In a recent post on Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer alerts his readers to a recent episode of the popular and long-running American TV crime drama Law & Order.
Spencer's initial post recounted the plot of the episode with sufficient accuracy (with a couple of mistakes noted in the comments field by a reader that don't really make a difference to the overall point): the essence being that a woman was found stoned to death on a rooftop in New York City, and although the initial leads were briefly thought by the investigators to be Muslims, the real culprit turned out to be the woman's own son, a fanatical Christian who, under the influence of a fanatical Christian preacher, had felt obliged to apply literally passages in the Old Testament about stoning adulterers.
The moral of the story, however, is completely lost not only on Spencer, but on all the loyal readers who contributed over 100 comments. The moral of the story may be summed up by two points:
1) Innumerable crime drama television shows over the years have had plots that exonerate Muslims -- often introduced as token leads that prove false -- while the real culprit turns out to be a non-Muslim whose motives are at best completely unrelated to Islam, at worst involve some kind of subplot of Islamophobia.
2) These TV shows -- particularly the more popular ones (and most of them in my experience have been popular) -- are driven by producers who only care about the monetary bottom line: they would not greenlight a plot unless they were fully confident that it would not rock the boat and not make any waves among the vast majority of the viewing public. I.e., these innumerable pro-Muslim plots, including the one Law & Order one that finally got the attention of Spencer's radar, are not going against the public grain at all: they are calculated quite assiduously, with millions of dollars of advertising at stake, to go with the general mainstream flow of the Public. They are not some dastardly plot by a nefarious cabal of "Elites" to manipulate the American viewing public as sheep.
I.e., the American public, the vast majority of Americans, are PC MC. And Jihad Watchers still don't get it.
An interesting example of how careful television (and movie) producers are with regard to which side of the fault line they choose to fall with regard to Political Correctness or Political Incorrectness, is the issue of abortion. One would think, given the general sense that pro-choice is the dominant cultural attitude of
The same goes for the issue of Islam. And with regard to that, the mainstream mood and attitude is decidedly PC MC. That is why Law & Order produced that show that caught Spencer's attention. And that is why innumerable other shows over the years -- including the entire Law & Order franchise (the original show plus Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: SVU), the former NYPD Blue, 24, the former J.A.G., its spinoff Navy NCIS, Cold Case, Without A Trace, and others -- have presented the Muslim angle from a decidedly PC MC perspective.
This is not, therefore, a problem of dastardly "Elites", or of nefarious "Leftists", or of a cabal of powerful leaders whose personal psychological peccadillos and foibles -- Fitzgerald's preposterous Esdrujula Explanation -- are determining the general flow of the West.
Not every show which I have seen over the years with a Muslim angle in the plot is quite as egregious as the particular Law & Order episode adverted to by the Jihad Watch post. Often, it is more subtly and insidiously packaged, with the most frequent scenario containing the following elements:
1) a crime is perpetrated that contains some vague features that might be interpreted as having a Muslim angle (most commonly under the vague umbrella of "terrorism", less commonly having to do with "religious culture" motivating murder, such as something vaguely resembling an honor killing, or issues surrounding the crime, such as religious polygamy or forced marriage on young girls, etc.)
2) the investigators initially pursue the Muslim angle -- obviously scripted as a token nod to the Muslim angle set up in order to be quickly dismissed later (with subtle or not-so-subtle jabs at "bigotry" and "racism" in the script along the way, as well as pointed digs at the paranoia and bureaucratic ineptness of Homeland Security)
3) as the plot unwinds, it is revealed that the real culprit is a non-Muslim and that the crime either has nothing to do with anything resembling Islam or "religious culture", or worse yet, is rooted in some non-Islamic "religious culture" -- (usually some flavor of evangelical Christianity, less often ultra-Orthodox Judaism, most rarely something vaguely Hindu or something vaguely resembling Cajun voodoo or Caribbean Santeria; but never, of course, anything Islamic).
Another trope common to most of these shows and movies is the almost exclusive use of Russian and/or East European villains, which provide the following advantages for producers laboring under the PC MC mental straitjacket:
a) They are sufficiently non-Western to show that the producers and writers are reaching out for an "edgy" culprit to portray, while being sufficiently Western to avoid any taint of "bigotry"
b) Russians and Eastern Europeans obviously don't take any offense at such portrayals, which number quite likely in the hundreds by now, and so the producers don't have to worry about death threats or actual attacks, as they would if they depicted Muslims as the villains.
This brings us back to the Law & Order episode showcased by Jihad Watch: its producers and writers ingeniously combined the whole shebang. They had a Muslim lead which turned out to be false; the Muslims involved were conspicuously white-looking Albanian Muslims; and in the process of ruling them out as a false lead, the show's detectives and their boss, the unctuously PC Lieutenant Anita Van Buren, are able to arrogantly smile with amusement at the incompetent Fed who has been monitoring the Muslims in question for possible links to terrorism which, of course, turn out to be completely unsubstantiated.
