Blossoms in the wasteland...

Television, particularly American television has been described as the great wasteland - empty of any real value or meaning or truth. Now of course that last item is open to some serious debate - truth. Perhaps the critics are correct and the truth presented by American television is its own representation. It could be that mainstream American television rips back the skin and reveals the shallow heart of American culture.

But life is always so much more complex and thus interesting. As if to confound those noble critics the occasional pearl is cast before the swine that devour the swill. But wait. Just who are these swine and what is this swill. It seems indeed that the remnants of the battle between high culture and low culture endure - preserved for all time in the supercilious gaze of the informed and sophisticated minds of the scions of culture - that is high culture!

Meanwhile your trusty correspondent has placed his cultural purity at risk and exposed himself to American Television Culture by watching an episode of Boston Legal. Of course it does star a Canadian, Bill Shatner so I am somewhat inoculated. But I have digressed long enough. What I really wanted to talk about was the raw nerve that this show continually exposes to the world. The lift away the shroud that obscures how the average American has been allowed to lose sight of their great gift of liberty and freedom to the world.

They have come to distrust their own people so much that today over two million Americans are in prison. In fact the United States of American, once the bastion of freedom to the entire world incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. These are the poor - the disadvantaged - the visible minorities - those who failed the test of the American Dream.

But tonight an episode of Boston Legal gave me hope because a mainstream media had uncovered that ugly sore and let in the light that can act to heal it. I saw a display of a human heart in all of its potential compassion and wisdom. Of course this is fiction. But is not all the world a stage and we but actors...