March 19, 2008
Law & Order hates Christians
Emphasizing the disconnect between the real world and Hollywood, tonight's episode of Law & Order features another story "ripped from the headlines."
It begins with the owner of an art gallery, a woman, pelted with rocks -- stoned to death. The detectives find that she was readying a show featuring a veiled Muslim woman, painted by an Albanian artist to highlight the oppression of women by fundamentalist Muslims.
The investigation soon leads to a compound where a demented religious leader indoctrinates his followers, children and young adults, about the spiritual rewards awaiting those who murder infidels.
It's a timely take on a real problem, what with death cults springing up throughout the Islamic world, Arab mothers going on TV to brag about children who have blown themselves up, taking Jewish enemies with them.
But, as the producers like to say, there's a twist.
The murderous fanatics in this episode are Christians.
Just like all those real-life Christian fanatics we're hearing about, slaughtering Muslim clerics, like Mullah Rahho, kidnapped in Iraq and found dead this week.
Oh, wait. He was Bishop Rahho, a Catholic.
Or that Christian fanatic who burst into a Jewish yeshiva and slaughtered teenagers studying the Talmud.
Oops. Muslim. Sorry. Or those Christian suicide bombers who -- erm, never mind.
Because, you see, as everyone but the fools in Hollywood know, the perpetrators of nearly all sectarian, faith-based violence in today's world are Muslims. It's just that those same Muslims get a bit exorcised when films and teleplays and cartoons target them for scrutiny or criticism. And when that happens, fatwas get issued calling for the deaths of the infidels responsible, like the Dutch movie director Theo Van Gogh, who was stabbed to death by a Muslim assassin for the "crime" of directing a film about the oppression of women in Muslim culture, or the cartoonist who dared to depict Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.
In the Law & Order universe, however, who are the villains, week after week? Christians and evil, white capitalists, tycoons, gun nuts and neo-Nazis -- but then, I repeat myself, for they're one and the same to the writers and producers of the NBC series.
What a stunning bit of cultural self-loathing.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 19, 2008 10:34 PM
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