Responses to the Comments of Jihad Watchers:
In a tv series E-Ring (featuring Dennis Hopper) there was an episode, in which a radical Christian group invaded a mosque. When I noticed the plot line, I deleted the episode from my receiver without watching.
This commenter has it precisely backwards. E-Ring was not short-lived because it had a story line about terrorism that was PC MC. To think this is bizarre, especially when dozens and dozens of major TV shows and movies have similarly depicted the problem of terrorism in totally PC MC terms -- as it is when they much more rarely broach the broader subject of Islam, such as in the 2005 movie directed by Ridley Scott, Kingdom of Heaven, that elevated the PC MC revisionist history of the Crusades to the silver screen. This commenter's myopia is typical of Jihad Watchers who routinely express the sentiment that most ordinary folks throughout the West must agree with them, and that therefore only those dastardly "Elites" are the problem. Would that our complex, thorny problem of PC MC were that simple.
This crap is never going to end unless the people responsible are called to task for their mistakes.
http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Contact_Us/
NBC produces this show. You can go to the above link and let them know what you think about their sick fantasies.
Of course, we should all engage such efforts as boycotts. However, to think that a boycott of sufficient size against the PC MC depicted on the Law & Order episode could be marshalled is the product of sheer fantasy.
That was weird, and a good example of why I killed my television years ago...
It's not weird at all. It reflects the supremely normal and mainstream tenets of PC MC. And it's certainly not limited to TV.
I got about a minute in and after I threw up my lunch, I realized that only in a fictional world can the premise of this show be put forward.
Reality outright refuses it, for this is the inverse of reality, plain and simple.
Who wrote this script?
Who wrote the script? Ordinary Westerners unremarkably breathing in the all-pervasive gas of PC MC; that's who. Yes, reality does "outright refuse" the premise of that show. However, reality is more complicated than that. Reality, unfortunately, is, on the sociopolitical level, an arena of competing tensions of interpretation, functioning within complexly interrelated systems of thought on the paradigmatic level. And currently, the paradigm of PC MC is dominant and mainstream throughout the West -- and because of this, the particular, albeit massive, reality of Islam's danger is systemically whitewashed. That too, unfortunately, is part of reality. The resistance against reality is, regrettably, all too often part of the warp and woof of overall reality. Curiously, enough Jihad Watchers have a good handle on the reality of Islam's danger, but they have a strange inability to grasp the proper dimensions of that other reality -- the West's irrational resistance to the primary reality.
WE need to mock these idiots at every opportunity. Plots like this are simply stupid. It's worthy of Seinfeld's bizarro world.
Again, another Jihad Watcher implies that the Law & Order show was remarkably bizarre, when it is the unremarkable norm throughout the West. Jihad Watchers, one must conclude, inhabit their own Bizarro world.
This must not be dropped. Every company that advertises on this show must be boycotted, relentlessly, and boycotted until it drops the show, and until that show drops all of those respoonsible for this disgusting farce.
This was Hugh Fitzgerald's comment. He reiterates the call to boycott which many other commenters make. While abstractly it is a good call to make, concretely it betrays a naive optimism about the numbers of people who correctly grasp the problem. And, as I stated in my introduction above, producers and creators of extremely popular TV shows and movies have a firm grasp on what is safely mainstream to purvey, and what is not -- for millions, if not billions, of dollars ride on their knowledge for which they pay expert analysts. And the PC MC views they purvey regularly about anything within the orbit of the problem of Islam demonstrates the very reasonable conclusion that the numbers of ordinary people are on the side of PC MC in this regard. The marshalling of a massively effective boycott requires sufficient numbers. It is highly unlikely that they exist in America or anywhere in the West on the side of Jihad Watchers.
Totally stupid. Hollywood are such cowards.
Here, this commenter is blaming "Hollywood" -- i.e., those dastardly "liberal Elites". A severely restricted delimitation of the problem.
Seriously, this is UNACCEPTABLE in todays world.
Yes it is; but I suspect the problem is far deeper and broader than this commenter is capable of grasping.
I think the main point is being missed here...these people are extremely AFRAID of muslims. They know that one false move, one false word, and muslims who live in America may be cutting their throats and stabbing knives with notes into their chests. Very simple. Its very easy to mock peaceful people...takes no guts.
