Some unfettered Thanksgiving

I was going to use my Thanksgiving-themed column to go into a diatribe about all the turkeys usurping face time in the media right now. But, except for a few new candidates cropping up in the incessant and inconsequential presidential campaigning, the turkeys are still pretty much the same Bush-Cheney-Rove-Ann Coulter posse they’ve been for a while.

Barring that giving-Indians-plague-ridden-blankets-and-taking-their-land thing, Thanksgiving, at its purest level, can be about acknowledging with gratitude the things we normally take for granted. And I have a short (ultra-short) list for this year — a couple of media types that have either never received enough acknowledgment or that we have just stopped giving enough credit to.

First on my modest list is a woman who single-handedly could be a whole float at the Macy’s parade: Rosie O'Donnell. (I refer to her largeness of personality, not anything else.) Sure, lesbians with talk shows are a dime a dozen — no, wait, there are only two. And one of them has been crossing picket lines and weeping about dogs, or something. So let’s talk about the other one. During her tenure on that bastion of banality, The View, Rosie made a certain kind of history. I realize she has left the show and is now keeping a relatively low profile, but she did something pretty astonishing. Let’s break it down.

Rosie O'Donnell opened her mouth. She was a television presence who refused to kowtow to the Orwellian powers-that-have-been, and wouldn’t put a little pink bow on top of her unabashedly forthright criticism of our screwed-up government. And the most insurgent aspect to it all was the location from whence the righteous vitriol erupted: the insipid and insignificant Barbara Walters mushfest, The View. It’s one thing for Keith Olbermann to rant on a cable news channel, or for Bill Maher or Jon Stewart to vent some steam on their erstwhile comedy shows. But to take a venue like this empty-headed “women’s gabfest” and use it to launch the most heartfelt and unguarded (and un-spun) eruption of civil disobedience — well, who knew what it was going to do? And what it did was make headlines, and impact, and impel the White House to launch an attack campaign reminiscent of John Kerry’s U-boat slanderers. All of a sudden, 10 or 11 a.m. on television was a cultural event, an opportunity to release our pent-up silent-scream over what six years of Bush-whack had done to our psyches and our world. The View, post-Rosie, has returned to being as insignificant and unappealing as it ever was, but for almost a year it inadvertently allowed a singular bigmouth to inspire the rest of us to grow a pair.

My other thankfulness this year goes to someone at the opposite end of the spectrum from the in-your-face one-gal-band reformation squad of Ms. O’Donnell’s. His name is David E. Kelley, and his is a more subtle and eloquent approach, yet hardly less brazen.

I remember several years ago seeing a Dutch film called The 4th Man, in which the central character was not a particularly handsome, wealthy or charismatic man, yet he got laid by all the hottest people. He was, in fact, a writer, and the argument was made that one’s words could be so powerful and seductive as to get you in anywhere and anyone you wanted. I never forgot that little manifesto and, while I haven’t completely corroborated it consistently, David E. Kelley married Michelle Pfeiffer.

More power to him, I say. If his previous achievements on L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Ally MacBeal and The Practice weren’t sufficient, he has been cranking out some singularly startling, cunning and politicized entertainment on his little show, Boston Legal. At its surface level it is an unabashed farce, with James Spader and the Presence Known as Shatner going onto wildly skewed and antisocial tangents. But don’t be distracted: There is groundbreaking polemic underneath the masterful writing here. Several seasons ago, they went after George Bush’s “opposing opinion areas,” where protesters were relegated during any public appearance of the Uniter-Not-a-Divider. In the past weeks, there has been thoughtful debate on vigilantism, religion and fat prejudice – and not necessarily the opinions you’d expect.

And I will never forget the hat trick Mr. Kelley pulled in one episode, in which time was chillingly running out to save a little boy from being molested or worse by his kidnapper. This was played against an unbelievably over-the-top, howlingly funny/shocking crusade to force a crooked priest to give up some crucial information. It still boggles my mind that this Jedi of TV Writers was able to balance all those incompatible threads and produce one of the most distinctive and indelible hours of television I’ve ever seen.

You deserve Michelle Pfeiffer, Mr. Kelley. And I hope she makes for a good stuffing. As it were.