'Law and Order' Trashes ACORN Videos

Dick Wolf has fallen from the heights as a writer on “Hill Street Blues,” a supervising producer of “Miami Vice” and the creator/producer of the once-excellent “Law and Order” trilogy. The flagship of the “Law and Order” series is “Law and Order,” the two other shows being “SVU” (Special Victims Unit) and “CI”(Criminal Intent). Perhaps 20 years is too long for any series, but “Law and Order” has devolved into the cheapest form of left-wing paranoid delusion. It is so obvious, it gives left-wing propaganda a bad name. Maybe Karl Rove planted a mole. I now watch it for its comedic satirical value, as one would watch “Saturday Night Live.”

Dick Wolf

The last episode was “Fed.” It’s a story about an ACORN-like community organizing group called “Rights Alliance.” The founder of the Rights Alliance has a conservative infiltrator murdered to “cover up a cover-up.” The cover up is an affair the founder was having with one of its members. The “cover up of the cover-up” was the money being paid by the founder to his mistress’s husband to keep the affair quiet. The right-wing infiltrator was murdered because he had been secretly video taping a sting he was arranging unrelated to the affair–clearly meant to be reminiscent of the O’Keefe/Giles real life ACORN investigation. The founder feared this tape would open the organization up to scrutiny, thus exposing his affair and the subsequent monetary extortion to his girlfriend’s husband. We are not supposed to be shedding too many tears for our murder victim, given he was “tricking a few dumb kids in an ambush video.”

The victim was found with the words “Fed” printed on his chest, apparently to throw our eagle-eyed detective team of Bernard and Lupo off the scent. You see, “right wingers” hate government so much we murder government employees all the time. Of course, Rights Alliance is a non-profit group, not a Government agency, but the writers assume dopey murdering “right wingers” might think Rights Alliance are government agents. This makes scrawling the word “Fed” on the victim’s chest a great ruse. Get it?

But the real action is how “conservatives” are portrayed and characterized. As implied above, the show makes more sense as a parody of the left-wing view of the right than it is effective propaganda for the left. This is now its entertainment value. The first suspect for the infiltrator’s murder is a “Patriot Ranger,” a crazed group that is stated to be linked with “last summer’s Tea Party Movement.” The Patriot Rangers look like casting rejects from the movie “Deliverance.” They carry rifles in Manhattan, are unshaven, uncouth, and it looks like you could smell them from 50 feet. The suspect, who is innocent, is still made to appear repulsive. He calls the detectives “Obamabots,” which they reacted to with shock and anger.

Our erstwhile “O’Keefe” style infiltrator is said to be a “militant conservative.” What makes one a militant conservative? Our murder victim is “militant” because in college he ran a student group supporting George W. Bush’s reelection. His roommate from college tells the detective Lupo the O’Keefe character “hated liberals.”

Of course, Jack McCoy has to get in his two cents. He states how he has always been a supporter of Rights Alliance, which “has worked across party lines.” He proceeds to tell his DAs to “go the extra mile” before “blowing up” up the Rights Alliance group because of its historical good works like “predatory lending reform,” “housing reform,” and “minimum wage reform”–the heart of the left’s financial reform agenda. (The first two were instrumental in helping take down our financial system in 2008.)

In a “town hall” meeting held by McCoy for Patriot Rangers (read: Teabaggers) and Rights Alliance, both groups get unruly, but the worst epithets naturally emanate from the Rangers. One exclaims: “Socialist Scum!” McCoy is genuinely pained when the Rights Alliance group does not believe his plea for patience because he supported their work for years. He made no such assertion to the “Deliverance” styled Patriot Ranger/Tea Party crowd.

This episode also comes on the heels of an “SVU” show earlier in the week where some character refers to various Fox opinion show hosts and Rush Limbaugh as “cancers” in society.

There is a “Last Days of Pompeii” feel to Wolf’s “Law and Order” empire. He has become very wealthy delivering prime time crime drama to television, and the truth is his shows have been high quality. But it’s time to hang it up. These shows have become message delivery machines. When drama is subordinated to politics, it’s no longer popular art, but cheap propaganda.

Dick should get out while it’s only a little too late.