For the record, it can be broken down as follows:
- The Right; the Middle; the rank-and-file, Ordinary, Decent members of the Left*: “Please, God: do not let the Assad regime use chemical and biological weapons against dissidents and rebels. So many innocent lives will be lost if that happens.”
- The Leadership of the Democratic party; the antiwar movement: “Please, [insert metaphysical entity of choice here]: do not let the Assad regime use chemical and biological weapons that were originally from Iraq** against dissidents and rebels. We will lose the 2012 elections if that happens.”
What? Oh, if you’re in the second group then I certainly hope you’re offended. Offending people who only are in favor of liberating foreigners when it rebounds to the credit of the Democratic party is one of my benchmarks for proper moral development.
Moe Lane
*Be damned careful what you say about my mother.
**Allegedly.
The far left will never admit that Iraq had WMDs, needless to say the msm will bury any reference of such weapons coming from Iraq.
Free Speech Forever!!
If there is ANY case to be made that the weapons originated elsewhere, that will be the ONLY information John Q. Public will see. There’s no better proof of that than the current Bain discussion.
This seems apropos of nothing, but it DOES apply, so I’ll mention it here anyway. Please bear with me.
I decided to give that new TNT show “Perception” a try b/c I’ve enjoyed several TNT original series (“The Closer,” “Leverage,” “Rizzoli and Isles”) and it seems like an interesting premise. However, as I am with every new show, I was on the lookout for inevitable leftist bias. It’s going to be there, we all know it, so I make my viewing judgements based on whether or not the bias is too overt, too over-the-top, or too mind-numbingly stupid.
The protagonist, Eric McCormack’s character, is a professor, so right off the bat I expect plenty of leftist babble. And the opening scene doesn’t disappoint, as the professor blathers on about what counts as “reality.” Of course that’s the driving concept behind his character, a schizophrenic who has hallucinations, so I’ll dismiss the postmodern deconstructionist bullshite and just accept it as storytelling. And it CAN be an interesting topic to discuss, so the scene gets a pass.
There’s a young woman sitting in the front row of the professor’s class wearing a tight t-shirt with “Stimulus Package” written across the bosom. This is actually a plot point later on in the episode, but it was SO obvious that it made me roll my eyes. I have to wonder what leftist women would think about their beloved Messiah Barack Obama’s “stimulus package” phrase being used to advertise the wearer’s breasts.
Oh, wait, I don’t care.
Moving on.
The “villain” in the pilot episode was a large pharmaceutical corporation, so there’s another checkmark against it. Really? Big pharma? AGAIN? That’s SO “Law and Order.” But whatever, it’s not an unexpected development, so it goes in my “mild bias” column. And hey, big pharma can be just as corrupt as anything else; I readily admit that. It’s only a bias in this case because it’s the constant drumbeat of the left that drug companies are eeeeeevilllll across the board, not just in a few individual circumstances.
Then we get to the moment that is applicable to this post, and the moment that turned me off the show completely.
The main characters believe that one of the suspects in a murder is lying about her alibi, but they can’t prove it. Then the professor has a brainstorm: aphasia sufferers can’t understand speech, but they CAN identify inflection, and the inflection in a person’s voice when lying comes across to aphasia patients as very funny. So he enlists the aid of one particular aphasia patient — named Timmy or Tommy or some other hackneyed name that is almost synonomous with “mentally challenged person” in Hollywood — to become a human lie detector.
The professor’s colleague (a young FBI agent played by Rachel Leigh Cooke) is skeptical of what an aphasia patient can tell them. So to prove his point about “Timmy’s” ability to act as a lie detector, the professor sets up a demonstration to prove that Timmy laughs when he hears someone telling a lie.
What does he use to demonstrate?
He plays Timmy a video of George W. Bush addressing Congress (or the UN, can’t recall) about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Timmy laughs, the FBI agent is convinced of his infallability, and they’re able to determine that the suspect IS lying by playing Timmy a tape of her interrogation.
So, there you have it. To prove the miraculous ability of Timmy the Aphasia Patient to spot a lie, the professor (I seriously don’t remember his name and I don’t care to look it up) uses a GWB speech about WMD in Iraq as his control sample. Because that’s Smart Science or something.
They attempt to balance the political scales at the very end of the episode by showing a passing shot of Timmy watching the infamous clip of Bubba Clinton saying, “I did not. Have. Sexual relations with that woman. Miss Lewinsky,” and cracking up (the poor kid apparently spends his days being subjected to decades old political footage if this scene is to be believed). But why not use that clip in the first place? Why use a political clip at all? Why not use a clip from the OJ trial — “I am 100% not guilty” — or from any number of entertainment programs? You mean to tell me there’s no video out there of Ricky Martin or Clay Aiken saying they aren’t gay? It was pure partisan hackery, plain and simple, and turned what might have been a promising show into a waste of time.
One thing it DID prove to me? The Left is TERRIFIED that there are Iraqi WMD out there somewhere. If it turns out that there ARE such things in Syria, and if they DO get used against the Syrian rebels, well… Let’s just say it won’t make the Left happy, for all the wrong reasons.
PS – And on a sidenote, if this miraculous ability to spot a lie just from inflection is true, why aren’t aphasia patients employed in every law enforcement agency across the country? That seems like a useful person to have around when you’re trying to decide if John Doe is lying when he says he DIDN’T butcher his wife. But maybe that’s just me.
*sigh* My apologies for the Block O’ Text format of my previous comment. Fricking online comment formatting, how does it work!