Pass The Zero

Media commentator Brent Bozell and Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Fumento draw attention to some of the latest 'ground-breaking' shows on US television and point out that the Hollywood emperors have no clothes.

Fumento's article talks of Over There, a hatchet job on US involvement in Iraq passing itself off as credible drama.

And of the show Weeds, the central character of which is a sympathically portrayed widow who sells marijuana to make ends meet, Bozell writes:

Corrupting society and championing illegal acts as harmless is all in a day's work at Viacom. It's always fun to squeeze a few laughs out of selling sandwich bags of dope. Pot is "so in the zeitgeist," claimed series creator Jenji Kohan, and "I thought of a female sort of anti-hero who did something risky, but not too offensive. She couldn't be a coke dealer." In other words, trafficking in one illegal substance is beyond the pale; in another, it's "edgy" and "exactly the right thing for us."

Moral relativism is alive and well at Viacom.

Bozell also observes:

Deep at the heart of "Weeds" (and the shows that it apes, from "Desperate Housewives" to "The Sopranos") is a very cynical notion that no one actually lives a conventionally moral life, especially in the suburbs. Star Mary-Louise Parker explained the show was about "the myth of suburbia ... and how it seems like normalcy and perfection and what is actually behind that, how that actually doesn't exist."

This truly is at the heart of much of Hollywood and TV Land's output these days - convincing people that normal is abnormal. And in the next paragraph, Bozell highlights the motivation:

You can almost feel the hate coming out of Kohan against suburban neighborhoods: "They all look pretty, but they're built like crap. It's the same house over and over, all style, no substance. Everything in their world is mass-marketed. There, homes are full of condo furniture, which looks perfect at first, but it's just trash." Left unspoken: unlike my home.

The film and television industry, to which gravitates a whole realm of damaged and immature psyches, holds us in contempt for being happy with our suburban lots and basically tries to convince us that we're the ones who are freaks.

-- Nick

PS. Zero