Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Guest post: The Real Scandal

Declan Finn confession: I watched the first season of Scandal...okay, maybe even some of the second season (I think I gave up after a sitting President asked the first lady for a divorce -- The soap factor, it's over NINE THOUSAND).

Dawn has addressed the real Scandal of the past week. What is it? I'll let her tell you.

THIS WEEK'S STUPID.

I was going to write something mushy about Thanksgiving or being thankful, but I’ve seen too much stupid crap lately that I’m in the mood to slap stupid people.

First is Scandal. You may have heard about the recent Planned Parenthood episode of Scandal. If you haven’t, let me give you a quick rundown.

The show Scandal revolves around the exploits of Olivia Pope who makes her living covering up political scandals in DC. She is having an affair with President of the United States. It glorifies lying, cheating, stealing, torture, murder, backstabbing, infidelity and other things that normal people abhor. The show is so over acted it is ridiculous. And EVERYTHING is a world ending crisis. A Senator breaks a fingernail...the fate of the United States hangs in the balance until Olivia Pope brings in an emergency manicurist to fix it two seconds before said Senator has an interview where that broken nail could start a world war or some such. The drama is so over the top it would make a teenage girl proud.

Yes, I watch the show...or rather I did. The show is rather a lot like a traffic accident where you just can’t help but stop and stare. I also like the puzzle aspect of the plot. It starts with a problem and Pope has to find a way to make it go away one way or another. Usually that involves all sorts of nastiness, some of which bleeds into later episodes.

Sooooo...Olivia gets pregnant and “has to have” an abortion. If she doesn’t the fate of the Presidency is at risk. President Grant would lose his political power if it was found out his whore was having his baby. (Getting caught banging women who aren’t his wife didn’t seem to hurt Clinton any, but I digress.) Yes, God forbid, a person’s life would be more important than political power.  The show didn’t just reference the abortion, they thought it was a wise idea to make the entire episode a commercial for abortion “rights.” (I never could understand how it’s a right to kill another human being.)

Over at Vogue, Michelle Ruiz writes:
It was a remarkably meta moment: a fictional politician tackling the real-life assault on abortion rights and women’s health at the very moment when it remains timely and pressing. Not only did the episode begin the process of destigmatizing abortion on television, but as Planned Parenthood said in a statement after the episode, “The millions of people who tune in to Scandal every Thursday night learned that our rights to reproductive healthcare are under attack.”
The stupid in that statement is mindblowing. People don’t watch that show for political commentary or for life tips. These people are deluding themselves if they think that abortion on Scandal does anything but make it look as bad and as selfish an action as it is. I mean come on. Olivia is no teenage girl who falls for the bullshit that sex comes without consequences and gets knocked up. She is a grown ass woman who is unapologetically the whore for a married man. She didn’t choose an abortion because she didn’t think she had any other options, it was political decision.

On the other side of the fence, there have been boycotts and hand ringing over this single episode. Um...hello. The entire show is about using and tossing away people. Killing a child is well within the realm of vileness that is Scandal. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is expendable on that show as long as it’s done in the interests of gaining more political power. The characters are not sympathetic and when bad things happen to them, the first thought is “they got what was coming.” Get with the program.

Second on my list is the Reproductive Freedom Festival being put on by a Words of Choice blog. (No I’m not linking to the site. It’s nasty. Trust me on this.) They claim to be “pro-women’s rights, pro-human rights, pro-reproductive rights, pro-reproductive justice and pro-choice.”

One of those things just doesn’t go with the rest. How the hell can you be pro-human rights if one of the things you support is killing humans? The stupid is beyond words.

They are wanting short theatrical works that celebrate the dismembering of children that they can perform live in New York City next year. Oh yay. Exactly what no one in their right mind would ever go to see.

Anyways...that is all the stupid I can handle for now. I may be back with more at a later date. Ciao.

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