{"id":2509,"date":"2006-04-29T10:28:08","date_gmt":"2006-04-29T10:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/heh-1.html"},"modified":"2006-04-29T10:28:08","modified_gmt":"2006-04-29T10:28:08","slug":"heh-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/heh-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Heh"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may know that there’s a little controversy about the most recent episode of ABC’s Commander in Chief. Here’s the WaPo story:<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In the episode that aired Thursday night, called "Ties That Bind," Davis’s character, Mackenzie Allen, watches a segment on the local news about civil unrest in Prince George’s during a protest over the high homicide rate and a lack of police protection. She then goes to the Prince George’s city of Hyattsville and gets out of her car in front of a restaurant advertising sweet potato pie, pork chops and chitlins.<\/p>\n

After listening to people talk about slain loved ones and a lack of police, Allen sends 40 U.S. marshals into the county to quell the crime.<\/p>\n

Peter A. Shapiro, a former County Council member who represented the Hyattsville area, said he was astounded as he watched the show.<\/p>\n

"They took the largest, wealthiest black county and reduced it to a stereotype of a poor, dangerous black neighborhood," Shapiro said. "And the irony is the neighborhood isn’t even a poor black neighborhood."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The reader who passed it along noted this quote, from the show’s producers:<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n
"While we used the name of the community, and we researched crime statistics related to the area, we also embellished the reality to enhance the story. Our goal was to create a more compelling drama for our viewers, not to portray the actual community or its citizens, law enforcement, or civic leaders in a negative light," the statement said. "We apologize for any offense, and reiterate that the series, the storyline, and the episode are all entirely works of fiction and do not depict any real person or situation."<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

And then added:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you think people will tell all those folks in Prince George’s county to loosen up?<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/em><\/div>\n
It’s only a television show!!!!!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may know that there’s a little controversy about the most recent episode of ABC’s Commander in Chief. Here’s the WaPo story: In the episode that aired Thursday night, called "Ties That Bind," Davis’s character, Mackenzie Allen, watches a segment on the local news about civil unrest in Prince George’s during a protest over the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHeh - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/heh-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heh - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You may know that there’s a little controversy about the most recent episode of ABC’s Commander in Chief. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}