ABC's 'Castle' Depicts Tea Party Type as Dangerous, Extreme

The March 26 broadcast of ABC’s “Castle” might have caught conservative viewers by surprise – at first.

Spoilers Ahead …

The episode featured a bombing at an Occupy Wall Street-like gathering, and when our heroes finished their crime-solving shtick, we learned an OWS member was responsible for the blast. Turns out the fellow wanted to draw attention – and sympathy – to the class warfare movement. A member of the media helped with the bombing, which killed five people.

If television is going to rip stories from the latest headlines, than the violence-prone OWS movement deserves a fictional kick in the pants.

But “Castle” couldn’t stop there. The show installed a suspect in the case who might as well have been labeled, “Tea Party Maniac.” The character is a patriot with “extreme” political views who hands out fliers emblazoned with the American flag at OWS events, writes threatening e-mails to OWS members and says these protests should be stopped by any means necessary.

He’s not guilty of this particular crime, but you can bet he’ll be guilty of something else sooner or later.

Now, the Tea Party rallies of the past few years have been overwhelmingly peaceful. You don’t see mass arrests, fecal deposits, smashed windows or anything else regularly on display at OWS gatherings. When the Tea Partiers leave, the grounds are generally cleaner than when they left it.

The media’s Tea Party narrative told a different, utterly false story, saying these patriots were angry and ready to hurt those who disagree with them. But apparently the scribes at “Castle” followed said narrative enough to build a false comparison between Tea Partiers and OWS.