The conservatives like '24'? After last season?

[norml]

The conservatives like '24'? After last season?

June 26, 2006


You might think that "24" -- the popular Fox series about superhuman U.S. counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer -- would have few fans among conservatives, given that its 2005-06 storyline dealt with a power-mad president who assassinated his noble predecessor and used a terrorism crisis as a pretext to advance his plan to seize Middle Eastern oil fields. This is a parody of the nutty "the war is about oil and only oil" arguments of the left, but a parody taken very seriously. "24" reflects the zeitgeist, we're told, and that the zeitgest fears we have a crazy man as president, and so of course it's happy that Jack Bauer kidnaps the president and strongly considers torturing him.

You might think this would lead conservatives to loathe "24," but you'd be wrong:

It's not unusual for hit TV shows to attract fans and draw crowds at fan conventions…. such as for ABC's "Lost," or CBS's "CSI." But in Washington today, there was a fan convention that was a tad unusual.

At the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, the Heritage Foundation hosted a forum on the hit FOX-TV show "24" that can only be described as adulatory. Though the panel featured homeland security experts, the co-creators of "24" and three of the show's stars to purportedly discuss "'24' and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" the event became a love-fest — a lofty, intellectual, probing one, but a love-fest nonetheless, with the amphitheater packed with rows and rows of the show's fans from the city's conservative power structure.

Front row center sat Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff gave the opening remarks. And it was a chance to see Rush gush.

snip

http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/003948.html


Or, why is it only the bad guys spill their guts when tortured on "24" while the hero never breaks, and only gives false information?

I like the show, however the monsters of make belive, the right wing media clowns, are presenting it as proof that torture works.


Chertoff, Limbaugh And '24'
By Peter and Helen Evans
June 27, 2006

What do Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh, and the creators and cast of the hit series "24" have in common? They were all part of a presentation last week by the Heritage Foundation.

snip

Rush Limbaugh introduced and moderated the panel, composed of James Carafano specializing in DHS at the Heritage Foundation and David Heyman from CSIS's Homeland Security Program, two academics who bracketed Hollywood's Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran and Howard Gordon, all executive producers and writers of "24" and three cast-members among them. In a prelude to the discussion about the contrast between TV and reality, Mr. Limbaugh's personal hearing-enhancement technology wasn't working well enough to allow him to hear most of what the panel was saying.

snip

It was brought up that what's generally called "torture" is liberally (ha-ha) used on "24" and did that correspond to a DHS reality. A Heritage academic on the panel with knowledge of American intelligence, author James Carafano, said the ticking time-bomb scenario - you know, the favorite extreme-case rationale for justifying torture - has never really occurred. Well, maybe someone will have to deal with that scenario sometime, but the consensus was that intelligence work was a tedious process of analysis rather than sudden, painfully extracted revelations. No question, however, what makes for better TV!

snip

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/guest/2006/phe_06271.shtml


Hard truth about Washington series

Tuesday, June 27, 2006
By Lisa de Moraes The Washington Post

snip

Don’t take my word for it. Just ask the show’s more ardent fans who, as we learned during the Heritage Foundation’s ”24” forum in Washington just last week, include Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, radio talker Rush Limbaugh, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush the Elder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

snip

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=293859&Category=20


http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&q=24+%22heritage+foundation%22

[BOSSHOG]

1. They love Movies about War too, it makes them feel patriotic

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. I stopped watching midway during season 3....

(ok, I'm slow)because I got tired of all the scenerios where "torture was the correct answer for EVERYTHING! Maybe the irony is over my head, but I "do" get Colbert. ;-)

[TomInTib]

2. I see "24" as psy-ops.

Classic tactic.

Soften the target (audience) so when the real thing hits the fan the outrage will be muted.

This is SOP in psy-ops training and practice.

[endarkenment]

4. What not Jack?

Seems like Mr Sutherland was not in attendance, instead the fascists got to rub shoulders with these: "There was "Chloe" looking cute, "Tony Alameda," certain that he had all the answers, and "President Logan" sneering at us."

What they love about 24 is the consistent use of severe torture to extract always accurate and valuable and timely information, and the parallel theme of a nation well protected by Total Information Awareness.

I wonder if Chloe opened up a socket and ran a backslash protocol for them. What a pile of fantasyland horseshit.

Love Boat gone feral.

[wyldwolf]

5. Jack Bauer is a Democrat

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=1824

[Javaman]

6. I am a hard core lefty progressive and I love 24!!

Call me crazy, flame me all you want, but it's fun tv to watch. And yes, I love war movies, action pics and things blowing up in general.

But unlike the various nazi's in our gov't who think that eliminating this stuff from our viewing will suddenly cure all the ills of society, I know and am fully aware that it's all fake and I am never ever support any of the tactics displayed in the show to get their information for use in real life. I'm a die hard democrat progressive liberal, I give to amnesty international, UNICEF and the world wildlife fun, I strive to be carbon free or at least neutral. I have never ever wanted to be in the military, never have or wanted to own a gun, try to eat as little meat as possible and only eat organic.
I capture rain water, have florescent bulbs throughout my home and keep the A/C set unseasonably high during the summer and unseasonably low in the winter. I have a compost pile and recycle everything, yet I enjoy the pleasure of Jack Bower kicking ass and taking names each week. Entertainment is just that, entertainment. It's the freaks on the right that want to BE Jack Bower that scares the living shit out of me.

Personally, if I wanted to BE any tv character, McGiver is more my speed. Heck, I wish I could make a nuclear accelerator out of a rubber band, paper click a wad of gum and yesterdays newspaper.

[endarkenment]

7. Who is advocating eliminating violence from TV?

It is sex on tv that gets the prudes aroused, not violence. The mommy state wants to smother game violence that IS OF THE WRONG SORT - such as the notorious Grand Theft Auto.

For example the problem with the Tom Hanks movie Saving Private Ryan was not limbs and parts flying around, it was 'fuck' and 'shit' being spoken.

[gratuitous]

8. There are probably several reasons

I watched the first season, and it's a good slam-bang shoot-em-up, although Jack Bauer's daughter seemed to get kidnapped a lot.

But I'd guess that a number of conservatives like it because it makes it look like counterterrorist work is simply a matter of will and hustle. Jack Bauer never worries about namby-pamby shit like legalities and blowback. That dude takes action, man! And that's what we need -- ACTION! All the hero's bullets fly true and straight, there's perfect coordination among even the most disparate factions, and if there's not, Jack Bauer cuts through Gordian knots like a hot knife through butter, baby. All the right wing fantasies about justice being meted out to the bad guys comes true, even when there's some bit of messiness like Jack's wife getting killed, and the hero perseveres through it all with integrity and dignity.

But remember guys and dolls, it's just a TV show. We lose sight of that fact far too often on both sides of the political divide.