This rallied the protestors to declare that they were not going to be used as tools for the corporate media, and they protested the show’s presence at their event.

The protestors could not get too close to the filming site, but on midnight Friday police announced the show’s filming permit had been lifted and production for the scene ended up grinding to a half.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if Tony Baloney will end up making a special appearance.

h/t NY Daily News

Stephen Clancy Hill, 34, spent about eight hours on the edge of a rocky cliff in West Hills surrounded by police and talking to crisis negotiators.

With dusk approaching and Hill continuing to threaten to kill himself, members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite SWAT unit tried to subdue and apprehend him, using some sort of less-than-lethal weapon, said Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese, who oversaw the incident.

Seated on the cliff’s edge, Hill threw himself over at 5:30 p.m. and suffered fatal head injuries from the roughly 50-foot fall, authorities said.

In a ‘you can’t make this up’ side note, Hill apparently played President Barack Obama in a film called Palin: Erection ’08. If you so desire you can watch disturbing footage of Hill’s fall below. Or you can wait for the premiere of Law & Order: Los Angeles where a thinly veiled version of this storyline will inevitably show up.

[Pic via]

Back When They Were Really, Really Young

Claire Danes
Longtime watchers of the show will likely know this, but before Danes became a movie star, even before she began wandering the high school halls in My So Called Life, she played a…promiscuous teen on an early L&O episode.

Skin Deep
Airdate: Wednesday September 23, 1992
Summary: After photographer Julian Decker is found murdered in his studio, Logan and Cerreta discover that Decker’s real business was prostitution and acting as a pimp for models who aren’t getting the work they needed. Their investigation leads to Angela Brandt, one of Decker’s models who found more money working for Decker in other ways, but they also discover that Decker was romantically involved with Angela’s teenage daughter. Stone realizes that something strange is going on when the case gets weaker against Angela, but all of a sudden she wants to cut a deal.

Leighton Meester
She’s young in this clip but if you look close you can see a burgeoning Blair Waldorf. Bonus: Video clip!
Disciple
Airdate: 2/24/1999
Summary: After a teen is found dead in the emergency room, the investigation leads to a case involving a religious ritual and a defendant who claims that the action taken was dictated by a saint’s voice.

NEXT>>>Two For The Price Of One

Maybe I was mistaken, maybe the source of Breitbart’s quote was something directly overheard by a Countdown staffer, or a Breitbart utterance in some public forum. Maybe Countdown didn’t lift the quote from an exclusive interview and fail to credit the source, in the very same segment in which they accused the Drudge Report of thievery.

In running down the conservative echo chamber, Olbermann cited many of the players involved, and made this claim: “…or get Matt Drudge to steal somebody else’s column in which somebody else will insist conservatives have no voice in the media.”

Here’s the video. The quote in question is at the 7:19 mark, but watch the whole thing. It’s pretty good.

The full quote is from a December 10 Mediaite article by Colby Hall. It was called “Exclusive Interview: Andrew Breitbart Announces Launch of New ‘Big’ Sites,” and also featured a little red “Exclusive” banner, in case you missed the headline.

In a phone interview with Mediaite, Breitbart says that his new sites will continue to “fight the mainstream media – New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN — who have repeatedly, and under the guise of objectivity and political neutrality, promoted a blatantly left-of-center, pro-Democratic party agenda.”

Breitbart didn’t make that comment into the void of space, he made it in response to a Mediaite editor who had gone to the trouble of securing the interview and preparing questions for it. He deserved to be credited. How would Keith like it if we all got to tune in to “Countdown with Blank Spaces and a Dateline?”

The segment was about reactions, by Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, to a line spoken by a fictional character on NBC’s Law and Order: SVU. Olbermann doesn’t make the heavy lift that the pair are “inciting violence,” a charge that carries a high burden of proof.  I’m sure we’ve all said or done things that would look equally bad posted on the web page of some killer.

He does, however, provide support for that SVU character’s assertion that they are “spreading ignorance and hate,” and eviscerates the notion of a gaggle of people who claim no objectivity accusing mainstream journalists of bias. Keith would have been better served sticking to those points.

What’s the fastest way to get Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly talking about you on national television? Comparing them to a violent cancer, also on national television, is a pretty safe bet.

