Monday, October 2
Fiddling as America Burns: ABC's Boston Legal Takes on Americans Ignoring Illegal White House Repression
Editorial note: For those redirected to my blog from Scholars for 9/11 Truth for my op-ed piece on Utah-styled academic censorship via the Bush White House, click here.--MooseCruising the website of the Canadian Action Party for updates on its evolving opposition to the North American Union, I happened upon a related webpage by Paul Grignon. An artist and videographer, Paul also is a concerned CAP member whose Canadian sensibilities are affronted by the White House's game plan to deny him his full cultural and national heritage.
In other words, Paul is a fiercely proud dissident who opposes the US corporate-driven North American Union, which he and fellow CAP members rightly see as a threat to their homeland's security. A slogan embraced by CAP members and supporters in response to the impending demise of their nation when it's rolled up in the NAU is "We'd rather be Canadian."
I too have adopted "I'd rather be Canadian" as a mantra as I go about exploring options to immigrated north and abandone Global Fascism Central.
Apparently to help us Americans remember our high school civics lessons, Paul posted on his site a 6:30-minute clip from a March 2006 epsisode of Boston Legal, an weekly ABC series.
In staring with veteran Canadian actor William Shatner (left), James Spader plays an attorney, who is this segment representes a woman tried for tax evasion, apparently out of a sense of conscience, i.e., to avoid promulgating fascism at home or abroad. Watch Spader deliver a searing closing statement to the jury detailing collective American lethargy in the face of the their government's escalating authoritarianism.
Thought not much of a commercial TV watcher, Spader's performance showed me I obviously was wrongly in assuming semi-intelligent political discourse left the boob tube with NBC's unceremonious boot to West Wing executive producer Aaron Sorokin. (Okay; I admit I naively wanted to believe the White House worked the way Sorokin depicted it.)
Spader's soliloquy also subtly impeaches the jurors for passively watching as fascism spreads like a virus through American society. The scene is shot and edited to suggest the jurors, convicted by Spader's moving patriotic fervor, will acquit a woman who he suggests is at least taking a stand in the face of their acquiesence.
Given the paucity of substantive ideas and discussion on US television, that brief put powerful scene must be one of its most politically pertinent moments of 2006.
