A “Law and Order: SVU” show currently under production depicts a Paula Deen-type character killing a Trayvon Martin-type character – and it’s actually set to air this October.
Executive producer Warren Leight confirmed the plot, and added that Cybill Shepherd will play Ms. Deen, Newsbusters reported.
Ms. Deen, celebrity cook, took nationwide fire for admitting in court testimony that she used a racial slur 30 years. She subsequently lost several of her advertising and product endorsement deals — and her public relations nightmare is far from ended. Just Friday, the Washington Post reported that Ms. Deen won’t be appearing at the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show DC in November, as planned. Organizers of the event blamed the cancellation on a “schedule conflict.”
But the “Law and Order” upcoming episode ratchets up further the recent attacks on Ms. Deen, fueling accusations of racism with a story line loosely based on the emotionally charged trial over the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon.
The show has a long history of denouncing the business sector: A recent media study found that the “Law and Order” series portrays businessmen as the guilty party in crimes 50 percent of the time, Newsbusters reported. The series also portrayed in 2010 devout Christians as murderous and sexually addicted and in 2009, conservative talk show hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as “a cancer spreading ignorance and hate,” Newsbusters reported.
The series’ creator, Dick Wolf, didn’t address his show’s politicization, but one of his former actors did: Michael Moriarty has denounced the show, calling it propaganda.
“I hardly expected my old television series to be the clown act that leads the American viewing audience into an increasingly predictable pile of hard left propaganda,” he wrote, Newsbusters reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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