Normally, I don’t write about television shows, but there’s a new sitcom on NBC that I find highly offensive.
It’s called ‘Parks and Recreation? and it’s a mockumentary that follows the career of the fictional Leslie Knope (played by actress Amy Poehler), a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana.
The show portrays various local government officials as naive, incompetent, self-serving, apathetic, on-the-take or outright hostile to the public as in the case of the character Ron Swanson who declares, ‘I hate the public. The public is stupid.?
How dare they make fun of government officials on national television!
Suddenly it’s funny to hurt people’s feelings and insult them? What about the families of government officials? Have the show’s creators considered the effect on them?
Don’t they know that everyday noble local officials are out there doing the Lord’s work among us heathen taxpayers.
You think it’s easy spending other people’s money all day long and trying to at least look like you care about what the public wants while still attempting to catch a glimpse of yourself in every mirror you walk by.
Local government officials are modern day Saints who deserve our respect whether they’ve earned it or not.
But this show doesn’t care about that. The writers only seem to care about lampooning what they see as the stupidity of government.
According to the show’s website, ‘The new half-hour comedy will examine the mundane but necessary ways that people interact with their government, and ask why it’s frequently so complicated ? as everyone knows from standing in line at the DMV, applying for home construction permits, or trying to get the city to fix a pothole.?
Mundane? There is nothing mundane about local government.
Sit through a planning commission meeting sometime and tell me if it’s ‘mundane? to listen to officials argue for four straight hours over a sign’s font or the height and variety of shrubbery required by ordinance or whether the new Kohl’s should be made to look like a barn.
Complicated? There is nothing complicated about local government. Lawyers, planners and engineers work hand-in-hand with local officials producing thousands of documents full of regulations, legal terms and numbers.
It’s not their fault we’re too stupid to understand the holy mysteries of government.
I, for one, shall continue watching this ‘Parks and Recreation? every Thursday at 8:30 p.m. on NBC, so I can catalog everything I find offensive.
Maybe I’ll even start a website to monitor the show.
On second thought, I have a life.