This has become a rather common trope in the Anti-Islam Movement -- explaining the general Western inertia and irrationality about Islam in terms of a semi-conscious fear of Islamic violence. While I agree that this is one factor among many, it hardly explains the massiveness, the dominance, and the axiomatic ordinariness of PC MC with regard to Islam. At best, the semi-conscious fear is simply a crack in the structure of mainstream PC MC, indicative of the incoherence and irrationality of PC MC and therefore an incipient symptom of reality breaking through as the increasing pressure of the data of Islam exerts itself upon the minds -- the millions and millions of minds -- who maintain PC MC. But, unfortunately, rather than having the effect of undoing the PC MC paradigm, this slowly increasing pressure seems to have the paradoxical effect of actually strengthening PC MC in their minds. I suppose this is rational in a way -- the logic of denial oftentimes gets stronger, not weaker, when dangerously undermining evidence becomes more apparent to the person in denial. And this is what has been happening in the years after 911 on a collective sociological level throughout the West. But in the case of PC MC, this logic of denial is not some flimsy psychological position: it is based in a complex, solid sociological structure of axioms that has evolved over many decades to its position of mainstream dominance -- to a great extent achieving that dominance because of its interlocking relationship with other axioms of modern Progress that are good and beneficial.
Amazing. They make the entire focus of the show the supposed violent reaction of the Christians to some abstract muslim atrocities. Yet they have NO evidence of any of this occurring among Christians.
Not amazing at all. Quite un-amazing, actually.
Why don't they focus the show in reality? Show the muslim jihad scumbags at their best, shooting crippled old men in the head, throwing acid in the faces of women, and blowing up school busses full of children, ALL IN THE NAME OF ALLAH!
What planet is this Jihad Watcher on? Apparently, a planet where PC MC is not the dominant and mainstream worldview of the entire West. I.e., not planet Earth.
Those brave Hollyweird liberals, so willing to standup to nothing, while pretending to stand for something.
Once again, restricting the problem to the "liberal Elites". As though solidly capitalistic CEOs and producers would go against the mainstream grain because of their personal ideology. No, their bottom line is money, and they have determined that the feathers of the mainstream would be less ruffled by shows like the Law & Order episode than by shows that showed more truth about Islam.
Disgusting.
This is one of the reasons I got rid of my TV.
Posted by: US_infidel at March 20, 2008 2:04 PM
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This particular Jihad Watcher seems to be part of that Branson, Missouri minority of Americans who are curiously out of the general mainstream sunshine of American culture, cultivating their subculture of a kind of Norman Rockwell America whose putatively dominant representation is largely mythic. Perhaps this accounts for the strange disconnection from the proper dimensions of PC MC evident in so many Jihad Watchers; though not in all of them by any means.
What's REALLY sickening is all the posts on the clipboard of people saying the episode was good! WTF????????????????????????????
Gee -- a Jihad Watcher getting a glimpse of the larger reality out there of PC MC.
The writers are obviously seeing the muslim violence, but are in terror of bringing the perpetrators front and center. Why can't the writers admit that muslim terror works and they are afraid of writing the truth.
Christians may critisize their content, but I don't see any of them going 'jihad' on the writers. And the writers know this, they know Christians are safe to critisize.
Another Jihad Watcher putting forth the "fear factor" to explain PC MC. We discussed this above.
That appears to be the problem. True blue Christians are too busy trying to teach creationism and stop abortion to be bothered with something as trivial as jihad. They have spent millions on anti-abortion lobbyists and these looney creation museums. The not-so-Christian Christians are too busy trying to live from day to day.
Then there are the missionaries sent into harms way spreading the "good news" in places where ther are most likely to be jailed or killed.
This summation is hardly "the problem". The problem is far deeper and broader than merely the failure of Western Christians to wake up and take a stand. For one thing, such a summation ignores the wider ocean of modern Western secularism in which Christianity is but one current, albeit a great one.
Christians are very fragmented.
Again, strength in numbers but if those numbers are fragmented... NADA!
Lets just hope everyone comes together in November's election so the second-to-last nail doesn't get nailed into America's coffin.
The solution to the problem of Islam should not depend solely on Western Christians somehow uniting around that problem. Such a simple-minded desideratum ignores two massive sociocultural phenomena: First, that millions of Christians are deeply PC MC themselves, and a goodly chunk of those millions outright Leftists. Secondly, that, again, Christians are not the West: they are one part of the modern West which is dominantly structured by secularism. It is the secularist structure that houses the source of the problem, and it is to that structure we must look for a way to solve this problem -- for secularism is not going to go away (God willing).
This episode of Law & Order was reminiscent of last fall's Cold Case episode (CBS) in which Christian students stoned one of promiscuous students. However, the Cold Case episode didn't mention Islam, as far as I remember.
. . .Both Cold Case and Law & Order are shows with a high viewership. I suspect that they have an influence. People are inclined to believe such fictitious representations over the facts.
This is giving way too much credit to the ability of TV shows to "influence" people's minds -- and conversely, it is ridiculously condescending about the ordinary audiences who could be so easily "influenced". No, the much more likely fact here is that, again, these shows and movies calculate what is already the predisposition of the audience, and run with that. Billions of dollars are at stake for the CEOs and producers. They wouldn't take any risks with that. A counter-argument to this would have to produce rather solid evidence that these CEOs and producers, and their expensive teams of demographics experts, have somehow got their knowledge completely wrong. I have yet to see such solid evidence.
