'Boston' attacks Utah

Gee, David E. Kelley must have Googled polygamy. And, in the hands of the executive producer/writer of "Boston Legal," a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

In another over-the-top episode of the soon-to-be-gone ABC series, Kelley climbed back up on his soapbox last week. And made himself look like a pompous, uninformed bully.

Yes, it's fiction. But it's fascinating how the same folks who would never descend to racial stereotyping have no problem with geographic or religious stereotyping.

Kelley and co-writer Corinne Brinkerhoff sent the comedy team of Alan Shore (James Spader) and Denny Crane (William Shatner) to a dude ranch in Utah — because, of course, all of Utah is a rural dude ranch. And the plot descended into sexual idiocy and infidelity involving Denny.

At which point he is arrested because "adultery is a crime in Utah, as is fornication out of wedlock."

Something Kelley and Co. apparently ran across on the Internet. But they missed the part about those laws not being enforced.

This being a Hollywood depiction of Utah, the stereotypes started flying thick and fast. Like when Alan called for the case to be moved to "any jurisdiction where the criminal justice code isn't written in the Good Book."

Of course, Utah means one thing only to Kelley and his ilk — polygamy.

"Utah is not the state that wants to prosecute adultery," Alan, charged as an accomplice, told the judge. "While it may technically be a crime, so is polygamy, which you don't prosecute.

"Your own attorney general went on record saying you lack the resources to go after all the polygamists," Alan continued. "And let's face it, you've got a lot of them. Not a judgment. Personally, I'm a fan. So's Denny.... I even find polygamy funny, just a little. These loser guys with all these women, the hairdos."

So polygamy is awful and awfully funny.

But if the show didn't falsely portray that Utah enforces fornication laws, then Alan wouldn't have been able to threaten to use the case to expose Utah's failure to enforce anti-polygamy laws. And, in one of the few things Kelley got right, he had Alan point out that "in many cases there's child abuse involved."

"I'm ready to take on the state ... and you and everyone you're married to," Alan told the judge.

I'm sure Kelley felt he was balancing things by having the judge say, "Polygamy is illegal in Utah and not practiced by the majority."

But attorney Melvin Palmer (Christopher Rich) shot back, "But it goes, Judge. It goes on. And, like he said, often with underage girls."

Yes, it goes on in Utah. And Arizona. And California. And Texas. And, like the folks in Texas, Kelley is under the misapprehension that there's an easy answer to a horrible problem of underage marriage.