Houston, We Have a Problem

So take it back, now. Please.

Actually, I wonder if this is more effect than cause--a show, 24, that apparently glorifies, or at least justifies torture as an effective method of 'getting things done,' which, in a typically warped, wingnut way, probably qualifies Keifer Sutherland's character as some sort of charming rebel to them.

Full disclosure: I don't watch 24, never have, and don't really feel like starting. However, I've been more or less aware of the premise, and the New Yorker piece seems to confirm my assumptions, even as the show's creators promise that Bauer (Sutherland) is basically "damned." Ah, I'll bet wingnuttia even salivates about that in an "only the good die young sense."

So, a prime time drama that literally is premised on the proverbial ticking time bomb. Hmmm...too bad that, like so many other foundations of, ahem, for lack of a better term, wingnut "thought," this is just more empty calories, or, maybe closer to the point, mental masturbation...after all, we're dealing with people who seem stunted in a perpetual state of early adolescence, who's fetishes/fantasies stand ever more starkly in contrast to their actual, dreary, at-best suburban reality (emphasis on "sub"). In other words, the political equivalent of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, minus (and for once I'll thank them for something) the actual willingness to act.

And their leader, Shrub, is likewise stunted, emotionally and mentally, a mastubator in chief, if you will...except that HIS fetishes/fantasies get acted upon by a national security apparatus. Hence, the actual, utterly ineffectual, and stupid activities going on in Iraq, in the secret prisons where those rendered (guilty or not) find themselves, at Guantanamo, and so on become inspiration for the TV show...which, itself being fantasy, provides a backdrop/justification for violence/torture as a means of getting results...which, further perverted/warped by wingnuttia, becomes yet another reason why "libruls hate America." Which would be one thing if it was just a matter of entertainmeent...

But reality last far longer than a tv show. Long after Keifer Sutherland is merely collecting residuals, and long after Jack Bauer is relegated to the next generation's version of TV Land, the effects of the REAL toture apparatus developed by our adolescent-in-chief will be with us, if not the apparatus itself.

And that does none of us any good.