We live in a world where the media, both the news and entertainment, twist and invert reality.
It is much more than "the media" that is twisting and inverting the reality of the problem of Islam. Here, another Jihad Watcher exemplifies that curious delimitation of the massive nature and dimensions of PC MC. Don't these Jihad Watchers get out and talk to people, for crying out loud? I would bet that every single Jihad Watcher has had the dismaying experience of finding out that the majority of his or her family and friends and colleagues are PC MC about Islam. I suspect, therefore, that Jihad Watchers are themselves in a kind of denial, denying the implications of their own personal experience with their social circles around them -- implications that indicate that the majority of ordinary people, not merely dastardly "Elites" and "Liberals", are Believers in PC MC with regard to Islam and with regard to the vast majority of Muslims who must be nice decent moms and pops like the rest of us!
Typical left wing propaganda. Why am I not surprised?
Ah, there's the Leftist Bogeyman again. Unfortunately, that Bogeyman leaves utterly unexplained why Bush and Condi Rice and the majority of Conservatives out there would basically find nothing wrong with that "propaganda".Look, it's a TV show, not a documentary. They have sponsors; as a rule, they are pretty pro-Jewish. But every now and then they do a Muslim show and of course they have to show some of them are decent, the good iman who turns state's evidence, etc. But they have also shown the darker side of Islam many times, so I'd take any of these shows with a large dose of bourbon.
I have not once seen a Law & Order show that depicted the "darker side of Islam", and I have been a regular viewer since 1990, missing only a precious few shows.
By all means complain, and boycott, for the obvious transferral of blame, from Islam onto Christianity, of the kind of punishment routinely meted out in those "honor killiings," is misleading, cowardly, and ultimately, dangerous.
This is Hugh Fitzgerald again. Of course, he's right as usual within the focus of his delimitation: the show's plot was misleading, cowardly and ultimately dangerous. However, more significantly, it reflected ordinary and mainstream axioms that reign throughout the modern West. And this broader, deeper and more sociologically and ideologically systemic fact makes the rest of Fitzgerald's comment also suffer from its ignorance of that fact:
And a boycott of advertisers is still a good idea. Perhaps, however, those in Congress who are supposed to oversee the FCC, and thus those on the FCC who are supposed to oversee, among other things, television, can also be alerted.
Alerted by whom? By a tiny minority of Jihad Watchers? Congress and the FCC will not pay much heed to such crackpots who are not only an insignificant minority still, but who more importantly voice concerns that are easily and automatically categorizable into the pre-fab axiomatic slots of the dominant and mainstream PC MC paradigm -- the slots, that is, of "bigotry" and "racism".
But for now, start with that boycott. Make it spread. Get the subject onto radio talk shows. Let it pullulate, and percolate.
I'm all for this; but one has to be realistic. And Hugh does not seem to have his feet touching the ground here at all.
Sharia Law & Order:
"In the Islamic criminal justice system, the people are oppressed by two separate, yet equally important groups: The religious police who investigate the crime, and the judges who hand down sentences of stoning, lashings, beheading, or amputation. These are their stories."
Da-DUM!
The above was posted by Marisol, one of the people on the staff at Jihad Watch. She probably has not seen my post on my other blog, The Hesperado (and why would she, seeing as I have been irrationally, petulantly and unfairly ostracized by her boss and mentor Robert Spencer and have been as a consequence banned numerous times from Jihad Watch?), in which I anticipated her spoof with an imagined spinoff of the Law & Order franchise into Law & Order: HCU (Hate Crimes Unit).
This segment of Law and Order illustrates media distortions of 'issues' at their most insidious. Who knows HOW much income media producers like LAW AND ORDER'S Dick Wolf, his sponsors and stars receive from the oil-rich Muslim world for cranking out this type of heavily-biased fiction?
Ah, now the Conspiracy Theories start seeping through. Jihad Watchers have to find some way of explaining phenomena of PC MC whenever it rears its head, as it does with this particular show, and as it does a thousand times a day throughout the West. Preposterously, the above commenter surmises that the "media producer" Dick Wolf is being bribed by Saudi Muslims to put on such Islam-friendly plots. This is the kind of desperate explanation people will reach for when they have not digested the much broader, deeper and sadder fact that PC MC is not the tool of dastardly "Elites" and their oil-rich Muslim hirelings, but is rather simply the dominant and mainstream worldview throughout the West. Were it not dominant and mainstream, people like Dick Wolf -- assuming the absurd scenario above -- would not have the traction to pursue his Macchiavellian manipulations: for they would be rationally recognized as dangerous, if not treasonous; and appropriate action would follow swiftly. No, the Dick Wolfs of the world are not evil wolves; they are simply trying to make and keep their millions (and many their billions) by licking their finger and putting it up to the wind of the dominant sociocultural atmosphere: and that wind is decidedly PC MC, and it blows.