Two nights ago, a character in Law & Order likened Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly to “a cancer spreading ignorance and hate” against immigrants. Beck and O’Reilly were quick to hit back against the show’s “far-left” agenda:

O’Reilly, for his part, had some choice words for Law & Order EP Dick Wolf, those choice words being that Dick Wolf is a “despicable human being,” a “coward,” and a “liar.” O’Reilly then proceeded to roll some clips in which he made remarks about illegal immigrants that by all accounts were not cancerously spreading hate: for instance, that “most illegal aliens are good people, coming to America to try for better lives.”

Glenn Beck, for his part, launched into an apologia for tea parties, saying that they didn’t kill that census worker who hanged himself for the insurance money and that the SEIU is the real violent hub.

No word yet from Limbaugh, but if the speed and indignation of Beck’s and O’Reilly’s responses are any indication, stay tuned…

O’Reilly:



Beck:

There’s no other show on television that draws both nursing moms at 3 a.m. and college students at 3 p.m. And that’s something that the writers, producers and actors who make “Law & Order” consider when putting together scripts and shows. They revel in their series’ universal appeal and mass audience.

The NBC show is celebrating its 20th season which executive producer Dick Wolf said “feels more like five or six.” That’s because not much has changed in the world in the past few decades — the show still bothers both sides when it has controversial episodes that deal with abortion, Wolf joked.

In some ways, though, a lot has changed over that period. Just ask Rene Balcer who acknowledged that storylines from the 90s no longer hold up as well because New York City grew out of the “crack war” the show sprouted inside. Balcer and his team do whatever they can to make the show’s storylines feel real to viewers, famously ripping ideas from the headlines. It’s the educational elements of the show that make Wolf proudest. Cast member S. Epatha Merkerson is particularly satisfied when an episode provokes thought and sparks debate among viewers after the show ends. The panel said they’ve done their job best if people throw their shoes at the TV as the credits roll.

In fact, because the show’s issues are so heated, it’s not uncommon to find actors arguing the merits and morals of scripts at read-throughs. Both Merkerson and Sam Waterston stated that one of the great perks of working for “Law & Order” as opposed to other series is that Wolf and Belcer give them authority to question their roles and lines. Wolf said that actor Steven Hill was the first actor he ever met who would routinely ask for fewer lines.

It’s the creators and actors embracing of their roles as publicly perceived legal experts that make shooting the show so much fun for them. Waterston appears in jury duty video overviews; Wolf can talk about the difficulties that large, media-heavy trials have in finding jurors; and Merkerson is occasionally addressed as “Lieutenant” by strangers. Merkerson admitted that, despite playing the head of police for 16 years, she doesn’t know anything about law. A woman near us, surprised, whispered to her friend, “She’s got to know as much as we do.”

What They Said
“I don’t know many people involved in television who were thrilled to lose the 10:00 hour. No, I didn’t ask for Friday at 8.”
- Dick Wolf questions NBC’s decision to have Jay Leno air five nights a week in primetime

“I have never done anything smart except by backing into it.”
– Sam Waterston said he was at first resistant to the idea of having his character, Jack McCoy, take a promotion but eventually warmed up to the idea

“The show has to be available online so people don’t have to get up to go see it.”
– Does Rene Belcer only know people whose televisions have a crank to power them?

“Fred is a terrific guy and his politics are interesting.”
– Dick Wolf chooses his words like a politician, when talking about actor and politician Fred Thompson

“What I’ve found is each person who came on, they came into a family. We all get along really well.”
– S. Epatha Merkerson lists pretty much everyone she works with as the “person” she likes the most

What We Thought

• Pat Mitchell ran this panel well. She tied together ideas, moved the discussion along, and motioned to play clips with perfect transitions that didn’t interrupt or sidetrack the conversation. She was obviously prepared and seemed to be a veteran of these types of events.
• Belcer said that the show has credited 6,000 actors over the show’s 20 years on the air. Wolf joked that the evidence is in the playbills of every Broadway show. The two seemed happy they could reward so many talented actors with chances to show what they could do, even in small, insignificant parts.
• Wolf wonders how cable shows can afford to make shows at the level they do. He said that the season two finale of “Mad Men” cost $1.6 million to make, which the networks would never sign off on.

PANEL RULES!
Some audience behavior seems to repeat itself panel after panel. We’ll be updating a running list of “PANEL RULES!” that will help ensure that you are not the dweeb of the Panel Nerds.

Panel Nerds don’t like… Look Unlikes
You think that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. resembles the character of Jack McCoy. You even suggest that Vance got elected because the public agrees with this comparison. Unfortunately for you – and your question – Waterston doesn’t see the resemblance. We’re just happy you didn’t tell Dick Wolf he looked like Nathan Lane.