How About Some Liberal Villains on TV

The Business and Media Institute has done a study on the treatment of businesspeople on TV and they don’t like what they see. In Bad Company they report that if you watch TV shows you would see that:

• TV Is Overwhelmingly Negative toward Business
  
• Businessmen Are Villains, Not Heroes
  
• Businessmen Are a Greater Threat to Society than Terrorists or Gangs
  
• Businessmen Are Almost as Likely to Commit a Serious Felony as Career Criminals
  

and so on. On “Law & Order” 50 percent of the crooks are businessmen. On “Desperate Housewives” the office is represented as little more than a dating service.

Tough, writes columnist Clarence Page.

How many people would have watched "Dallas" if J.R. Ewing were an "average businessman"? A nice, ethical, self-sacrificing father who volunteers in his spare time to work with the Boy Scouts is hardly the stuff of gripping crime dramas.

And anyway there are plenty of bad apples in the business world like “Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff or Jeffrey Skilling.” So get used to it.

Look. If TV wants to do lots of stories about corrupt murdering businessmen it’s OK by me. But the point is that the world is swimming with skunks and scoundrels that never get a mention. How about:

• Liberal professors full of hate and rage towards George W. Bush who fake their resumes and plagiarize other peoples’ scholarly work.
  
• Race baiters who shake down big businesses for cash and contributions
  
• Bus drivers who fail to show up for work and don’t get fired for six months.
  
• Government employees who don’t do any work, run businesses on the side, and get paid 50 percent more than folk doing the same work in the private sector.
  
• Liberal environmental activists who lie about the environment.
  
• Journalists who profess their objectivity while spouting Democratic Party talking points.
  

I don’t know about you, but if TV put out some shows about folks like that, I might even tune in now and again.

It happens that all the candidates for TV villainy above are real. Liberal professors really are full of hate. Government employees really do earn 50 percent more than equivalent workers in the private sector. But what of that? What if they weren’t? If it makes a good story, who cares, as long as the profits roll in?

And, best of all, TV could get out of its rating slump with innovative, edgy story lines.

Why is it that liberals are grossly underrepresented in TV villainy?