Although this show IS admittedly fiction (and which is something I enjoy, ands I admit am even occasionally entertained by this particular program) millions who watch it are not likely to understand that this show does NOT reflect reality (except the minds of the persons who script and produce it) and will buy into the nonsense it is selling us here.
What utter nonsense -- a patronizing condescending attitude to his own fellow Americans. So desperate are some Jihad Watchers to explain the massive dominance of PC MC, they will even sacrifice their fellow Americans as sheeps stupid enough to be led by the nose by Elites who manipulate them. The more reasonable, and less caustically cynical, alternative is that most Americans, and most people throughout the West, are not easily manipulable sheep (for that is, ironically, the cynical view of Leftist sociologists and anthropologists), but are reasonably intelligent and decent people, more or less. They don't form their hearts and minds on the basis of what TV shows or movies or pop songs or media pundits purvey: in fact, what is purveyed popularly reflects the dominant sociocultural atmosphere that all concerned share. And that points to a much larger, deeper, and more complicated problem.
Islam's war is not religious as we understand the term to be: it is an eternal war to obliterate everything that is non-Islamic. Thus, democracy and freedoms are well and truly threatened by Islam's present jihad wars against the west (which is not a problem with Christianity). Since when would that be an esoteric point-- except perhaps in the universe of Dick Wolf.
Good Lord! As I read through these comments, I am more and more dismayed by the disconnection from reality of Jihad Watchers. This above commenter thinks that it is only the Dick Wolfs of the world -- those dastardly, probably "liberal" Elites -- who can't see the dangerous supremacism of Islam. I swear, these Jihad Watchers must not get out much. Unbeknownst to the above commenter, the "world of Dick Wolf" is in fact the same world of millions and millions of ordinary Westerners who agree that Islam must be "respected" and that the vast majority of Muslims must be good, decent moms and pops like the rest of us, and who sincerely believe that to think otherwise is to be "bigoted" and even "racist". Perhaps this curious delimitation, this strange truncation by such Jihad Watchers of the problem of PC MC down to the level of "the world of Dick Wolf" -- i.e., the "Elites" -- functions as a kind of way to make the magnitude of the problem of PC MC more psychologically manageable for them. But Jihad Watchers are not children; I will not condescend to this childish mentality. I expect them to think like the mature adults I know they are.
The same commenter then goes on to articulate some things that finally begin to slightly glimpse the larger picture:
Yes indeed: if more people understood the problem, the Dick Wolfs of the world would not have the traction they enjoy. That is what I have been saying for several months in over 100 essays here and on my other blog. But that's not all. We must also ask: Why don't more people understand the problem? That is the 6-million-dollar question. Impermissible answers include:
1) Conspiracy Theories
2) Regarding Western people as sheep easily manipulable by "Elites"
3) Thinking that Western businessmen and politicians would knowingly and treasonously betray the West for money (from "oil-rich Muslims").
The same above-mentioned commenter ruins his tiny glimpse into the problem with his final statement:
The universe of Dick Wolf is out of synch with reality (but is it maybe in synch with Arab under-the-table payola?).
The universe of Dick Wolf is not out of synch with reality, insofar as reality includes dominant social paradigms. It is the dominant social paradigm of PC MC that is out of synch with reality -- at least with regard to the superiority of the West and the danger of Islam. But to dismiss a Dick Wolf as being "out of synch with reality" is itself to be strangely out of synch with reality.
And this is why I watch South Park. Say what you want about the show at least they're still willing to offend EVERYONE equally...
This is patently erroneous. South Park has not offended everyone "equally". This commenter must have a strange notion of what "equally" means. Anyone with a lick of sense would say that "equally" means at least close to 50/50. The ratio of South Park offenses to Islam compared with their offenses to Christianity and Judaism is, on the contrary, about 10/90, at best. And that is only looking at the matter quantitatively. Qualitatively, the disparity is also unacceptably great: the couple of measly times they insulted Islam, it was an insult to bin Laden and al Qaeda -- hardly "daring" targets. They have never insulted Mohammed himself, while they have insulted and mocked Jesus Christ dozens of times. They have never insulted mosques and religious orders of Islam, while they have insulted Christian churches, church-goers, and denominations (Catholic, Mormon) dozens of times. They have never insulted Allah, but they have insulted the Judaeo-Christian God Himself dozens of times. They have never insulted Muslims per se, but they have insulted Christians per se dozens of times. The above Jihad Watcher is ludicrously off base. Another Jihad Watcher a couple of posts down at least corrected him on this point.
The leftist zealots and propagandists of this trash are no different than their counterparts of CNN, MSNBC and so-forth – they are all on a mission to distort and manipulate truth to meet their leftist, political-correct agenda.
They loathe Christianity… until it comes to the hate-monger and racist Pastor Wright and his disciple Barak: or is it the other way about?
Another delimitation -- to "the Media" and to the somewhat wider bugaboos, "Leftists". And at the end of the comment above, we see the frequent consequence of such delimitation: the creation of an explanatory vacuum that is easily filled with a Conspiracy Theory.
