Right wing nut-job criminal?
WHATEVER IT TAKES – The New Yorker – It seems that many right wingers like Jack Bauer and they way he handles interrogations of suspects.
Each season of “24,” which has been airing on Fox since 2001, depicts a single, panic-laced day in which Jack Bauer—a heroic C.T.U. agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland—must unravel and undermine a conspiracy that imperils the nation.
The twisting story line forces Bauer and his colleagues to make a series of grim choices that pit liberty against security. Frequently, the dilemma is stark: a resistant suspect can either be accorded due process—allowing a terrorist plot to proceed—or be tortured in pursuit of a lead. Bauer invariably chooses coercion.
This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.”
Finnegan and others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”
For what its worth I find any type of torture scenes, especially if the violence is directed against women, very upsetting. Shows like ‘LOST’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ also fall into this category, depicting ‘heroes’ inflicting torture to get information.
As a side note, it seems that Battlestar Galactica has been renewed for a 13 episode 4th season.
it’s TV…if you don’t like it change the channel.
“In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers.”….can someone explain to me how a show can adversely affect the training and performance of real American soldiers?
It took the West millennia to get rid of torture, and I’m sorry to see it trying to sneak in the back-door again. I was utterly disgusted by the Galactica episode with torture. There’s no scope for a moral rethink on this subject- once you open the floodgate, EVERYTHING comes through. So yes, If a cute 5-year old dies unless you torture a suspect, she has to die. Likewise hostages, fluffy dogs, families and nations. Because that level of devotion to an idea represents the thin thread seperating civilisation from barbarism, and gives value to life. Life and survival must not be ‘at any cost’. If TV shows keep re-presenting/inventing torture to us and we eventually habitualise, rationalise and immure ourselves to it, we risk to knock a century off of our cultural and spiritual evolution.
If our Govt still tortures in secret undisclosed locations then I don’t see a problem. They would rather we didn’t know about it though. 24 has always been a good show.
If that was your daughter up there about to die without someone coercing some terrorist into revealing information I think you’d feel differently.
In my opinion, if someone breaks the law, then they forfeit all rights under those same laws. This goes for terrorists as much as it does for murder. If it takes torture to retrieve information from a terrorist and their ilk, I’ll hand over the pliers myself.
What do you expect from Fox? Their entertainment channel is closely aligned with the right-wing propaganda of the Faux News Channel. 24 glorifies torture and argues for its justification. Lost and Battlestar Galactica question it usefulness and debate its use in a civilized society. There is a huge difference in the depiction between the two.
The old leftie’s accusations are finally true, we are a fascist country.
Comments like some of the above and over at Digg concerning the rights of a imprisoned DUI convict, only reinforce the point.
#4, what if one member of your family had done something awful? would you hand me some pliers to get the needed information out of them?
What do you expect from Fox? Their entertainment channel is closely aligned with the right-wing propaganda of the Faux News Channel.
Oh Please! Any chance to take a shot at the most watched news channel.
Maybe 24, Battlestar and others are popular because they show life as it really is. That sometimes you have to do the unthinkable or the disgusting for the greater good. I must prefer these real story lines to the sanitized, politically correct, Utopian ones.
We may not like it , but it is sometimes necessary and that is something that many liberals can not understand.
“Is Jack Bauer of ‘24′ a criminal or just a lovable sadistic patriot?”
Neither. He’s a fictional character on a crappy American TV show.
8. “Maybe 24, Battlestar and others are popular because they show life as it really is. That sometimes you have to do the unthinkable or the disgusting for the greater good.”
So we’ve finally come full circle. Now it’s the Conservatives who claim that it’s OK to break the law. Gee, I’m so old I remember when Conservatives supported law and order. Now it appears they only support law and order when it’s convenient.
I certainly hope that Liberals have switched too. Because if both parties feel they can break the law we’re in a lot of trouble!
I like how this same exact argument has come up now since TV has been around. This is nothing new. Same old argument…it goes nowhere.
Also accompanying these arguments are the jackasses that claim “the general public can’t tell the difference between real and fake violence and so they blah blah blah”. I mean, come on, this goes on and on and on and on.
People seem to forger that some children saw Sadam’s execution on YouTube and decided to imitate that situation.
10. “Some people aren’t smart enough to change the channel, so, become mini-Jack’s”
Wow, do you have names? I’m dying to meet someone who runs around 24 hours a day blowing stuff up and torturing people. That fad has not caught on here in the Rust-Belt. Since they’re “mini” are they really dwarves or midgets?!
“if its “cool” people will do it. Jack is “cool” to a lot of people.”
God, when I was a kid parents complained about us kids watching Superman because they were afraid we’d try and fly. Now instead of jumping off of the couch people are capturing terrorists and torturing them?! Gee it really sucks to be old.
#4, what if one member of your family had done something awful? would you hand me some pliers to get the needed information out of them?
