Conservatives who say Hollywood is liberal crack me up

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We've been watching the burn-off episodes of Dirty Sexy Money this summer, and we just watched Saturday's episode on Sunday (long live DVR!). At the beginning of the episode, Karen (played by Natalie Zea) is upset because at the end of the previous episode, she found she was pregnant and the father was her ex-fiancée, Simon Elder (Blair Underwood), who ditched her at the altar when he was offered what he really wanted, which was half of Karen's father's company. So Karen is a bit upset. She and her mother (Jill Clayburgh) head off to a clinic, where Karen, naturally, has second thoughts about terminating the pregnancy. Simon finds out she's pregnant by following her to the clinic, and he tells her later that he's going to be very involved with the kid even though she now hates him. Got all that?

The reason I bring this up is because Karen and her mother never mention the word "abortion." I mean, it's not surprising that Karen doesn't have an abortion, because no one on television is allowed to have one. She later says that having Simon involved is going to be horrible but that she has no choice. Well, yes she does. She gets around this by saying it might be her only chance, but Karen is, presumably, about as old as the actress playing her, and Ms. Zea is 34. There has never been any mention on the show that she has trouble conceiving, nor were she and Simon trying to have a baby, so this "just happened." There's no reason to believe that Karen can't have another kid.

The funny thing about this is Sarah Palin's recent farewell speech, in which she blamed Hollywood for going against American values. This is a frequent rant from conservatives, but rarely in television shows do you see something as odd as, say, the Republican governor of South Carolina lying about hiking on the Appalachian Trail while he was in Argentina boning his mistress. But that's neither here nor there. On Dirty Sexy Money, which is a soap opera that aired at 10 o'clock at night and featured the usual number of murderers, cheaters, candidates for political office who cheated on their wives with transsexuals, and all the sexual transgressions we expect from a prime-time soap opera. Yet a show that has already been cancelled, is airing its burn-off episodes on Saturday night in the summertime, and in the same episode features a gay Congressman and his wife propositioning a Senator because they have an "arrangement" in their marriage, can't utter the word "abortion," much less let one of their selfish, spoiled characters have one. Television, I'm sorry to say to those moralist Republicans, is extremely conservative, because all television executives care about is money, which means they can't piss off any portion of their audience. So not only is a perfectly legal medical procedure forbidden to any television character, even mentioning the word is like Dick Cheney saying the n-word at the Apollo Theater.

So shut up, conservatives. You've neutered Hollywood. Congratulations!