The Courage of Hollywood Writers (and Other Topics)

CSTL SinglePageKeyArt.indd

So, Mrs. Blather and the daughter unit have this show that they love to watch. Eventually they got me pulled into it too.

Castle is implausible but fun. The female NYC detective is, naturally, Vogue-cover beautiful. And for some reason, a crime novelist is allowed to be her partner and solve murders with her every week and will-they-or-won’t-they romantic tension carries everyone along.

So a couple of weeks ago a special two-episode story has a plot to set off a dirty bomb in Manhattan unfolding. The story line gives us some Muslim immigrants from a Middle Eastern country as suspects. But wait.  As it turns out, they’re only suspected because we’re all bigots and xenophobes.

Your actual bomb plotter turns out to be this guy:

terrorist

He is ex-military. Special forces. And he and some of his buddies who served together in Afghanistan are going to set off this dirty bomb because, according to the words Castle’s writers put in his mouth, they are “patriots.”

Ironically, the same week that this episode aired, police in Lubbock, Texas uncovered a plot by a real guy who is working on building a real dirty bomb. It was this guy:

r-khalid-aldawsari

His name is Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari and he is an engineering student from Saudi Arabia.

So we have two worlds. The world of Hollywood writers in which the only terrorists are U.S. soldiers who speak of patriotism and honor. And the real world, the one you and I have to live in.

After watching this episode, I tweeted: “Is there a writer left in Hollywood with the courage to write a drama in which the would-be terrorist is Muslim?”

I think I know the answer.