Television Media Bias

An age-old problem, can we trust what the T.V. media tells us? No we can not! Most of the media in this party seems to be bought and paid for by one of the two prominent parties. Fox obviously by the GOP, and seemingly the rest of the T.V. media world by the democrats. Set the news aside, it has even trickled down (to steal a favorite Reaganomics term) into our favorite prime time shows. This past Monday, the day before the historic election of our 44th president, I was watching my favorite show Boston Legal, and the Democratic bias of David E. Kelley was sickening to a registered GOP member. This show is a spin-off of his very successful show "The Practice". The show follows the inter workings of huge Boston law firm Crane, Poole, and Schmidt. The two main characters are Allen Shore, a very liberal lawyer who is portrayed as a brilliant litigant, and Denny Crane. Crane is conservative, and was once the best lawyer in Boston. But now Crane has early Alzheimer and is portrayed as very crazy and just a buffoon. The portrayal of the conservative Crane as a buffoon is just a beginning of the slant of this show. In all of his closing arguments, Shore spews out the current liberal agenda, no matter what the subject of the case. Then in the episode before the election, Crane is asked why he supports McCain and he does not give an answer before Shore starts making fun of Palin. And at the end of the episode, Kelley has Crane vote for Obama because after the past eight years he "knew the wrong choice". On this show full of liberals, the one conservative voice was silenced because of media bias.

Modern Day Bartlebys

For those of you who have never read "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville, you may not know what I mean when I make reference to Bartleby. "Bartleby the Scrivener" is a mid nineteenth century essay in which Melville describes a lawyer who hires a scrivener or document copier, Bartleby. At first Bartleby does great work, but as time goes on he starts to refuse to do even the smallest jobs. This goes on until the lawyer is forced to fire Bartleby.
This reminds me of public figures in today's world, most notably professional athletes. The first figure that comes to mind is Manny Ramirez, an all-star outfielder who recently was traded from the Boston Redsox to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ramirez is one of the premiere players in today's game, but is allowed to get away with acts that the games historic stars would have found ludicrous. Ramirez has left the outfield in the middle of an inning to use the restroom, failed to run after fly balls, and does not hustle on ground balls in the infield. The Redsox put up with all of these actions, but finally were forced to trade Ramirez after he trashed the Redsox fans in the media. In a recent radio interview, Manny's former teammate Curt Schilling talked about how on certain nights Manny would refuse to play. This reminded me of "Bartleby the Scrivener". Tell me why anyone should be able to refuse to work, especially when they are being payed millions of dollars to play a game. I can not go into my job and tell my boss that I would prefer not to work that night. I would have to do my job or risk losing my employment. Shouldn't it be the same for the million dollar "stick swingers"?