Jack A Very, Very Bad Man

Check out Jane Mayer’s new piece in the “New Yorker” on torture and the Fox show “24.” Mayer's one of my favorite journalists and I’m grateful to her for writing about something which has long been on my mind, which I've written about here—in Rosebud #14, from September of last year: “Several times in the last week I’ve heard TV commentators make reference to the popularity of the show 24 as some sort of proof that the American people condone the use of torture. Just once I’d like to see 24’s hero, L.A. counter terror cop Jack Bauer, torture or kill a suspect, only to find out later that he, or she, was innocent. ‘You made a mistake, Jack. Was it worth it?’”

There’s never been any proof that torture facilitates intelligence-gathering—on the contrary, torture has been known to lead to bad intelligence, which can potentially endanger U.S. servicemen and women and warp U.S. policy. It’s also illegal and wrong. Mayer goes farther in exposing the warm relationship between the creators and writers of “24” and people in the Bush administration. How could they not love this show? It’s apparently also very popular with cadets at West Point, who idolize the crackerjack terror detective Jack Bauer—a brutal, self-absorbed figure who self-righteously defies orders, a cooler-looking Ollie North.

Mayer was on Brian Lehrer’s “On the Media” on NPR today and someone emailed in to say oh, this just a fictional show and it doesn’t make me approve of torture. Maybe that’s true for some; but if you have any doubts about the close relationship between the entertainment media and the White House, just look back at the letters from FDR to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer about making movies that would help the war effort. Maybe that’s something we can all agree was a good idea at the time; but our government is obviously very interested in using entertainment to shape public opinion; they know its power. It’s naïve to think otherwise. It used to openly be called “propaganda,” even in this country, until Joseph Goebbels gave the word a bad odor.

And speaking of the Nazis: if they’d had TV throughout Hitler’s Germany, would you be surprised to find out that the number one show was one with graphic scenes of people being tortured by cops? Was does it say about our society that we’re so inured to images of people being hurt physically—and so arrogant to think that our torture is somehow “justified,” because we are doing it “for the right reasons”—that we can’t wait to get home to watch that stuff?

But not everyone is inured. Children aren’t; unless we allow them to be. Interestingly enough, the conversation on Brian Lehrer's show veered into the question of whether a parent should allow his or her child to watch “24.” My daughter is only 6, so it isn’t even an issue for me, but I’ll tell you something she said while watching “Home Alone”—not exactly “24,” which is why I let her watch it. It’s supposed to be for kids.

Well, the end of “Home Alone” features a 5-year-old boy essentially torturing two burglars: he pummels them with paint cans, burns them with a blow torch, shoots them, cuts them, tars and feathers them, and causes them to fall down flights of stairs. It’s supposed to be funny.

Watching this, my daughter started to cry. “Why are you crying?” I asked her, alarmed. She said, “Because he’s hurting the men!” And I said, “But they’re the bad guys.” And she said, “Yes but they’re human beings like us!"

I turned it off.