The chosen stupidity from this station [sic -- he means "network", NBC] that has already been labeled a left wing station. The left wingers are just idiots - dangerous idiots.
Delimitation to "Leftists" again. One wonders, if this is only or mainly a problem of "Leftists", why a Pentagon under a Republican administration for 8 solid years is also just as PC MC as NBC is. But I guess Jihad Watchers can't wonder beyond their determined little boxes.It was so very over-the-top, even by Law & Order standards, with the moral/cultural equivalence message, that I figured it either had to be a self-parody, OR, they were encrypting the real message (i.e., reverse the religious labels to understand actual episode's story) because they were too afraid to tell the story the way it would (and does) play out in the real world.
Or perhaps they don't grasp how they be-clown themselves.
It was not over the top even by Law & Order standards: it was, in fact, standard fare from Law & Order -- not only in terms of every episode I have seen that deals with anything Islamic (whether vaguely, peripherally or more centrally), but also with scores of episodes I have seen on PC issues. The theory the above commenter broaches is absurd, and resembles a kind of reverse Conspiracy Theory. Not surprisingly, other Jihad Watchers subsequently picked up on it, but, of course, did not appropriately mock it.
In a rare fit of television watching I did catch this episode, and I had the same hypothesis churning in my head.
My take is that they could be trying to demonstrate how absurd religiously motivated punishment for moral crimes in Islam is by framing it in Christianity.
Thus another Jihad Watcher chimes in supportively for the absurd theory -- and yet another:
"the folks at NBC are trying to send us a secret message and what they really mean is the reverse of this"
To me his explanation is not pure sarcasm.
Maybe the broadcaster has a completely dhimmi-attitude but surely it is possible that the writer of this episode meant to send this (hardly) secret message.
So many ordinary people immediately see that this is a reversion of the real world.
Other Jihad Watcher comments:
Spineless, clueless media, seem to be ever so creative creating new fictional enemies and missing the real ones.
It's not just "the Media" purveying this PC MC myth. In fact, the Media is a money-making machine and they do not routinely take risks with what they purvey to the general public: they would not purvey a view, whether couched in fiction or mantled in journalistic fact and/or opinion, if they did not think it was safely mainstream. Would that the problem of PC MC were delimited as severely as Jihad Watchers strangely imagine. It would make our problem a hell of a lot easier.
The Archduke of Canterbury has suggested that sharia law might be OK. We have Christian leaders writing pitifully groveling letters to Mulsims. I am beginning to think that the clergy cannot be counted on.
Beginning to think? Where has this Jihad Watcher been for the past 50 years? There are millions of Western Christians who are PC MC. Look at the National Council of Churches, and all the different mainstream denominations that fall under their umbrella. Look at all the Catholics and Protestants who regularly participate in "inter-faith" seminars with Muslims. Even most Southern Evangelicals I would wager are PC MC when it comes to Islam.
Fortunately, most Americans, even those who sometimes entertain themselves with vacuous network programming, are not as stupid as the producers and writers think they are. If you polled those who viewed these idiotic Cold Case and Law & Order episodes, and asked them: OK, now how many of you think that Christian fundamentalists routinely murder their friends and relatives who act in what they think is an immoral manor, only the most brain-dead 'kos kidz' would raise their hands.
First of all, the question the above Jihad Watcher formulates is misleading and beside the point. It would not properly screen for PC MC people who otherwise accept whitewashes of Islam and who would brand as "bigots" anyone who overly criticized Islam and Muslims. Secondly, the above Jihad Watcher is in for a rude surprise the day he finds out that PC MC is much, much broader and deeper than "koz kids". He should already know this. The fact that he doesn't makes one wonder what planet these Jihad Watchers are on. And more from the same Jihad Watcher:
As for everyone else, well, I think they 'get' the point, which is that it's really about another "religion", but either 1) the producers and script writers are too cowardly to portray it as such or 2) but it would be so unfair and racist of us to think that ONLY THAT "religion" would do such a thing.
Because the above Jihad Watcher (like others above) labors under the severe delimitation of the problem of PC MC, he buys into the absurd notion that the creators of that episode were covertly trying to convey the proper message through reverse code.
NBC is, by far, the worst of the networks. I would get outraged by the garbage that would occur on shows such as "Crossing Jordan" and "Law and Order, SVU." When these shows first started out, they were not bad. I especially liked "Law and Order" and watched it for many years. If I had watched this episode, I probably would have taken a bat to my TV. Something very bad has happened at NBC.
All the networks are PC MC. There is no network "worse" than the others in this regard. Secondly, NBC hasn't deteriorated over time with regard to PC MC (unless, of course, you go back to the 1950s perhaps).
I've seen numerous episodes over the past year on Law & Order, as well as on a few other similar programs. The pro-Muslim push is the reason this year's "24" will go down the ratings tube and may have been why Joel Surnow left the show. As long as the liberals control the programming, it will get worse, not better.
