No Where Safe from Leftist Bombast: TV Mom Frets GOP House Guests 'Denying Global Warming'

Brent Baker

February 28, 2010 - 10:15pm

Demonstrating how Hollywood writers aren't reticent about inserting gratuitous political points into prime time dramas, on last Sunday night's (February 21) episode of ABC's Brothers and Sisters [1], "Nora Walker [2]," played by liberal actress Sally Field, walked into her kitchen during a kick-off party for her daughter's Republican senatorial campaign, and complained to another daughter, a son and his husband:

I can't believe the three of you are in here drinking while the GOP is out there denying global warming.

The far-fetched current storyline has "Kitty Walker [3]," played by Calista Flockhart, weeks after a battle with cancer and adopting a baby, running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican from California to replace her husband, "Senator Robert McCallister [4]," played by Rob Lowe, who is stepping down after a heart attack.

In the early days of the program produced by ABC Studios, "Kitty" was a DC-based conservative host of a TV debate show who was frequently at odds with her liberal and vocally so mother, "Nora." As recounted in a November of 2006 CyberAlert, "ABC's Conservative Character: 'Acknowledge the War Was a Mistake [5],'" it "took ABC until just the ninth episode...to have its sole conservative character 'grow' - as they say of conservatives who move to the left - from a pro-war right-winger to a critic of the Iraq war who declared it 'a mistake.'" Specifically:

On Sunday's episode [November 19, 2006], Nora was very upset by the Army's decision to recall her son, "Justin," who had served in Afghanistan, to go to Iraq. Feeling guilty about her pro-war sentiments which may have influenced Justin to enlist in the first place, before an interview with "Senator Robert McCallister," a California Republican played by Rob Lowe, Kitty plead with him to get the order rescinded. He refused, but she did him the favor during the interview of not asking about his divorce and rumors he had sex his family's nanny. Before the taped interview aired, she introduced it with an apology as she asserted:

I made a mistake in compromising the interview that you're about to see, and I made a mistake in continuing to defend a war that is in a desperate need of re-examination, re-examination which cannot come until we acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake.

Flashback to 2007 Emmy Awards: "Field: 'If Mothers Ruled World, There Would Be No Goddamned Wars [6].'"

- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [7] to follow him on Twitter.