Thor's Day: Score 2 for the A-team

By Morris Dean

It may have taken a drink or two for courage to get the second score, but in Sunday’s episode of the CBS TV program The Good Wife, its title character, Alicia Florrick, is asked by a reporter—
    But why not read the brief dialogue leading up to her answer?¹ Alicia has gone to an event attended by the two candidates for Governor of Illinois—her husband, State's Attorney Peter Florrick, and Mattie Hayward—and, because she has recently been offered a partnership in her law firm, Alicia is celebrating. By the way, Peter’s campaign manager has warned Alicia that she's likely to be asked the question that is coming....

Actresses Maura Tierney
and Julianna Margulies

Reporter: Ms. Hayward, how do you respond to the controversy over your actions at last weeks benediction?
    Mattie: My actions? You mean the video on the web of me not bowing…
    Reporter: Yes.
    Mattie: During prayer.
    Reporter: There has been some chatter about your insensitivity.
    Mattie: Well, I apologize if it seems insensitive. I was trying to avoid being hypocritical. I am an atheist.
    Reporter: Really? Don’t you worry about how that will play in a state where only 15% call themselves non-religious?
    Mattie: I worry about everything. But, I am who I am and I don’t think you should run away from that. Let’s just let the voters decide.
    Reporter: Well what about you, Mr. State’s Attorney?
    Peter: I respect Mattie’s point of view.
    Reporter: But, you don’t share it?
    Peter: Well it’s different. I was in prison. Belief means a great deal there. It was sometimes the only thing we had.
    Reporter: And your wife?
    Peter: Oh...well...I think my wife can speak for herself.
    Alicia: I’m an atheist.²

Another celebrity’s coming out is newsworthy—even the coming out of a fictional one—for it signals that being not religious is becoming more accepted—if not exactly acceptable by most.
    And that makes it more difficult for "most people" to ignore the yet bigger news that, if the atheists are right, then the Ultimate Big Celebrity for the B-team is Himself a fiction.
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1. Thanks to Polly Gerencser for the transcription.
2. This scene hasn’t appeared on YouTube yet, or I’d have included the link; actress Julianna Margulies’s face expresses ecstasy beyond mere inebriation.

Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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