CBS’s ‘Good Wife’ Ridicules Ayn Rand’s Books as ‘Awful’ with ‘a 12-Year-Old’s View of the World’

May 18th, 2014 3:54 PM

The season finale of The Good Wife will air tonight (Sunday) on CBS. Last week’s episode included a quick pot-shot, from lead character “Alicia Florrick” played by Julianna Margulies,  at legendary libertarian author Ayn Rand.

She declared Rand’s books are “awful,” snidely asserting: “A guy bombs a building, the rich go out on strike. It’s a 12-year-old’s view of the world. It’s like basing your philosophy on the books of John Grisham.”

Audio: MP3 clip

On the May 11 episode, “The One Percent,” lawyer “Alicia Florrick” had as a client “James Paisley,” a corporate CEO played by Tom Skerritt, who is being sued by an ex-employee and during a TV interview, about protests against a merger held outside his company’s building, complains: “I felt like Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis” and the “one percent is the new hunted minority in this country. Not unlike the Jews in Nazi Germany.”

In one scene in the show set in Chicago, they have this conversation (matches video above):

Alicia Florrick: “You have a lot of things Mr. Paisley. Why do you feel so cornered?”

James Paisley: “Because there are more people who want than people who have. Read Ayn Rand.”

Florrick: “Oh, dear god. Have you read her books? They’re awful.”

Paisley: “Well, they weren’t meant to be Moby Dick. They were meant to make you think.”

Florrick: “A guy bombs a building, the rich go out on strike. It’s a 12-year-old’s view of the world. It’s like basing your philosophy on the books of John Grisham.”

My previous posts on the political agenda of The Good Wife:

> Friends on CBS’s ‘Good Wife’ Appalled by Man Who Supports Palin and Owns Guns

> “CBS Prime Time Judge Declares ‘Global Warming 1, Skeptics 0’”

> “Judge on CBS Prime Time Drama Cheers ‘Amazing’ Occupy Protesters: ‘I Salute Them’”

> “Prime Time CBS Drama ‘The Good Wife’ Impugns Tea Party as ‘Racist Organization’”

> “CBS Drama Showcases Blank Book that Mocks Palin as Empty-Headed Dunce