" treatment, but with the killers' races changed to white, is a Dick Wolf trademark.
In the recent episode, "Open Season," a William Kunstler-like criminal defense attorney gets a black man acquitted, who was guilty as hell of shooting a white police officer, and is murdered — the lawyer, that is — as he is celebrating the acquittal. The killer is a white supremacist, who conspires with other supremacists to murder defense attorneys notorious for handling such cases.
This episode's story line resided entirely in the fantasy world of Dick Wolf and writer Richard Sweren.
One secondary aspect of this episode was, however, based on a true case. At one point, the jailed white supremacist, who has been forbidden from all contact with the outside world, except for his defense attorney (Tovah Feldshuh), uses her as an unwitting conduit to pass along the address of someone he has targeted for murder to an associate, who carries out the killing. However, Dick Wolf's creative team made a slight adjustment in the story. The subplot was based not on a white supremacist, but on the case of radical attorney, Lynne Stewart. Stewart has been arrested and charged with deliberately passing along instructions from one of her clients, Islamic terrorist Sheik Abdul Rahman, who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, to his confederates. Stewart was taped laughing about what she was doing.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that on occasion, Wolf crosses over, and abuses white women, too.
In an episode created last season by writers Terri Kopp, Aaron Zelman, and Eric Overmyer, and re-run on December 4, Myth of Fingerprints, the forensics chief from hell (Diana Scarwid), is caught after having spent years falsely testifying against innocent men (even white men!), all of whom were convicted based on her perjured testimony. Eventually, she is convicted of manslaughter, based on the prison murder of one of the men whom she'd framed.
That episode was based on the very real case of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma forensics chemist, Joyce Gilchrist, who was caught having falsified evidence for years. Based on Gilchrist's testimony, 23 men have been sentenced to death, and eleven have been executed. Unlike the fictional forensics boss on Law & Order, however, Joyce Gilchrist is black.
Dick Wolf and his creative team apparently see TV drama as an opportunity to create non-stop propaganda, and get paid handsomely for it.
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Plus careful lighting, top-grade hair and makeup artists, not to mention top-grade photographer(s) who took about 100+ fames to find this one.*
*In your average fashion photo shoot anywhere from 120-300 pictures are taken, of which maybe 3 are used (and often computer "enhanced")
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And/or a woman?
The judge was a Black female. I guess they figure they can kill two birds with one stone. Black and female.
My favorite show on tv is probably the Simpsons and it is probably better than most, but I just thought about it. The Judge and Doctor are Black.
S.C.T.V. was a whole lot more entertaining than todays P.C.T.V.
No thanks, i'll stick with Discovery, TLC and a few others over that primetime garbage. And there's always FreeRepublic.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with it, and you can do whatever you want, but I'm still going to watch. I'm also not missing The Matrix 2 just because Morpheus signed it either. In my opinion that silly petition just doesn't rise to the level of Alec Baldwin type stupidity.
Well, Law & Order adapted this crime for an episode that aired a couple of seasons ago, and they were faithful to the details of the real crime except in one area: the murderous gang of teens ended up being white. And there was one more nasty little surprise in store -- the ringleader of the group was named Reagan! He ended up receiving the death sentence (none of the real-life perpetrators did, BTW). A PC victory all around.
I love Jerry Ohrbach, too. First saw him as incompetent mobster "Kid Sally Bananas" in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, and often heard his rendition on recordings from the original B'way Chicago of a song that's a variation on "Ya' Gotta Have a Gimmick." Years later, I saw him play the "criminal" brother of Martin Landau in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Though it was before my time, the young Ohrbach's first big role was as the star of The Fantasticks. He's always good, and I've heard he's a real nice guy to his fellow thespians and crew members, unlike Sam Waterston, who's a notoriously unprofessional SOB.
Regarding the real case you mentioned, I believe the same writer dealt with L&O's misrepresentation of it a while back. I'll have to check on that.
.... Not to be outdone, Law & Order's "heavy" could have been written by John Grisham. A high-end, Manhattan real estate agent, upon finding out that an interracial couple seeks buy a co-op in his building, sends a letter to the co-op board, objecting to the sale on explicitly racial grounds. Next, he gets the idea that a black colleague stole a client from him, and shows the colleague that he's got a gun stuck in his pants. That gets the racist fired; now he's even angrier. Soon thereafter, while hanging out with a friend during the evening, he hails a taxi, but a middle-aged black man beats him to the car. The white shouts racial epithets at the black rider, who refuses to give up the taxi. The white hails the next cab, whose driver he orders to follow the first cab. The racist ignores his friend's advice to drop the matter; the friend exits the cab. The racist follows the black rider to the latter's destination, and guns him down on the street.
Were a successful, young, white Manhattanite to write such a letter, it would have found its way to the front page of every newspaper in town, and the man would have been fired from his job, and prosecuted and sued for civil rights violations. But in Law & Order's parallel universe, there was no reaction to the letter.
The killer argues that minorities are "out to get whites." Producer Dick Wolf and his writers are thereby suggesting that any white with the same complaint, is also a savage monster. But one doesn't have to spend much time in New York, to know that minorities are out to get whites. It was January, 1991, when a white NYPD detective confirmed for me, that black-on-white racial attacks are an everyday event in New York. The detective added, that for "political reasons ... there are some things you're not allowed to say." And so, the rare white-on-black attack is treated as a "hate crime," but the constant black-on-white attacks almost never are, even when black attackers use racial epithets.
And make no mistake about it: Anti-white racial epithets are perfectly "normal" in New York. But in 16 years in this town, I have yet to hear a white call a black a racial epithet. Hell, in all those years, I've only heard whites say the "n" word three times in private.
And although black racist monsters are a dime a dozen in New York, no such white, racist monster has been recorded in at least fifty years. The Law & Order story was "ripped," alright. It was a rip-off of the ridiculous story line of last year's Shaft remake, in which a wealthy, white supremacist blithely murders a young black man in Midtown Manhattan.
Dick Wolf has been down this road before. He once presented prosecutor Kenneth Starr as a deranged Torquemada, who in the pursuit of power, peeps through people's bedroom key holes. And in another story, Wolf turned a band of young, black thrill murderers (in the real case that he "ripped from the headlines") into white killers.
Political types in Hollywood have long understood, that the easiest way to short- circuit political debate, is to present "realistic" dramas with cartoon-like images that support their prejudices. For Aaron Sorkin, Steven Bochco, and Dick Wolf, I have two words: You're busted!
This guy needs to get his facts straight. I SAW this episode. The real killer was ALSO black, he was collared at the very end of the episode, he was a huge black man on a sofa when the cops busted in.
What a crock. L&O may have some liberal bias, but then what Hollywood show doesn't. It's one of the best shows out there, in terms of quality. And this specific complaint is total BS. The writer should learn how to do a basic cite-check before spouting off about it.
VR
So, the Carnegie Deli killers were white? And Joyce Gilchrist was white? Oh, but you didn't see the shows, didn't hit the links, and probably didn't even bother reading the article!
So, how's life at DU, disrupter?
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