If they were guilty of terrorism? Absolutely I would.
#11 full circle, don’t worry, they’ll come around, just give them 50-100 years…….. who knows? by then people might even start to remember and value that the ‘God’ in “In God We Trust” is all for Compassion, start caring for each other, and leave all this petty nonsense behind!
#14, you bring up an interesting question…
Does Jack Sleep?
#4 JB & #10 Woktiny
Both very good posts. Well said.
#8, gq, well, you did it again. Geeze putting your foot in your mouth so much will ruin your teeth.
Maybe 24, Battlestar and others are popular because they show life as it really is. I have only seen quick blurbs of 24 and BattleStar Gallactica and nothing of Lost. None of them show life as it is. One shows an agent killing people willy nilly (what is the death count) all day while the other takes place in the future. The only way this represents “real life” is in your fantasies and considering some of your posts, that can’t be far from reality for you.
#11, SN. Good point. I still wonder how someone can justify torture, killing, and other types of violence on TV yet get so upset about a two second boob shot.
#15, I really doubt of your sincerity, I think deep down you don’t believe that.
Yes, if it was my daughter at stake I’d want the bastard tortured. But not all my whims should be indulged. Law exists in our society to impose restraint on us when we are either unable or unwilling to restrain ourselves for the greater good of society. Would I rather my daughter was saved to live in a society where Police stations have secret rear entrances and a ‘lower level’?
Even in Dirty Harry, the first backlash against excessive liberalism, the camera pulls away and the key goes minor when Harry starts his torture session on the football field, and it turns out the girl was dead anyway.
At least that was ambiguous in intent, unlike the torture episode of Galactica, which pretty much green-lighted torture as an interrogation weapon for the good guys.
Who will you torture when you have become your own enemy by descending to their tactics? If you are willing to do that, what do you have left to defend? Are we to become a society of mafiosi kissing our own children goodnight tenderly and regarding any family outside of our own as expendable and unimportant? This is psychopathic behaviour, defined by an inability to empathise – the very reason we axed torture as a legitimate practice in Western culture. This is a rocky road to be treading just becasue we are scared.
When I was growing up we didn’t have the tube so it was either radio or Sat afternoon at THE movie. My mother was not too happy about us watching a half naked man as the side kick of masked man on a white horse. She doesn’t care what I watch now.
I’d skin someone alive to save my daughter. Think I’m joking?
No, I don’t think you’re joking. You wouldn’t give us much mileage in ‘Saw 4’, would you? No conflict at all there. You’re the mafiosi I was talking about.
The best way to describe Battlestar Galactica is Days of Our lives in space.
They even have the ones who get killed and usually return the next episode.
Martin – thank you for the clarity and thoughtfulness of these posts. The complete refusal of some people to see the eventual outcome of torture-as-entertainment is worrying. If they really want to believe that visual depictions never influence “real life”, it doesn’t affect the obvious conclusion of living in a society where the ends justify the means.
As talented as some writers and producers are I still can’t see lurid, prolonged depictions of deliberate human agony as anything but depravity…
#4) So you’ll give up your right to not incriminate yourself, to have an attorney, habeas corpus, and right to appeal (among hundreds others) if you are suspected of a crime? Sounds awfully similar to the same countries and people you right wing wackos so fear…
#26 per 10: I’m not in the “gov’t censorship” camp, I’m in the “citizens aren’t any smarter than the gov’t” camp … we’re all dumb. so don’t extend assumptions over what I say.
#26 per 16: the veal image doesn’t help the point. Whether you believe in deity or not, the writings plainly show Jesus walked into it by choice with foreknowledge. Besides which Jesus’ act of taking someone else’s place is Compassionate. Since the typical American Christian subscribes to the idea of the Trinity, it can be here seen as God Himself on the cross. Furthermore, my point was not to debate the nature of God, but that people will be a lot better off when they come around to a culture of Compassion, with or without religious foundation. The God reference is in reference to the text on American Money, myself being an American citizen. Compassion referenced because the God that Americans supposedly “trust in” said “I desire compassion…” Add it all together and my point was a call for Americans to actually do what they say, and not an invitation to debate the theology of the cross.
but seriously, does Jack sleep?
26. “If you were on a battlefield and witnessed a soldier planning to blow up a building full of people would you shoot or arrest the person and send them to trial?”
All is fair in love and war, even camping. But I was not talking about war. I was responding to gquaglia’s argument that it’s acceptable to break the law for the greater good.
#29, this is the same as wondering where the toilet is on Star Trek’s Enterprise.
How many times have you seen Jack taking a piss?
Irony: “the right to bare arms” , “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”:
which piece of the constitution is sacred and which is disposable today?
My bet is the fear based neo-cons responding are fairly clear that one is “constitutional” while the other is negotiable, even though they are rooted in the same document.
Way to go conservative citizens for defending that fine old liberal concept: situational ethics.
And, how very Christian of you too. So, WWJD?????