Law & Order: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

NOTE: Oliver is of course right. The judicial system is broken, it reflects the larger society with its myriad unfixable flaws, inequalities and pervasive corruption. And TV, until recently the most potent medium to control the masses (now equaled but not surpassed by social media), has always been in the business of selling us lies and conformity with the status quo. A big part of that job is to sell the public the notion that the repressive agencies are impartial, "class blind", or on their side; or that they are benign, or, at worst, just incompetent but never evil. In that sense, Law & Order is part of a large and enormously profitable roster of shows dedicated to burnishing the US capitalist "security" machine. Besides Law & Order we can also mention The FBI, a show which ran for a decade and then went on to TV heaven to tell its lies on syndication forever. Next we have the military/police shows, an insidious species that grows like fungus, the most prominent being the CSI franchise, with convenient location hooks (Miami, Las Vegas, NY, all inaugurated on the security-worshipper network CBS). The genre's wildly successful  military version is NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), with pods in Hawai, Los Angeles, etc. Other shows carrying the same sanitising message about establishment spooks and cops are Blue Bloods (idealizing NYPD), and the far more sinister 24, whitewashing sordid "intelligence" operations. This is just a sample of what Hollywood cranks out in this field for TV consumption. They also have many big movies of the same ilk. Any wonder why the US and world publics are so dumb or plain brainwashed about America and her motives? 

The Editor