This is my daily effort to discover good things people do around the planet. I’m planning to engage in these searches six days a week. I will gladly post your contributions regarding good human behavior, no matter how trivial they may seem to you (or, frankly, to me). Please join me on this trip and tell your friends.

Thursday

Police Procedural Skewers Traditional Values

A lady named Mary Beth Hutchins, who works for CRC Public Relations, sent me the following note, under the headline: Assessment of Law & Order: SVU Finds Anti-Christian Storylines.

Yori,

The Culture and Media Institute, a group that monitors media bias from a conservative point of view, has released a piece about the real victims of Law & Order: SVU --- conservatives and Christians.

Three different episodes have aired since February 10 and all promoted a liberal agenda. In the past month, audiences saw Christians portrayed as kinky sex addicts and murderers, heard propaganda that supports the idea of special punishment for hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and heard the detectives on the show refer to the abortion debate as "pro-choice or no choice."

Thanks,

Mary Beth Hutchins

CRC Public Relations

Here’s the link, Conservatives, Christians the Real ‘Victims’ of NBC’s Liberal ‘Law & Order: SVU’, Police procedural skewers traditional values in portrayals of current social issues, by Colleen Raezler, Culture and Media Institute. I lifted these paragraphs to give you an idea of the tone of the story:

NBC’s "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" has consistency working in its favor: the biggest "victims" are its depictions of conservatives and Christians. Part of "SVU’s" appeal is its ripped-from-the-headlines storylines, but the program’s writers frequently use these storylines to promote liberal agendas and to bash Christians.

Three different episodes have aired since February 10 and all promoted a liberal agenda. In the past month, audiences saw Christians portrayed as kinky sex addicts and murderers, heard propaganda that supports the idea of special punishment for hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and heard the detectives on the show refer to the abortion debate as "pro-choice or no choice."

And Raezler’s sub-headlines tell the rest of the story:

  1. Christians in Hollywood: Closet Perverts with Murderous Tendencies
  2. "P.C.:" Politically Correct Crimes
  3. Abortion Debate According to Hollywood: "Pro-Choice or No Choice"
  4. Liberal Propaganda

If you think you already know what’s in the article, you’re probably not wrong. But since Mary Beth Hutchins’ spam program went out of its way to address me by my first name, I felt obliged to share with Mary Beth some of my own observations. I hope you’ll identify with at least some of them. And let that me my daily act of public service in search of the nugget of goodness.

Mary Beth --

An avid fan of all the L&O series, I was taken aback by how bad the last few SVUs have been. Gone is any semblance of detective work, gone is the examination of the tensions between cops and prosecutors. Instead, the 2010 shows are shallow exploitations reminiscent of the 1970s and 80s in US television. In general, the Dick Wolf empire seems to be dipping in the murkier end of the pool, pushing brawn in place of brain.

Having said all of the above, I doubt very much that the L&O writers are out on a mission to get anyone, Christian or otherwise. Granted, as an observant Jew I, too, cringe whenever their plot comes around to my neck of the spiritual woods. Likewise, I've seen them malign Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Twelve Steppers, take your pick. I fear that the current generation of Dick Wolf writers don't know any better. It's not hatred of Conservative or Christian values -- they don't know enough to actually hate anything. I believe it's laziness and a poor liberal arts education.

Still, it was truly strange to receive this complaint about the biased liberal media from you.

You and I don't belong to the same political camps. As a registered Democrat living in Manhattan, your company, CRC Public Relations, is forever associated in my mind with Swiftboating and similar dishonest and vile shenanigans. Seeing you crying the blues about being misrepresented on TV is like watching a guy who murdered both his parents begging for clemency on account he's an orphan.

But there's more. Your PR company represents most of the major players in Hollywood and everywhere else:

The Walt Disney Company

Warner Brothers Television Network

Microsoft Corporation

Republican National Committee

Simon & Schuster

TIME Warner Inc.

Universal Studios, Inc. (Producers of L&O SVU)

Viacom Inc.

Walden Media

It would seem to me that all you'd have to do in order to put a stop to this anti-Christian bias is walk a few doors down from your office and shout out: Stop biasing Christians! It should have at least some effect...

In other words, as you're positioning your message around the defense of helpless Christians, in a country which is, say, 85% Christian, you should know that doing that may score you points with your clients, but does very little to bridge the gap between right and left, liberal and conservative. My goodness, if Christianity can be so easily victimized by a few pimple faced recent English majors working for scale at the Dick Wolf sweatshop, it doesn't bode so well for its resilience, does it? My own tradition, for example, has taken so much worse on the chin and is still fiddling on many a roof, coat tails flying and all.

I honestly wish there were a way to invest the staggering resources at your disposal in an attempt to communicate with the other side, rather than constantly either scare them or be scared by them. We're sharing a huge country, we speak similar languages, we're really smart -- do we really want to just keep punching each other?

Yori Yanover