A few days ago, I was discussing Law and Order with my brother (a common topic, since we both love the show) and he started telling me why Ben Stone’s character was written off the show.  He didn’t know all of the details but he knew that the actor, Michael Moriarty, clashed with the creator of the show on the concept of censorship and and this directly lead to his departure.

So, naturally, we turned to Wikipedia for more details. It turns out that Michael Moriarty is nuts!  He did have problems with censorship, but it seems that most of his fears stemmed from a comment made by the Attorney General, Janet Reno, rather than from any actual censorship that took place.  The creators say that he was fired due to erratic behavior (perhaps due to his admitted drinking problem?).  Shortly after leaving the show, he went to Canada as a self-proclaimed “political exile” and eventually received Canadian citizenship.  He regularly writes about political topics and his views are rather eccentric (he equates the idea of abortion with the genocidal motives of Nazism and generalizes Islam as a violent, power hungry religion which may need to be dealt with using nuclear weapons).

To top things off,  he has expressed an interest in running for president in the 2008 elections.  He announced his intentions in 2005, so maybe since then he realized that he has no chance of winning.  Or maybe he is campaigning, but nobody is listening.  Either way, he won’t end up in the oval office.  But it is certainly a funny story!