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About ArmaVirumque ( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh) In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age. Recent posts
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May 11, 2006 04:18 PM by James Panero
In 1990, "Law & Order" began as a one-hour drama on NBC and first series to film on location in New York. It also reversed the traditional focus of the television crime show by focusing on the police and the prosecutors rather than on the criminals and the defense lawyers. The formula worked. The show became a hit, not to say a cult favorite among New Yorkers. Creator Dick Wolf had tapped into the conservative unconscious of a liberal city. "Law and Order" was the television series for the liberal mugged by reality. The show is now in its fifteenth season or what not, with an untold number of spinoffs, but the first four seasons present the show as it was originally intended: a crime drama without the sensationalism of crime itself. In the second half of season three you find the platonic ideal of L&O actors: Richard Brooks and Dann Florek (who were both fired by Wolfe after season three to make way for more women on the show), Chris Noth, Jerry Orbach (who replaced Paul Sorvino), and Michael Moriarty. The strength of the early series could be found Moriarty himself, who as Ben Stone portrayed a hero as foundational to the American conservative ideal as Gordon Jackson’s Hudson was to the Tory ideal in Upstairs/Downstairs. But it has only been since his resignation from the show, after going toe-to-toe over freedom of speech with then Attorney General Janet Reno and moving to Canada, that Moriarty’s conservative heroics, and often quixotics, have truly come to light. Readers of New York magazine were reminded of this side of Moriarty several weeks ago in a rambling letter to the editor. This letter read, in part, The entire letter can be found here. Some say Moriarty has gone insane, a conservative Colonel Kurtz up the river in Canada. But he’s all the more a hero for what he represents, both on and off television: a conservative individualist in show business. From his website, this statement rings too true: I am one of only two high-profile actors who are ardently conservative believers in the sacredness of a Republic. The other one is Charlton Heston. Briefly put, Heston defends the Second Amendment of the now-endangered United States Bill of Rights -- the right to bear arms --, while I defend that which the Second Amendment was intended to protect unto death: the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech.
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