MRC Follows Right-Wing Herd, Complains About TV Show

The Media Research Center’s Elise Ehrhard got the right-wing memo and devoted a Jan. 26 post to complaining about a TV show:

On Thursday, NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered an episode in which a white rape victim agonizes over prosecuting her rapist because he’s black.

In the episode, “Truth Embargo,” the rape occurs during a mass smash-n-grab robbery of a high-end store. One of the masked looters spots a shopper in a bathing suit near the dressing room and attacks her.

At the hospital, the victim, Natalie (Romina D’Ugo), falsely claims she did not see the rapist because he was wearing a mask. Video store cameras later show he took off his mask before entering the dressing area.

Natalie’s lesbian partner, Brooke (Keeley Miller), is angry at police detectives when she meets them in the hospital, somehow blaming them for New York City’s spiking crime:

[…]

During the trial, Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) asks Brooke how she’s doing. Brooke tells her that the biggest source of angst for Natalie right now is “the systemic inequities that exist within the criminal justice system”:

Ehrhard continued to whine: “This story is, of course, preposterous. Even if it were realistic, it’s still not believable that a victim would want her rapist to go free because of it.”

It wasn’t until the 31st paragraph of her post (including embedded transcript excerpts) that Ehrhard got around to admitting her post was meaningless: “Eventually, Benson manages to convince Natalie to identify her attacker on the stand.” And then she whined: “At no point in this episode, does any character question Natalie and Brooke’s presumptions about systemic inequity despite studies showing innocent black men are not unfairly targeted for criminal prosecution.” But Ehrhard cited only one study, from the right-wing Hoover Institution; by contrast, other studies show that this systemic inequity exists.

This was followed by Ehrhard grumbling that the show showed the perp as slightly sympathetic by his stating that “nobody paid attention to anything I did. Not at home, not at school. Always felt kind of invisible, you know? So why would this be any different?” She huffed in response: “Lots of young people are neglected. Feeling invisible does not drive them to rob a store and rape a shopper in it.”

Ehrhard concluded with one more rant:

“Truth Embargo” is eye-rolling in its excuse-making and guilt-tripping. The audience is supposed to feel sympathy for a violent criminal merely because of the color of his skin. No one, especially the victim, mentions the danger of Watson raping another woman if he is set free or receives a reduced sentence. The whole focus is instead on neurotic white guilt. For a show with the words Law & Order in its title, this episode is oddly uninterested in whether or not society should be protected from a predator.

Ehrhard didn’t explain why the criminal deserves no sympathy whatsoever and should simply be locked up with the key thrown away.