Keep Your Politics Out of My Entertainment

Last week I watched one of my usual television shows. It’s one of those shows that are not really very good anymore, but you’ve watched it for so long that you feel obligated to keep watching it out of an obscure sense of loyalty. The show in question is about a group of young doctors and nurses in a busy city hospital. For sake of keeping the show’s identity a secret, we’ll just refer to it as “CR”; short for “Cutting Room”.

Anyway, last weeks episode of CR featured a dual plot line. Not only did we get the usual hospital story line, but we also got a story about one of the former characters that is off doing volunteer work in a foreign land. It’s the extra story line that causes all of the problems with this episode. Doctor Rich (I made that name up) is off in some unidentified desert country somewhere in Africa providing basic medical care and surgery to the people who’ve been displaced by the country’s ongoing civil war. They may have actually mentioned what country it was, but I wasn’t really paying that close attention. Anyway, Dr. Rich is visibly shaken by the horrible conditions that the poor oppressed Muslims are forced to face in the midst of this civil war, although they are somehow able to keep their robes whiter than I can get my socks no matter how much bleach I use. Dr. Rich’s friend, we’ll call him Dr. Jessie J, continually tries to explain the facts of life to him. A paraphrase of their conversations goes something like this:

Dr. Jessie J: “The oppression will continue because the United States has flown the leader of the revolt to Washington for dinner.”

Dr. Rich: “Well, that’s the only way we they can get the oil. They must support the evil oppressor and killer of children.”

Dr. Jessie J: “If only we could get some aid for the poor and oppressed. Unfortunately, it’s always the same. No matter where it is, the Sudan, New Orleans, or here, if the faces are black, the help is slow in coming.”

Now I’ve had just about as much of this crap as I can take! It’s bad enough that I hear this on the news every night, but now I have to listen to this left-wing propaganda in the TV shows that I watch. I’m sick and tired of people whining that the United States government doesn’t care about black people. Aid for New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina was slow for two reasons and neither involved the color of anyone’s skin. The first reason was that FEMA was somewhat ill prepared and unorganized. The second reason was that the people who needed help weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. An evacuation order was given to the city of New Orleans two days prior to Katrina making landfall. The people should have left! The only people who should have ended up in the Superdome are those who were too old or too frail to walk out of town.

As for the whole deal about oil being the motivating factor for the United States, I’ve just got to say, “Why is that a bad reason?” Take a look around. We need oil, lots and lots of oil, and it’s not just for gasoline. We need oil to make plastic and we need plastic for just about everything. Negotiating with those who control the oil seems like a good idea to me. Curiously enough, I didn’t notice any oil drilling equipment or any oil wells anywhere in the African desert setting of last weeks CR.

Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion regardless of how ridiculous it is, even the writers of CR, but there’s a time and a place for everything. If I wanted to listen to political propaganda, I’d watch news programs and opinion pieces. When I’m watching a fictional television show, I want to be entertained. So stop trying to force your own personal manifesto on us and in the immortal words of Kurt Cobain, “Here we are now, entertain us.”

Date Added: 05-03-2006