Topic: Media Research Center
In 2010, the Media Research Center railed against a characterization of Superman it didn't like. Now, the MRC has found another comic-book plot it disapproves of.
In a Feb. 13 MRC Culture & Media Institute post, Paul Wilson asserts that the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" comic book is "promoting abortion" because the title character decides to have one. Wilson reads the fictional character's mind: "In other words, for Buffy, abortion is a convenient way of cleaning up a mess, created by a lack of self-control."
Wilson then states: "But by publishing a comic where a woman gets an abortion, the creator of the comic has effectively taken the side of abortion." That's a pure Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy.
Wilson goes on to rant about how "Buffy’s abortion decision is merely the latest in a recent spate of pro-abortion propaganda in the entertainment industry":
Grey’s Anatomy, which is produced by a Shonda Rhimes, board member of the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood, inserted a pro-abortion message into a September 2011 episode, by positively depicting one of the doctors killing her baby. Private Practice, also produced by Rhimes, was even more overt in supporting abortion in a May 2011 episode, featuring a “pro-life” doctor who admitted to an abortion doctor who had just performed a partial-birth abortion that “you helped that woman.” Friday Night Lights also featured a pro-abortion message in a July 2010 episode, with the moral counselor of the show counseling a young woman to "think about her life, think about what's important to her and what she wants."
Such knee-jerk attacks -- and dismissal of any portrayal of abortion in the media that isn't negative as "pro-abortion" -- are exactly what "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon was trying to counter with his storyline. From a USA Today article:
Whedon points out that Friday Night Lights is one show that recently tackled abortion with the proper respect. And he concedes there's a little bit of a political jab in the Buffy story line. It's not that women should be on one side or the other, he says, but that people have to make this decision and talk about it.
"It offends me that people who purport to be discussing a decision that is as crucial and painful as any a young woman has to make won't even say something that they think is going to make some people angry."
[...]
"I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges," he says. "But because I don't, when I do it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life."
Wilson is apparently not interested in dealing with real life -- He's rather just mindlessly spout right-wing talking points.
