(Article changed on February 20, 2013 at 01:14)
SCANDAL ABC - Defiance
Lives: Secrets and Betrayals
By Sheila Parks
Scandal Whiskey
Tango Foxtrot aired February 14. I
want to remind everyone please not to get sidetracked by all the exciting sub
plots in this Beltway TV series. The
main story is the rigging of a presidential election. The election was rigged by five people, some of
whom were very close to Fitz (Tony Goldwyn), the Republican president now in office. They got him elected by rigging electronic
voting machines in Defiance, Ohio,
thus enabling him to carry the state of Ohio.
Since being betrayed by
two people he trusted and relied on heavily -- Olivia "fixer" Pope
(Kerry Washington), love of his life and Cyrus (Jeff Perry), his chief of staff
- Fitz is now distancing himself from both of them. Olivia has told Cyrus that Defiance will never be over.
David Rosen (Joshua
Malina) was front and center this week, not only in the episode but also by
appearing in a - hour interview before the show, in which viewers could submit
questions for him to answer.
I submitted a question
that did not get aired: "Wasn't he afraid that he would get killed because
he is investigating the rigging of the election?" He did answer my question, though, by saying
in answer to another question that when he gets the script weekly, he looks at
the end of it to see if he is going to die that week.
David was a truth-telling
Assistant U.S. Attorney who was looking into the rigged election in Defiance, Ohio. He had enlisted the help of James Novak (Dan
Bucatinsky), Cyrus' husband. When James
was called to testify about the rigging of the election, he lied and said he
knew nothing about Defiance
and nothing about a rigging. And so
David lost his job. James was trying to protect his family, his newly adopted
baby girl and his husband Cyrus. Hard
choice.
We don't know much about
David, not his past nor his secrets. He
is likeable and honest, at least as far we know. Relentless in his pursuit of the rigged
election in Defiance, he has much courage and integrity. For a show full of
secrets, I am eager to know his past and his secrets. I wonder if he will ever forgive Abby (Darby
Stanchfield) for betraying him by stealing the memory card from Defiance out of his
safe. Also, I wonder if he has he ever
betrayed anyone and why and, if so, what did he do to make amends for it, if
anything. Is he able to forgive? Will he betray anyone in the present?
I like David and love the
role he is playing. I also cannot help but wonder, however, why with such a
diverse and interesting cast, there is still a straight white man playing the
hero here, the one who is going to help save the world by exposing the rigged
election -- as is usually the case on TV, radio, film and everywhere else.
Just to hammer in the real
life story of the rigging of a presidential election:
In the real
life backstory, in the voting that took place in the 2000 presidential
election, the Diebold AccuVote OS [optical scan] electronic voting machines
were most likely hacked in Volusia,
Florida. As with the
touchscreens seen in Defiance, Ohio,
the tampering can be done without leaving a trace. Each machine is
supposed to have one memory card. In the middle of the night, in Volusia, a
second memory card [called "card no. 3"] "mysteriously
appears" in precinct 216 and negates 16,022 votes for Gore.
On February 19, 2013, in a phone and email conversation with Cliff Arnebeck, Ohio election attorney, he told me that in the real life backstory, "in the voting that took place in Ohio for the 2004 presidential election, I believe we can trace how the computers were hacked by SMARTech."Michael Connell, Karl Rove's high tech operative, testified that SMARTech had been placed into his contract with the Ohio Secretary of State and that they, rather than he, were responsible for the security issues created by their computers in Chattanooga, Tennessee." Connell was a hard-right-anti-abortionist-true-believer, who died, suspiciously, in a small airplane crash after testifying under oath. Like the characters in Scandal, he also had a personal agenda. He viewed abortion as murder and wanted an anti-abortion president. We will probably never know the real story of what happened with the fraud via the electronic voting machines in Ohio in 2004. For more detailed information, read Victoria Collier, Bob Fitrakis, Craig Unger. Thanks to Deltadoc of ePluribus Media for his most wonderful help with this.
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