You know…..I used to like E.R.; it was always a quality show, well-written and with good acting and production values. It was never my favorite show by any stretch, but it was the kind of show I could watch with my wife, who loves it, and more or less enjoy.

I used to watch it every week, but due to pressures of work and the intrusion of just general life, I slacked off over the years. I watched it, but infrequently.

Thursday night, however, I said goodbye to E.R., and couldn’t care less if I never see it again.

The show has always leaned a little to the Left, I know, and often worked hard at pushing the envelope on propriety. Back in the day, however, when my politics and views weren’t quite so set, I could deal with it. In recent days, however, the show has become such a cesspool of blatant liberal propaganda and agenda-advancing that I guess I’ll just go watch some other show, or a movie, on the other TV when it comes on.

I’m not sure when this slide to the solid Left began…..as I say, I watched it infrequently. One night, I tuned in to discover that Carrie Weaver was a lesbian. I don’t know when this happened; there was dialogue that more or less alluded to the fact, but I hadn’t seen anything concrete, so to speak. But then, one evening, there she was, kissing a woman in a way that told me something had changed here. Seriously.
Okay….I guess I could deal with it. Sign of the times and all that, like it or not.
Sometime later, I tuned in and began watching with a little more frequency. Over time, I started seeing some drastically liberal-slanted plot lines. A few which come to mind just now:

1. Weaver’s lesbian relationship has evolved and become more prominent. She now lives with her lover, who is her television producer, and they have a baby. They sometimes engage in passionate makeout sessions. You know, if I want to watch lesbian porn, I’ll just go into the other room, log on and download the real thing; thanks.

2. This may have been last season, I think; they had an emotional story about one of the doctors enlisting in the Army. He went to Iraq and was of course killed. This allowed him to become the show’s resident symbolic, anti-war martyr, and to be the focus of much anti-war (and, I noticed, even anti-Bush) rhetoric. His decision to serve was disrespected, derided and cried over, and his like-minded father, who considered his death noble and honorable, was treated with great disrespect, as were other military figures featured in the storyline. Only the attitudes and ideals of the wise, liberal doctors at County General mattered. The character was involved, perhaps married to, one of the other doctors, and we all got to feel her pain, frustrated rage and anguish at her loss.

3. Recently, a devout Christian character, a moderately ditzy and very attractive blonde, has been added to the mix. Her religious views, though treated as sincere and not directly scorned, sometimes come into troublesome conflict with those of her more "practical" and grounded, secularly-minded co-workers. She is also often used as comic relief, being the subject of backhanded jokes and comic dialogue and situations.

4. The storyline about the doctors going to Darfur highlighted the terrible situation there and, perhaps not so ironically, mirrored the activism of former E.R. star and liberal activist Loony George Clooney. Christians and other non-Muslims are butchered all the time in Africa by Muslims and other Africa warlords; this, somehow, seems to have escaped the notice of the writers. However……

5. Thursday night, as the show opened, the face of Condoleeza Rice was seen on the television in Weaver’s home. Rice was making a speech of some kind; the camera switched to Weaver’s lover, who said something like "Oh, I just can’t listen to her anymore," as she switched off the TV. To the show’s credit, Weaver asked if she didn’t think Rice was "….something of a role model? Not for me, maybe, but for someone." She opined that maybe their daughter will grow up someday and want to be Sec. Of State. She could look to Rice.
Her lover smiles chidingly, even condescendingly, and says "If she wants to be Sec. Of State, she can look to Madalyn Albright."

Okay. That was it. That was an open endorsement, shedding any pretense of objectivity, and was enough for me.

This was no longer just working a vague liberal agenda into the ongoing, evolving, overall plot. This was blatantly biased leftist stumping and open, unopposed propaganda…I got up, told my wife goodnight, and under her protest, went to bed. No longer will I allow E.R. to sully my mood and poison my mind with its ever more prominent liberal bias. Goodbye, E.R. Hope you get cancelled this year.

The lesbian lover, by the way, is a liberal triple-play. She’s a strong, self-determining, professional woman (for the feminists) who is the product of a bi-racial relationship (black and white….for the blacks and self-loathing, PC liberal whites) and who just happens to be gay.
Voila! The most well-rounded character on the show.
Carrie Weaver, an equally strong and self-determining professional woman, however, has the poor fortune to be white, and seemingly the " wife and mother", the "weaker half", in their relationship…..all this, in the liberal view, gives her lover moral superiority, and the right to be condescending and chiding and to be allowed the last word on the issue.

Maybe their kid can grow up and simply hand North Korea a few 100 megaton H-bombs and a delivery system, instead of only giving them all the materials they need to build one themselves, as did Not-Too-Bright Albright.
I hope the kid grows up to make Rush Limbaugh look like Al Franken, or Anne Coulter look like Rosie O’Donnell.

But it won’t.