Tom DeLay’s ‘Law & Order’ problem — redux

May 31, 2005

Not content to let a sleeping dog lie, Tom DeLay and his GOP allies are still upset about last week’s “Law & Order” flap and are intent on generating more attention for the controversy.

The fallout from NBC’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” episode featuring the Tom DeLay T-shirt continues over the Memorial Day break. House Republican message makers, back in their districts and vacation destinations, are armed with talking points on what to say about the episode that so riled their fearless Majority Leader. The hit list includes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). […]

House GOP Conference Vice Chairman Jack Kingston (Ga.) has been out on the TV circuit blaring outrage. Kingston instructed Members who serve on the House GOP message team to “repeat that this was a PERSONAL swipe at Tom DeLay during sweeps week.” In a memo to his message folks, Kingston gave four talking points, telling Members to stay on message that “L&O” finished “dead last” in sweeps week, is biased and liberal, and, in what he called “outrageous and over-the-top,” associated DeLay with a “racist, anti-semitic judge killer.”

Then he suggested some “zingers” for GOP Members to use on the subject. Criticize NBC’s Katie Couric for one. And secondly and most importantly, he said, “Turn the tables for a minute: You never see TV shows depicting a 15-year-old teenage girl driving across the state border to get an abortion with a Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton T-shirt on.”

The Republicans have seen the enemy — and it is an NBC spin-off.

Usually the right thinks more strategically than this. NBC’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” — which, by the way, is a fictional program — had an episode in which actors playing police officers were searching for a fictional killer of two judges. In the show, the police believed right-wing extremists were involved. Frustrated by a lack of clues, one officer joked, “Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.”

What DeLay and his cohorts seem unable to grasp is that we want them to raise a fuss over this. First, when leading members of Congress start taunting a fictional television show based of sweeps-week ratings, they appear pretty ridiculous. Second, the more the public is reminded of who DeLay is, the better it is for Dems who hope to boost his name recognition.

And third, the more the Republicans keep this flap alive, the more people will learn why “Law & Order” made the joke in the first place — DeLay’s veiled threats against the judiciary.

DeLay and House Republicans aren’t usually in the habit of doing favors for the Dems, but this one’s a gift. I was afraid it’d get lost in the holiday-weekend shuffle, but if the GOP wants to keep it alive, I’m delighted.

“You never see TV shows depicting a 15-year-old teenage girl driving across the state border to get an abortion with a Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton T-shirt on.”

Who thinks up these “zingers”? Do they have a group of snarky Young Republicans sitting around a conference table as if they were the gagwriters for “Seinfeld”? Do they have one speechwriter responsible for generating TP – er, Talking Points? Do they collect them from their friends and load them into a big database, so they can tap into them when needed?

Is there a special R M Scaife “Zinger Fund”, which pays the salaries of the guys who invent these “good ones!”?

Geez – where did they get the idea that the cutting put-down was the end to all debate? And how do we get them to learn something else?

  • Delay’s flapping about this came right at the same time as the Newsweek scandal. That one is turning around to bite Bush in the a*s, and this one is a lemon for Delay.

  • The Olin Foundation hasn’t been gone three days and look what happens. If this keeps up you know they’ll be back.

  • To me, obsessing over the trival is a affliction of those who don’t want to face up to larger problems and shows that people feel persecuted/under seige. It is an indication that Delay knows all is not going well for him and his normal tactics may not work.

  • Republicans are employing the strategy that worked so well for former Vice President Dan Quayle … get into a debate with an imaginary character over a relatively trivial issue – and watch it blow up into a full-fledged embarrassment.
    How many of us would have even seen the episode or heard the remark without hearing it repeated as some GOP talking point ? The truly frightening aspect of this is that the level of thought that went into this strategy is also capable of enacting legislation.

  • My conservative father-in-law likes to tell about the time he knew Nixon was going down. Apparently Nixon looked out the window of the White House and saw a lone protester out there calling for his ouster. Nixon immediately sent someone out to arrest the guy.

    DeLay’s moment is the L&O episode. Let us not forget that this is the same producer who hired that well known liberal Fred Dalton Thompson to play, essentially, himself.

    Adios, Rep. DeLay. The countdown continues.

  • The L&O franchise has been around longer than DeLay and will outlast him too. Didn’t the Republicans learn anything from Quayle’s Murphy Brown problem?

  • Before the Schiavo debacle, hardly anyone had even heard of Tom DeLay and his ethical challenges. Then he had to go and make a big fuss in a private family matter… Now another big fuss over a slight on Law & Order, which as Carpetbagger says, DeLay brought on himself with his threats to judges.

    Keep it up, Tom, keep it up. We like where this is going.

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