MoveOnBostonLegal.org

“Legal Dramedy”, is how Wikipedia defines the format of the TV series Boston Legal. Living TV describes the show as a “… critically acclaimed and Emmy Award-winning quirky legal drama …” That is a good summary of why I first became enamored with this brilliantly entertaining program. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly common to hear the production characterized as “shamelessly liberal”. With that, Boston Legal’s brilliance and entertainment value has continued to decline and its charm is rapidly fading for me.

Ironically, in a recent episode, entitled “Tabloid Nation”, Boston Legal, itself, addresses my very concern. In that episode, during one of his much ballyhooed “arguments”, James Spader, as Attorney Alan Shore says, “… today you can switch back and forth between the right-wing news and the left-wing news. Whatever happened to Huntley? Brinkley? John Chancellor? To news that was just the news? Now we have partisan junk appealing to the lowest common denominator …” I want to ask something very similar … Whatever happened to Seinfeld? Frasier? Tony Soprano? To brilliant entertainment that was just brilliant entertainment?

Now, it’s Boston Legal that gives us one-sided “… partisan junk appealing to the lowest common denominator …” Worse yet, its cloaked in the pretense that it’s still really just entertainment. There’s a Biblical caution about this … In what is known as The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15), Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” And, there’s a Biblical caution about the results too … in Revelation 3:16, the Lord says, "So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.” If Boston Legal wants to be brilliantly entertaining, I believe it still can. If it wants to be a “shamelessly liberal” public policy advocacy group, it can probably do that too. By trying to be one while pretending to be the other, it squanders the significant value it once had and that makes me want to vomit … or, at least, tune out.

Although the waste of what Boston Legal once was is a shame, what it has become is aggravating a wound that our nation desperately needs healed. In a more recent Boston Legal episode, entitled “The Court Supreme”, more one-sided “… partisan junk appealing to the lowest common denominator …” is featured in another Spader/Shore “argument”. This has received much acclaim from those to whom this sort of thing appeals. For me, it was another glaring example of the continuing political decline of our nation – i.e. the politics of fully pitting ourselves against those who don’t agree with our views, based on any difference we can find. As I said in an earlier posting, entitled Rediscovering America's Strength, our nation needs urgent care for this wound, through “… rediscovering the strength that made America great in the first place ... the synergy of the best of our differing ideas.” With that in mind, reluctantly, I plan to start tuning out of Boston Legal, as well as other programs that choose a similar route.