Occupy Wall Street earned a shout-out Sunday night on a CBS drama, the kind of Hollywood affirmation the Tea Party could never dream of receiving. “Before we begin,” a judge announced in a Chicago courtroom on The Good Wife, “I want to take a few minutes to talk about something that is happening a mere one hundred yards from this courthouse: Occupy Wall Street!”
“Judge Charles Abernathy,” played by Denis O’Hare, continued to pay tribute to the leftist cause celebre: “Yes, these amazing young men and women are braving 36-degree weather, with the grit in their eyes of a shared cause, and all to challenge the system. And I, for one, I salute them.”
Audio: MP3 clip
The outburst came in a scene, but unconnected to it, of the judge overseeing a lawsuit against a software company which sold data-mining software to Syria which used it to identify and “disappear” American protesters.
Later in the February 19 episode, “Live from Damascus,” the judge loudly sniffles, leading him to explain: “Over lunch I went to offer moral support to Occupy Wall Street and it’s because of the pepper spray.”
Have the Chicago police ever pepper-sprayed the Occupy protesters?
Almost exactly a year ago (February 22, 2011), the show gave prime time legitimacy to the presumption the Tea Party is racist as a lawyer in a courtroom tried to discredit an expert witness (Gary Cole as Sarah Palin supporter “Kurt McVeigh”) who testified against a since-exonerated black defendant, by demanding he admit he’s “a member of the Tea Party.” The lawyer asserts “it is our contention that my client’s prosecution was racist,” citing McVeigh’s “membership in a racist organization,” namely the Tea Party. Video:
To illustrate, the program created a photo taken at “a Tea Party rally in Milwaukee last January” showing a man near “McVeigh” holding up a “Go Back to the Jungle” sign which the lawyer asks McVeigh to confirm “refers to our current President.”
The Good Wife, set in Chicago but produced in New York City, stars Julianna Margulies as lawyer “Alicia Florrick,” a “wife and mother who boldly assumes full responsibility for her family and re-enters the workforce after her husband’s very public sex and political corruption scandal lands him in jail.”
