"Glee" caused a stir Thursday night with an episode that depicted a school shooting, something that hit much too close to home for some families in Newtown, Conn., less than four months after the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Ahead of the episode, the Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots group formed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, posted a message on its Facebook page that urged Newtown residents not to watch the episode.
"According to someone who blogs for an Internet site that is a TV spoiler site, the TV show, 'Glee' that airs tonight on Fox is going to depict a school shooting from the vantage point of the students hiding in the dark," read the message, which was attributed to a "Newtown organization.
"He said it is extremely harrowing and it even freaked him out and he's not from here. I would suggest if you do watch this TV show to either not watch it tonight or watch with caution."
Newtown parent Andrew Paley, a parent of two survivors of the shooting, said on CNN Friday morning that he was shocked at the episode.
"We have no problem, at least the parents I've spoken to, that they aired an episode that had a school shooting. It's reality. It happened. It happened here. It happened at Columbine. It happened in many other places," Paley said.
"What's really upsetting is that no one, none of the producers, reached out to the town of Newtown to let us residents who were so close to this know that this episode was airing. ... It would have just been a shocker to them if they didn't know what the episode was about."
Here's the video of Paley's appearance on CNN:
Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
     |