There is a TV show called Flashpoint. Each episode purports to be a day in the life of a sort of SWAT team that is called out to deal with unusually difficult circumstances, hostages, major robberies in process, bomb threats, etc.
I’ve watched several episodes of it, spread over several months, and somehow the show seems to have a hard time just telling it like it usually is, namely that there are bad guys and good guys, and the good guys usually are wearing uniforms. But on Flashpoint, it seems that the usual deal is to try to make the “bad guys” as likable and humanly accessible as possible, almost to make us root for them…. that is, of course, when the show gets around to having actual bad guys, instead of merely the misunderstanding of the week, or the hurt feelings/over-reaction of the week.
I happened to have DVR’d an episode that aired August 13, called “Follow the Leader” and I just got around to watching it.
It featured (gasp) yet another White Aryan Conspiracy, this one involved with plans to blow up several public facilities, targets chosen to kill as many minorities as possible, along with newly sworn in citizens at a citizenship ceremony, etc. It featured the usual charismatic white middle aged REAL bad guy, along with a couple of “sympathetic” bad guy brothers who are just confused and in over their heads. It also involved the usual trope, namely that the bad guy leader doesn’t plan to sacrifice himself to bomb civilian targets, but instead plans to take advantage of impressionable young people to do it for him, personally blowing up the bombs on the spot if necessary, at the cost of their own lives.
Well. There WAS a Timothy McVey. But as far as anyone can tell, he had only one co-conspirator. That was in 1995. Pretty much all the rest of the terrorist actions that have killed Americans since then have been Islamic terrorists. I honestly can’t remember such a politically motivated, violent event before 1995, unless you count Obama’s friend Bill Ayers and his friends in the Weather Underground bombing this and that, or possibly the Black Panthers, or maybe the Symbionese Liberation Army or something of the sort. As far as I can remember, there has never been a case since 1995 of home-grown, non-Islamic, White Aryan terrorists planning to bomb some innocent people. If there has been such a plan, it apparently was not carried out. Further, the authorities seem not to have arrested anyone planning such a thing… because it would have been HUGE news in the major media, given how interested they are in equating Christian and Islamic “fundamentalists” as being equally dangerous to society.
I turned on my TV earlier today and was greeted by one of those cops shows with lots of brilliant, earnest investigators trying to figure out who murdered a late term abortionist. That happens about once every ten years in the USA, but has happened on TV maybe around a hundred times in the last decade…. or more.
Hollywood is clueless. It hasn’t had an original idea in years. It doesn’t have one today.
So they make cop shows that feature cops who would be nearly unrecognizable in motivation or perspective to most actual working cops…. who are mostly conservative, have a clear view of right and wrong, good and evil, and who don’t normally hew to the politically correct line of most cops on TV, except when forced to by their city councils.
There is one bright spot. A new show called “Chase” in its first two episodes has featured irredeemably evil bad guys, and there is no ambiguity about what should be their just deserts. If they start having the “Chase” federal marshalls chasing down innocent people who accidentally ran afoul of the law, maybe I’ll change my mind. But it looks promising.
Not that I have much time to watch TV. I just got around to watching something I DVR’d in August, after all. But Christmas break is coming, and it would be nice if the villain of the week was actually a villain that we’re likely to run across, instead of one that shows up mostly in the imagination of fevered Hollywood producers.
