"The Mentalist" sticks to the first rule of US TV - "normal bad, abnormal good"

Social commentator Ben Shapiro's insights into the execrable treatment of fathers on US TV (which you can hear in the clip below) were borne out by last night's episode of The Mentalist, America's favourite cop series. It's also currently my preferred white-out TV show, but, after last night’s nauseatingly preachy, transvestite-lauding episode, I may have to find an alternative means of switching off what passes for my brain.

The charred body of a young homosexual man is found in his burned-out car behind a club which happens to feature transvestite entertainers. From the moment the camp troupe appeared, you knew with absolutely certainty that (a) they hadn’t done the deed, because, in TV-land, transvestites are always morally superior to straight people, and (b) they’d all be sensationally kind and loving and compassionate – because all of those rejected by society can’t bear to see others suffer, having suffered so cruelly themselves.

It was also inevitable that the show would end with a heart-rending stage performance by one of these gentle, wise, damaged beings – in this instance a distinctly unattractive cross-dresser sang (I kid you not) “Over the Rainbow”.

There was a predatory drug-addict/dealer (drug addicts can be cuddly in films, but never in TV programmes, no matter how liberal). And the boy’s father was always going to be a really horrible homophobe (he used to handcuff his son to his desk chair to make him do his homework). In all US crime dramas, the father is invariably a deranged, oppressive, uncaring Nazi – unless he is black, when he is usually a saint, even if he has spent most of his life in prison (you see, he would have looked after his kid if The Man hadn’t locked him up).

Homosexuals have been treated with so much understanding for so long, that we’re occasionally allowed to meet one who is not a perfectly evolved human being – but lesbians are still almost invariably shining role-models for the rest of us repressed sexual fascists.

Doughty old CSI regularly featured a sympathetic professional dominatrix who was supposedly arousing strange passions in Gil Grissom – they used to exchange lots of meaningful looks and smirks, which I think were meant to imply that Grissom was gagging to have his bum flayed (or gagging to wear a gag). In fact, CSI regularly featured whole episodes devoted to specific pervert groups – dwarf-lovers, chubby-chasers, people who like to dress up as babies or, in one patricularly execrable episode, animal costumes.

In fact, the only group treated even more unsympathetically in TV cop dramas than fathers, priests and businessmen are paedophiles – even LA liberals balk at shedding tears for kiddie-fiddlers. Paedophilia, Christianity and Capitalism are pretty much on a par when it comes to sheer evil.

At the risk of a visit from Mr Plod for hate crime, let me state now, once and for all, that sexual perverts bore me… well, I can’t say rigid, but you know what I mean. I have no interest whatsoever in shoe fetishists or transvestites or people who fantasise about having sex with octagenarians or animals. In fact, I even resent being asked to take an interest in these perverts, and I really resent being asked to sympathise with them – I just don’t bloody well care! As for transvestite entertainers, I find their appeal elusive, to put it mildly.

In last night’s Mentalist, three suspects rapidly emerged – the father, a work-colleague who had bullied the dead boy, and the gay paedophile drug-addict bookstore owner who had sexually abused him (fathers, straight men and paedophile drug-addicts – same thing, really: I'm amazed they didn't add a wicked priest). During the course of the investigation it emerged that each of them had committed crimes other than the boy's murder, and that they'd all be sent to prison.

At the end, the Mentalist reveals that the supposedly dead boy is still alive – and performing show tunes with the other transvestites. Turns out these lovable victims had helped him fake his death (without, of course, harming anyone in the process), while ensuring that the crimes committed by the lad’s persecutors would be discovered by the police.

The show ended with the Mentalist and his female boss sitting in the audience at the club enjoying the supposedly dead boy’s dire homage to Judy Garland, having already decided that they wouldn’t charge the delicate little flower – or his disconcertingly burly helpers – with faking his own death or wasting police crime. The female boss was in tears. By that stage, so was I!

No wonder President Obama felt able to come out in favour of gay marriage this week. No wonder the worst and possibly most damaging attack yet to have been made on Mitt Romney is that he might have been ever so slightly homophobic 45 years ago (a far worse crime than Barack Obama’s admission that he guzzled drugs as a young man). The social liberals who have always controlled American TV have been busy enlightening – i.e. brainwashing – the public for decades with the following simple message: “Abnormal good – normal bad!”