Slavery - Once Again Barney Miller Proves to be Ahead of Its Time

I saw this article about a Saudi Arabian couple indicted for "keeping a young Indonesian woman in their home as a virtual slave" mentioned over at Instapundit. Gateway Pundit also reports that this is not the first case of a Saudi famly convicted of keeping a slave.

It may be just the way I think but as soon as I saw the mention about slavery - my first though was of an episode of Barney Miller from 1978 about a Burmese chauffeur who was kept as a virtual slave. The big difference between the real-world cases cited above and the Barney Miller example was that the guy keeping the slave in the TV version couldn't be prosecuted because he was a diplomat assigned to the United Nations. Then again - would anyone be surprised that diplomats to the UN in New York were keeping slaves?

Once again - Barney Miller proves to be a show ahead of its time.