The show 24 has been largely pro-Muslim from the start. The ground-breaking early season that portrayed a Muslim sleeper cell in the U.S.A. of course could not help to insinuate anti-Muslim implications; however, everything else the show did with regard to the problem of Islamic terrorism undermined those implications, preposterously and effectively -- by, among other egregious plot devices, making the Muslims mere pawns in a larger international intrigue whose real masterminds were a cabal of Russian ex-KGB plus American businessmen and politicians reaching right up to the President of the United States! The show repeated the same formula for its sixth season (about which I wrote on my other blog, The Hesperado).And, the coup de grace, the above Jihad Watcher blames it all on the "liberals".
What I'm thinking is that maybe they're doing what George Orwell did in Animal Farm. Instead of writing about the Soviet Union as such, he writes about communism in terms of a farmyard.
Maybe this is what they are trying to do. Maybe they just can't write about muslims, so they have to say that it's christians who doing, what we all know that muslims always do.
Maybe they assume or are hoping, that their audience will know what they are trying to say. And that is that it is muslims who are the danger, but because they can't say it, they have to frame it in terms of christians.
Actually I think that it's pretty clever.
Again the preposterous theory of a covert encryption of the proper plot. Such a preposterous theory can only be entertained by those who in fantastic ignorance of the mainstream dominance of PC MC, presume a vacuum that must be filled by some kind of explanation, no matter how ludicrous. It couldn't possibly be that the show's producers, creators, writers and supporters -- and viewers -- all unremarkably believe in the PC MC nonsense by which such a plot as the one Law & Order aired flows perfectly logically and naturally. No, that cannot be, say the Jihad Watchers -- for most people in the West must think like us! Therefore, there must be some other explanation for shows like this -- either dastardly "Elites" are manipulating us poor ordinary folks; or there is some Conspiracy Theory of similar "Elites" being bribed by oil-rich Muslims to subvert the West; or the show's creators are actually encoding the proper message in cryptic reverse-speak. Yes, that must be it!Incidentally, I have not included many comments by Jihad Watchers who mock and denigrate TV and say they haven't watched it in years -- as though there aren't millions of Western people who don't watch TV (or who watch it very seldomly) who are not still PC MC. Abstaining from TV is not going to inoculate people from PC MC -- unless TV is one of those evil devices being used by the dastardly nefarious "Elites" to manipulate the minds of all the hapless ordinary sheep of the West!
Well, as usual, the leftist types in Hollywood are being useful idiots for the enemy!!!
They are, for sure; but they aren't the only ones in the West, not by a long shot.
If I was a muslim and if I had any brains at all, I would be very worried by this episode of Law and Order.
The Christian pastor is speaking the truth when he says that muslims intend to seduce or rape western infidel women. We all know what is happening in Malmo Sweden, and elsewhere.
What this dunderheaded Jihad Watcher is ostensibly obtuse to is that the messenger of this message in the Law & Order episode is set up to be an evangelical fanatic who countenances murder for the "crime" of adultery.
They are probably worried about being sued by CAIR so they have to take precautions. But because the truth is being enunciated by the "bad guy" christian pastor, CAIR can't do anything, but the message is still getting out there.
No, the only message "getting out there" is that -- at best -- Christians can be equally fanatical as Muslims; and -- at worst -- Christians are more of a danger than Muslims are. The same Jihad Watcher quotes some of the dialogue from the fanatical evangelist preacher on the show:
"What do you say to muslims who murder christians"? "This means war."
"We are engaged in a great battle with muslims."
"In case you haven't noticed we're at war. A war of religions, our enemies understand that" They use their madrassas to turn out soldiers against us. "They want to take over the world and install a caliphate."
Again, this is not a good thing that these truths are put forth on a popular TV drama -- when the mouth out of which they are being uttered is packaged as a fundamentalist, fanatic, extremist evangelist, for God's sake! It is precisely a bad thing: it reinforces the prevailing PC MC paradigm that makes any substantive criticism of Islam the fodder of extremist alarmist "bigots".
My God, what's happened to my beloved Law and Order - it used to be one of the best-written, most honest and LEAST politically correct drama on TV. I remember an episode about female genital mutilation, involving an Egyptian immigrant family, very obviously Muslims - would they even dare do an episode like that now?
I remember that episode too. Of course, since it aired ten years ago, I had to refresh my memory, and I found a rather thorough synopsis of the plot that comports well with my memory. In a nutshell, that plot was this:1) A dead body is found in a car in New York City.
2) The L&O detectives (at that time, the great Jerry Orbach (PBUH) and the short-lived Benjamin Bratt) uncover the Egyptian identity of the victim, and the fact that he had a doctor's satchel with a chemical substance also used in the making of bombs, and begin to conjecture possible terrorism (keep in mind this was the late 1990s, a few years after the first World Trade Center car-bombing by Muslims)
3) This, of course, turns out to be a false lead. However, it is determined that the Egyptian doctor was murdered by the Muslim father of a girl who was going to have her genitals mutilated by the doctor at the behest of the Muslim father's wife's brother.
