How To Get Away With Smoking Crack, While Working For The New York Times

I am trying to give New York Times TV Critic Alessandra Stanley a way out, because her recent article about Shonda Rhimes and the new television series “How To Get Away with Murder” makes no sense. Maybe she should come clean, fall on her sword like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and admit, “Crack made me do it.”

The title of the article, “Wrought in Rhimes’s Image, Viola Davis Plays Shonda Rhimes’s Latest Tough Heroine,” would have you believe it is a review of ABC’s new show “ How To Get Away with Murder,” which was not created by Shonda Rhimes, but by Pete Nowalk. Oh, Ms. Stanley, wherefore art thou fact checker? Instead it is an odd, disjointed and offensive piece about the “angry,” “powerful,” “intimidating,” “fearsome,” authoritative black female characters that Ms. Rhimes has created who are respected and even from the haughty elite, instead of those “working class maids and nurses” American television viewers are so accustomed.

To be fair she does offer some review of the show about two-thirds of the way into the article, but it’s buried by her supposed historical treatise of the depiction of black women in television. She claims she wants to praise Shonda Rhimes for evolving our imagery beyond stereotype, but then lambasts her for embracing the “trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman,” then praises her again for recasting it and making it into an enviable image. OY VEY, I’m confused!

It sounds like Shonda’s ladies need to help Ms. Stanley out in the name of sisterhood. Dr. Bailey can help her get off the crack, Olivia Pope can launch a full court press mea culpa and Professor Keating can teach her how to write a logical, well written brief, I mean article.