Fred Thompson backed into a corner

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

Sure, it was only on Law & Order, but with the public's tendancy to mix up an actor's character with the actor himself--

Last night, L&O touched on themes about the horrible way veterans have been treated. You'd almost think the writers had been reading DU! :) Anyway, they touched upon the fact that many returning vets are diagnosed with PTSD and yet given a discharge worded in such a way that the VA doesn't have to treat them. They touched on the fact that many vets are homeless, and are preyed upon by others. And they actually touched upon the horrible conditions at Walter Reed, transferred, of course, to a local VA hospital in NYC, where the series is set. As a part of the drama, the Feds got an injunction forbidding the conditions at the VA hospital to be presented in evidence. The hero of the series, Jack McCoy, goes ahead and does it anyway.

Now comes the interesting part. In the last scene, McCoy is back in his office, and there is talk that he may spend time in jail for violating the injunction. There's banter about sending him a cake with a hacksaw in it, and then McCoy asks his boss, Arthur Branch, if he didn't think it was right to defy the Feds in order to let the truth out about how they were treated. Now Branch is played by none other than Fred Dalton Thompson, who is considering running for President. Yeah, that guy. After a beat, he says, as Arthur Branch, that what McCoy had done was right---it was "taking care of the troops."

Several interesting things to be said. Number one that there was a major drama show talking openly about veteran's affairs, AND talking about a government coverup. This means either NBC has decided these concerns are mainstream enough to be expressed or they think no one watches L&O anymore so it doesn't matter. Number two is that FDT was placed in an interesting position--will the actor have as much sympathy towards the troops and disgust with the coverup as his character has?

[EST]

1. The Fred Dalton Thompson/Arthur Branch has an important

though well hidden streak of humanity running through him, as well as an underlying understanding of people and the battles they face, as well as the foibles they fall victim to and their struggles to surmount them.
The Fred Dalton Thompson who was in charge of shepherding a certain supreme court justice through nomination hearings and in charge of heading up the committee to raise money for the defense of sleazebag scooter revealed his hidden streak as not being one of humanity but of a typical republican slime. His character is, unfortunately, for more exalted than himself and he fails to learn anything from it.

Ronnie Raygun was a third rate actor and a third rate politician, whose claim to fame was a knack for choosing the winning side and a penchant for profound-sounding pronouncements. No great intellect, he, however, saw the benefit of taking the easy road of condemning the already condemned and siding with the powerful against the helpless--great for racking up those winning numbers, but requiring nothing like the building of ethical muscle by defending those without a chance against the massed corporate greed.

The resurgence of enthusiasm for pulling someone like Thompson into the fray of national political gamesmanship bespeaks of nothing but the desperation of the corporate collaborators, flailing madly about to search for someone...anyone who might return to them the imagined statesmanship of that magically glowing era of -- Raygun the magnificent.

[Jim__]

2. All the cndidates will condemn the bad treatment of our returning soldiers.

They'll just blame it on different things. Thompson and the pukes will blame it on government bureacracy and the "democrat" congress not supporting the troops.Democrats will blame it on the the puke administration.