Agreed: this plot is better than most in actually portraying one of the many pathologies of Islam, namely FGM (female genital mutilation). However, the show diluted the problem in a couple of key ways:
1) Islam was never mentioned as a source of FGM (leaving the doors wide open for the common "cultural" explanation).
2) The show prominently featured Muslims resisting FGM -- indeed, the father goes so far as to kill the doctor who performed the FGM operation on his daughter (and the mother near the end of the show also expresses passionate disapproval of FGM). A much more likely scenario would have been the reverse: a father killing family members for resisting his daughter's FGM, or even killing his own daughter for her "impure" sexual activities (real or imagined).
While it is arguable that such a show would probably never be aired in the years post-911 -- and that therefore there has been a deterioration into increasing PC -- two factors militate against exaggerating the significance of such an argument:
1) PC is obviously a lot older than 2001; and the 1997 show about FGM cited above was already swathed in PC MC assumptions, and also was pointedly detached from the problem of terrorism.
2) The undeniably palpable increase in PC MC since 911 is less to do with it being a new phenomenon than with it being simply the manifestation of the dominant mainstream and its representatives and participants (both "Elites" and ordinary folks) beginning the process of "circling the wagons" so to speak, as they begin to perceive an increase in two pressures:
a) more and more signs of criticism of Islam
b) more and more manifestations of Islamic pathology by Muslims themselves, as Muslims themselves start behaving more and more excitedly about the smell of global Jihad in the air.
Western society is circling the wagons because the vast majority of its members are afraid not of Islam but of themselves: their own Western society, or broad sectors of it, going down the "slippery slope" toward genocide -- and short of that, increasing in "bigotry" and "hatred" and "hate crimes" -- against Muslims.
The ONLY thing the NBC Nihilists understand is MONEY. Therefore hit them where it hurts. Boycott the advertisers. . .
While the above Jihad Watcher at least sees that money drives the production of such shows, it's not "nihilism" that is problem. Evidently, he like all the other Jihad Watchers, can't seem to get it into his thick skull that it is precisely because money is the main driving force here that proves the problem is much broader and deeper than mere "Elites" trying to manipulate society. In a free democracy, businessmen like the producers of Law & Order, and their bosses the owners of NBC, put on shows that they think will be safely, comfortably received by the mainstream. Anything else would be too financially risky. So the above Jihad Watcher does have it half right: indeed, the only thing they understand is money: and that is why so many PC MC shows and movies are produced: because there is a sufficiently broad mainstream of millions and millions of consumers out there who want that and who do not want the opposite -- politically incorrect views that rock the boat. It's that simple. But perhaps not simple enough for simple-minded Jihad Watchers.
TRUST ME ON THIS --ITS THE ADVERTISERS YOU GO TO--THEY COULD NOT CARE LESS FOR HOLLYWOOD'S PREACHING THEY ARE BUSINESS PEOPLE WHO ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN SELLING THEIR PRODUCTS.
True enough: however, I am not optimistic that there is anywhere near enough of a sufficient groundswell to make the advertisers worry about their product placement. They and the network executives work together with expert analysts to figure out where the broad demographic stands on issues. And common sense dictates that they have determined, long ago, that the broad demographic is more comfortable with PC MC themes whenever Islam is the topic, than not. It's that simple.
I have already contacted 2 bishops who have agreed to help and will contact the other 5 in the rest of the immediate region. Thats just of one denomination of one region! Contact as many as you can of every region. Look up churches in your local area of all denominations and email or mail them to do the same.
This Jihad Watcher and others who follow his advice will be in for a rude awakening, when they discover that the broad majority of "Christian pastors" are in fact PC MC about the Islam issue, not the other way around.
Its already been happening actually because NBC has made the mistake of becoming extremely left wing in its other areas of programming and HAS NOW HAD TO PAY BACK MONEY TO ITS ADVERTISERS BECAUSE ITS VIEWER RATINGS DROPPED SIGNIFICANTLY!
here is some proof on that:
The link provided by the above Jihad Watcher offers zero proof of the main claim -- that NBC's financial problems were directly caused by its putatively Left-leaning direction of late. The linked article only makes the conjecture. The worse mistake the above Jihad Watcher makes is in thinking the magnitude of the problem is reducible to "Leftism", and that this "Leftism" is a fairly recent development.
Conclusion:
The above comments by Jihad Watchers show that their time spent on Jihad Watch under the influence and tutelage of Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald has done nothing to provide them with a proper pedagogy by which to begin to understand the dimensions and nature of the problem of PC MC in the modern West -- the single most important factor preventing the West from dealing rationally with the danger of Islam.
In this light it was hardly surprising that E-Ring never made it past first season.