Earlier this week, Rene Balcer, the Executive Producer of “Law and Order,” had some obnoxious and demeaning things to say about one of the show’s former stars, Sen. Fred Thompson:

I wasn’t on the show when he was on the show.  In fact, when they brought me back on the show I said I’m not coming back as long as that guy is on the show.  I didn’t think much of his acting or the character.

Never mind the fact that a simple IMDB search shows that Balcer and Sen. Thompson share credit on a handful of “Law and Order” episodes, facts like this get in the way of a good, bitchy attack like that.

Sen. Thompson, for his part, has always maintained a level of discretion whenever discussing any behind-the-scenes conflicts with the notoriously left-leaning creative staff.  He has never referred to any individuals by name and only that “one writer in particular” was always butting heads with him over storylines and bias injected into the show.  But, now that Balcer has shown himself to be so classless and obnoxious, Thompson confirmed with me that indeed, Balcer was the writer.

“He was the guy who I busted on several different occasions and made him change his script” he told me during our one-on-one interview this week in Los Angeles.  “So, I think it’s fair to say he’s not very happy.” (more…)

Despite the darkening clouds of increasingly Marxist/Islamic sympathies in the White House (“This is no longer just a Christian nation …”, said the President) and regardless of the Obama Nation’s success at “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” into the Obama Nation … Americans are still celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah.

Such a time of profoundly important Judeo-Christian sacredness, with our pride in its significance increasingly muzzled by “Progressively political correctness”, should and, I believe, will be honored more deeply because of the inferential shame our New World Order leadership would like to immerse it in.

Apparently, and for the entire history of America, its Judeo-Christian roots have been, in the eyes of Progressives, one of our nation’s incessant problems, and the main reason the United States has found it impossible to join the … uh … “community of nations”.

“Is this another diatribe, another imbecilic slap at the United Nations, Mr. Moriarty?!”

Yes … among other shots at the Progressive certainty over the apparently incontestable New World Order. (more…)

Well, I think I’ve been fairly calm and forgiving of Law and Order for about fifteen years. Living outside of the U.S. has certainly helped in more ways than one. Out of sight, out of mind. Law and Order has, for years, been just a press of the remote away from non-existence.

However, recent events have Law and Order just begging for my reassessment. I hardly expected my old television series to be the clown act that leads the American viewing audience into an increasingly predictable pile of hard left propaganda.

Why?

Dick Wolf

Dick Wolf is basically a follower of usually high-level talents such as Joe Stern, Robert Nathan and Ed Sherin.

Those men, I believe, are no longer regulars on Law and Order.

The guy who apparently wears the pants in that family is now Rene Balcer.

That’s clearly the hypnotist in whose deep pink trance Dick Wolf is irretrievably drowning. (more…)

When “Law & Order” first hit the airwaves in September of 1990, I was an immediate fan. The concept, the ignoring of the personal lives of the lead characters, the wonderful acting and especially the endless plot twists hooked me a few seasons before the public would catch on and make the show a regular ratings hit. The first four seasons are among four of the best ever produced for dramatic television, thanks mainly to Michael Moriarty’s exceptional work as Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone, a resourceful, Robert F. Kennedy-style hard-nosed prosecutor determined to see justice done (though the whole cast was top-notch).

After 88 episodes Moriarty left, Sam Waterston (one of my favorite actors) took his place, and while the show was never quite the same, it remained regular viewing until around 2002.

The program’s eventual deterioration was a case study in the boiling frog theory. The quality of the production and acting remained, but the politics slowly shifted to the far left almost without my noticing. And it wasn’t the actual politics that first became apparent; it was the negative effect of those politics on the quality of the storytelling. (more…)