At home, we get the benefits of ntl cable tv. Since they got bought out by virgin, that means no sky. Instead, the Hallmark channel. I don't mind; Five consecutive hours of Law and Order every night bookended by House is great fun.
Anyway, Law and Order. It's cheesy and can be intensely moralistic, but it's great brain-off TV. Better than Diagnosis Murder (which also appears on Hallmark twice a day). As with CSI, there are three varieties of Law and Order; Criminal Intent, SVU, and vanilla.
Vanilla Law and Order has a cast of six characters, three for the 'Law' half - two detectives and a lieutenant - and three for the 'Order' half - the DA, the Assistant DA, and the Executive Assistant DA. For the last five seasons, the DA has been a minor character, one Arthur Branch, played by someone who I assumed to be a low-grade character actor.
This low-grade character actor is a man named Fred Thompson. On May 30, he quit the show. I discovered this earlier today, and it was the first piece of news I'd heard associated with the man. I hadn't given him much thought. More fool me. For the benefit of those equally as ignorant and European as I, why was this foolish of me?
This is why.
This man has spent four years in a bit-part role on a notable but not adored TV show. Before that, he was a lobbyist and a senator. He was also - thanks, wikipedia - part of the Scooter Libby defence fund, surely a dazzling bright spot on anyone's CV.
He is pro-war in Iraq, pro-war in Iran. He is pro-life, pro-gun, and as supportive of free trade as he is angered by free movement of labour. An outspoken federalist, he naturally voted yes to DOMA (and the Fourteenth Amendment could, of course, go **** itself. He also voted no on including gays in hate crime and employment discrimination laws). He wants more church in our schools, fewer flag-burners, and disputes human influence in global warming, while voting against renewable energy. In the Senate he voted to restrict death penalty appeals; he voted for school vouchers and abstinence education and against increasing the education budget. He voted to cap foreign aid at $12bn, voted no to nuclear disarmament...
This mighty figure of a man has some interesting statistics for those of us not following contemporary US politics.
Primary polls?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by wiki
Rasmussen Reports Poll July 22-29, 2007 Rudy Giuliani 25%, Fred Thompson 25%, Mitt Romney 12%, John McCain 11%
Harris Interactive Poll July 6-13, 2007 Fred Thompson 29%, Rudy Giuliani 28%, John McCain 17%, Mitt Romney 9%, Newt Gingrich 6%, Tom Tancredo 3%, Sam Brownback 2%, Duncan Hunter 2%, Ron Paul 1%, Mike Huckabee 1%, Tommy Thompson 1%, Chuck Hagel 1%, Jim Gilmore 0%
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And in overall head-to-heads?
Quote:
Rasmussen Reports Poll July 30-31, 2007 Hillary Clinton 45% Fred Thompson 46%
George Washington University Battleground Poll July 15-18, 2007 Hillary Clinton 47% Fred Thompson 45%
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polls move, of course. The election is more than a year away, the primaries aren't for months, and the samples are small enough that you have to collate different poll data fairly studiously. But he's consistently coming in second to Giuliani, and not a distant second. This strange man, this wonderful caricature both of the ridiculous despotism of the Bush White House and the actor-to-office mechanism the US seems fond of,
might just become President.
And here I was, dismissing him as another damning indictment of American TV drama. As it happens, he's actually a damning indictment of America!