ABC’s Scandal [1], which has a fresh episode tonight (Thursday), last week featured “President Fitzgerald Grant,” supposedly a Republican, channeling Piers Morgan as he used the State of the Union address to plead for more gun control: “How many other people’s children are we going to let die before we put a stop to this?”
Audio: MP3 clip [2] [2]
“Grant [3],” played by Tony Goldwyn (IMDB page [4]), recalled how his teen son died of a “fluke” infection (not true, that’s one of many of Scandal’s wild conspiracies), but “there were thousands of people last year who lost their lives in a completely avoidable way.”
He then compared gun rights with slavery: “The right to bear arms -- set in stone in the Constitution by our founding fathers. So was slavery, by the way.”
By that logic, you could say: “The right to free speech -- set in stone in the Constitution by our founding fathers. So was slavery, by the way.”
The fictional President of Hollywood dreams proceeded to lecture, referring to a teacher who witnessed a Sandy Hook-like school shooting: “The right to bear arms -- seems indisputable until the shooter comes, until you’re Lisa Elliot, covered in blood, watching a little girl take her last breath, watching the light go out of her eyes.”
And
true to modern liberalism’s wish to silence views with which they
disagree (making my free speech comparison not so ludicrous), he
maintained: “That is where the argument ends. That is when the debate is
over.”
Scandal was created and is executive-produced by Shonda Rhimes, who held a $32,400 per-person fundriaser with Barack Obama [5] at her home in July on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.
President Grant, in the House chamber, during the October 2 episode of Scandal, delivering words which generated hearty cheers and applause (the woman seen exiting the Capitol, in the video, is star “Olivia Pope,” a political fixer played by Kerry Washington, who had urged “Grant” to insert the plea into his prepared text):
My son Jerry’s death was a horrible fluke. But it was just that -- a fluke. An accident. A bacterial strain that we do not yet have the capacity to keep our loved ones safe from.
But there were thousands of people last year who lost their lives in a completely avoidable way. The right to bear arms -- set in stone in the Constitution by our founding fathers. So was slavery, by the way. The right to bear arms -- seems indisputable until the shooter comes, until you’re Lisa Elliot, covered in blood, watching a little girl take her last breath, watching the light go out of her eyes. And that, that is where the argument ends. That is when the debate is over.
My son, my son is dead. And I ask you here tonight, without a tele-prompter, without a speech, without anything but my love as a husband and a father and an American, how many other people’s children are we going to let die before we put a stop to this?
— 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. [6]