Hate-watching the ABC miniseries “When We Rise,” about the gay-rights movement, was apparently not enough for the Media Research Center. The MRC’s Brent Bozell and Tim Graham devoted an entire March 10 column to cheering that the show got bad ratings:
They say network television is a profit-oriented business, but that’s obviously not the case when it clashes with Hollywood’s sexual politics. Last week, ABC tried to lecture America with a four-part miniseries on the radical gay left called “When We Rise,” and it tanked in ratings despite heavy promotion throughout the Academy Awards broadcast the night before the premiere.
Nightly ratings were cracking just below three million viewers. The cable network FX drew far larger numbers for its O.J. Simpson miniseries last year. The History Channel drew almost two million viewers recently for its miniseries “SIX” about Navy SEAL Team Six. Those are obscure cable channels next to ABC.
Of course, lack of popularity does not necessarily equal lack of quality, and these two are indulging in a fallacy to suggest otherwise.
Bozell and Graham also complain:
Then there’s just the corrosive hatred. On the first night, the main character Cleve Jones tells one of his lovers: “I say we just get rid of all the heterosexuals. They’re so boring.”
Can you imagine the outcry if a straight character were to say, “Let’s get rid of all the homosexuals”?
That phraseology sounds strangely familiar. Here’s the MRC’s Alexa Moutevelis Coombs from her hate-watch of the series:
Cleve tells one of his lovers, “I say we just get rid of all the heterosexuals. They’re so boring.” Can you imagine if a straight character said, “Let’s get rid of all the homosexuals?”
Aside from ripping the quote out of context — in neither post is it stated what the motivation is for this character to say this, presumably all the better to manufacture anti-gay outrage — it seems Bozell and Graham are just lazily copying-and-pasting from their own employees.