July 14, 2008, - 9:31 am
“Law & Order” Quota: Show’s Producer Mandates 83% of Criminals Must Be White Rich People
By Debbie Schlussel
Are 83% of criminals in America, wealthy White people? Are they 83% of the murderers (the crime “Law and Order” focuses on)? No, not even close in real life, but they are on “Law and Order.”
My late father always hated when my mother would put “Law & Order” or one of its spin-offs on the TV. In addition to being a show that frequently vilifies Jews and conservative causes and people–such as evangelical Christians, pro-lifers, and the Minutemen–it mostly elevated Muslims and left-wingers, portraying them as victims and those wrongfully accused of crimes. My father would always say that the show was “pretentious”–drivel written by lessers who want to think they’re intellectuals. I share his opinion, by the way, and have said so on this site before.
Now, we have more evidence of the slant of the show, from its creator/producer, Dick Wolf. Saturday, the Wall Street Journal ran a long front page piece on the story of our day: How multi-millionaire Wolf is fighting gazillionaires at NBC/Universal for more than the $750 million fortune he is set to earn from the show. I call it, “Death Match of the Selfish and Self-Important.”
But there was this one interesting nugget of info from the story, which backs up what we conservatives, including my Dad, have been saying about this show for years:
The show has remained almost exactly as Mr. Wolf envisioned. A former advertising copywriter, he sees “Law and Order” as a brand. He tells his writers that the series should be like Campbell’s Soup: many different flavors, all of which are of consistent quality and predictable taste. “Episodic television is the triumph of the familiar,” he is known to say. One way Mr. Wolf maintains this consistency is by making most of the victims wealthy white people, which he believes viewers are more interested in watching. He limits the number of shows containing minority victims, including blacks and Muslims, to four or five episodes a season out of 22 to 24.
That means, under Wolf’s mandate, up to 83% of the criminals on L&O in a 24 episode season will be rich Whites. The lowest figure, based on the Wolf formula, can be 77%.
But–since “Law and Order” focuses on murders–here’s a reality check, courtesy of the Manhattan Institute’s Heather McDonald:
In 2005, the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests.
“Law & Order”? More like, “Politics of Envy & Racism.”
Sound the “Law & Order” double chime here. Because a crime is taking place, and the villains are show creator/owner Dick Wolf and NBC.
That is so true regarding Law & Order. I always said to my friends that anyone watching any of the L & O’s would think that every homicide in Manhattan was committed by millionaire white men (or women) who live in multi million dollar townhouses on the Upper East Side. Earlier this year on Law & Order SVU there was one particularly stupid episode about a Psychiatrist (Elizabeth McGovern) whom they prosecuted for teaching Army soldiers how to interrogate terrorists not in America but in Iraq! Lat year on Law & Order Criminal Intent there was one episode in which a woman is either a double agent or triple agent for Mossad in Israel and the Chris Noth character (Noth by the way in real life is pro Israel and has visited the country) mouths Buchananite inanities about dual loyalties to his Jewish boss (as if that would happen in real life). The ADA’s on Law & Order sound as if they should be working for the ACLU. The only true ìlaw and orderî tough ADA was Angie Harmon. Jill Hennessey sounded a lot like Michelle Obama! Also on L & O they are always talking about and threatening the death penalty (ìAll youíre going to get is a gurney and a needle in the armî), conveniently ignoring the fact that in liberal New York there is no death penalty (actually one was on the books for a while but it dealt with killing cops. Producer Dick Wolfís politics are so transparent it is laughable. On Criminal Intent the Kathryn Erbe character (Det. Eames) also made a totally out of place snarky comment about Tom DeLay once. On Law & Order SVU the Richard Belzer character (Det. Munch) sounds like Dennis Kucinich.
Ripper on July 14, 2008 at 10:07 am