NEW YORK – House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (search) is hot under the collar about an episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (search) that he says "slurred" him.
The Texas Republican fired off a letter Thursday to NBC executives complaining about a comment made when two of the show's detectives were investigating a right-wing group's connection to the murder of an appellate judge.
In the season finale Wednesday, the detectives suspect an imprisoned white supremacist is behind the shootings of a judge's family, but their investigation widens when an appellate judge is later murdered.
"Looks like the same shooters. CSU found the slug in a post, matched it to the one that killed Judge Barton. Maybe we should put out an APB [all-points bulletin] for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-Shirt," Detective Eames (played by Kathryn Erbe) said in the episode entitled "False-Hearted Judges."
In his letter to NBC entertainment chief Jeff Zucker (search), DeLay wrote, "This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse."
"Law & Order" creator/executive producer Dick Wolf (search) fired back, "Up until today, it was my impression that all of our viewers understood that these shows are works of fiction . . . but I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show."
DeLay has been in hot water over alleged ethics violations and has taken even more heat for comments he made regarding judges involved in the Terri Schiavo (search) case. Schiavo was the severely brain-damaged woman who died in April after some Florida judges allowed her feeding tube to be removed.
"The hardest thing for a politician to do is to not respond to something even though it's really annoying ... if I was Tom DeLay, I would be annoyed because there is a movement to link Republicans to anti-judge violence," said Slate.com writer Mickey Kaus.
Klaus called the comment on the show "a cheap shot" and said it was just another example of Hollywood showing its liberal bias.
"I think it was a gratuitous comment," added Bill Simon, a former California gubernatorial candidate and vice chairman of Paxson Communications, adding that the comment was a "typical example of Hollywood sliding out of the base pan."
Both Simon and Klaus, however, think DeLay should have left the issue alone and not responded.
"I think it was a mistake for Delay to do that .. not only did he put a highlight on that particular remark but frankly it showed he has a little bit of a thin skin at this point," Simon told FOX News. "I think at this point, he should let it go ... you're just going to encourage people to pile on."
FOXNews.com's Liza Porteus and The New York Post's Michael Starr contributed to this report.
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