Some more bashing of Sarah Palin on Sunday night’s episode of CBS’s The Good Wife [1], but the scene also managed to deliver an illustrative dramatization of liberals in a bubble displaying arrogant condescension toward those who dare stray from liberal orthodoxy – and how they learn to despise the Fox News Channel via Jon Stewart.
A couple who are old college friends of liberal lawyer “Diane Lockhart” visit and meet her fiancé, Gary Cole as Sarah Palin supporter, gun owner and ballistics expert “Kurt McVeigh.” An appalled “Francesca” despairs: “But his views, Diane. All his views. He supports Sarah Palin!”
She soon lectures, before getting cut off: “Issues matter. I know we’re all supposed to disagree and smile and go home and pretend it’s all some big tennis match, but people end up poorer, guns end up killing people. Global warming keeps destroying our-”
Audio: MP3 clip [2]
“Francesca,” and husband “Lyle,” played by left-wing comedian Robert Klein, meet “Lockhart” and “McVeigh” in a restaurant where they learn he owns a gun. “Francesca” exclaims: “So you don’t think Sandy Hook changed anything?”
Later, at the apartment of “Lockhart,” played by Christine Baranski, “Francesca expresses her disgust with how her soon-to-be-husband likes Palin. “Lockhart,” a fan of Hillary Clinton’s, laughs as she acknowledges, “I fell in love with a Palin supporter.”
To which “Lyle,” just after grabbing hold of Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, on a bookshelf, scolds: “It’s not funny, Diane. Did you see her? She’s back on Fox.”
“Lockhart” points out: “Oh, you don’t watch Fox.” “Lyle” counters, showing where liberals learn about FNC: “They show clips on Jon Stewart.”
The “Diane Lockhart” - “Kurt McVeigh” liberal/conservative romance has arisen off-and-on over the run of the program, starting in a 2010 episode [3] when she showed him a picture of herself with Hillary Clinton and sent him a gift of a book about Sarah Palin made up of, he discovers by thumbing through it, blank pages “satirically representing,” Amazon.com explained, “the mind and thinking of Sarah Palin.”
In 2011, the show set in a Chicago law firm, gave prime time legitimacy to the presumption the Tea Party is racist [4]. “Kurt McVeigh” was used as a foil as a lawyer in a courtroom tried to discredit “McVeigh,” who testified against a since-exonerated black defendant, by demanding he admit he’s “a member of the Tea Party.” The lawyer asserted “it is our contention that my client’s prosecution was racist,” citing McVeigh’s “membership in a racist organization,” namely the Tea Party.
My previous posts on the political agenda of The Good Wife:
> “CBS Prime Time Judge Declares ‘Global Warming 1, Skeptics 0 [5]’”
> “Judge on CBS Prime Time Drama Cheers ‘Amazing’ Occupy Protesters: ‘I Salute Them [6]’”
> “Prime Time CBS Drama ‘The Good Wife’ Impugns Tea Party as ‘Racist Organization [7]’”
> “CBS Drama Showcases Blank Book that Mocks Palin as Empty-Headed Dunce [8]”
— Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Follow Brent Baker on Twitter. [9]