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Complete text of editorial on torture and 24. Kept here because I'm sure that the story will disappear from the web and I will eventually want to reread it.
Editorial on Torture
By Jon Carroll
It seems pretty much established that we, as a nation, don't mind torture all that much. Abu Ghraib was, of course, a scandal, but the reaction from the masses was underwhelming. The Pentagon as usual scapegoated a couple of grunts, and the whole thing went away.
Guantanamo Bay is pretty clearly a hellhole of illegal and/or repulsive activities (female interrogators saying, "I've got my period! This is my blood! Ick, eh?"), and yet it continues to continue. The new attorney general thinks that some portions of the Geneva Convention are quaint. President Bush personally approved shipping unnamed prisoners to undisclosed prisons in compliant Third World countries, where we can just keep them until they rot and beat them at will.
I don't know that those actions are going on, of course, but I see no reason to think they're not. Openness to torture has been a feature of this administration for at least three years.
And why not? The dilemma is usually posed this way: Suppose the three people you loved most were in a building where a bomb was going to go off in one hour. You held the man who knew where the building was and how to disarm the bomb. Wouldn't your prissy reservations about torture go right out the window?
There are two problems with torture, besides the obvious one. One, it doesn't work. John McCain was tortured for six years, and never said a thing. Do you think that Islamic radicals believe in their cause less than John McCain believed in his? And here's the second problem: You can't be sure you're torturing the right guy. If someone says, "I don't know," and he really doesn't know, then you've spent a lot of precious torture time for nothing.
And it is in this context that I want to mention Fox's torture-o-rama television program, "24." This show is not one of those cookie-cutter cop/forensics shows. This show is like doing nine lines of cocaine and washing it down with a dozen Red Bulls. This show is like nothing else on television. This show makes no sense.
In the first season, the writers did not know how the show was going to end when the first episodes began airing. They made up the second half on the run, and it showed. Characters appeared and disappeared more or less at random. All of a sudden: Dennis Hopper! What? People did stupid things for no reason at all. When the writers got stuck, they inserted some sort of computer mumbo- jumbo -- "I'll use the interface to bypass the coordinates!" someone would yell. Everyone yells in this show, when they are not talking in a menacing whisper.
In one cherished episode, the writers could not think of what to do with Kim, the designated babe in peril, so they tossed in a mountain lion. A mountain lion! It's like, dude, why not an elephant? Let's get Dali-ed up and go out on the town!
Also, no one eats on this show. I just noticed that this year. They're all up for 24 hours, and they don't eat. They drink coffee, of course, and whenever any of them has a really bad scare, he is handed a glass of water. "Marlene, get Agent Smithy a glass of water!" It has a powerful calming effect, that water.
In this, the fourth season, not an episode has gone by without a torture scene. Naturally, the bad guys did some torturing -- they're Islamic extremists, of course, leading to another Cherished Moment when Kiefer Sutherland, the star of the show, appeared in a public relations spot to explain that not all Muslims are bad and all Americans should love them very much.
But the good guys do torture too. They do it, of course, because they have no choice. They pretend to be reluctant for about 10 seconds, but we know they are sociopaths and are just dying to get on with it. So, if you have a nasty, suspicious mind, you think: Fox Channel, good guys torture, not-so- subtle political agenda.
But here's the thing: So far, the good guys have tortured nobody but the wrong people. They tortured the son of the secretary of defense -- don't ask -- and he knew nothing. They tortured one of their own data analyzers, and it turned out she was innocent too. Then they tortured the estranged husband of the daughter of the secretary of defense -- no, seriously, don't ask -- and he turned out not to be guilty either.
The one actual guilty person they did capture alive, they took to the enemy hideout because they needed her thumb -- didn't I say not to ask? And she was immediately shot dead. So the message of this show is the federal agents are (a) very stupid, (b) mindlessly violent and (c) unable to find their donkeys with both hands and a flashlight. Is this really what Fox wants to tell the American people?
Original from San Francisco Chronicle by Joh Carroll 3/15/2005
Editorial on Torture
By Jon Carroll
It seems pretty much established that we, as a nation, don't mind torture all that much. Abu Ghraib was, of course, a scandal, but the reaction from the masses was underwhelming. The Pentagon as usual scapegoated a couple of grunts, and the whole thing went away.
Guantanamo Bay is pretty clearly a hellhole of illegal and/or repulsive activities (female interrogators saying, "I've got my period! This is my blood! Ick, eh?"), and yet it continues to continue. The new attorney general thinks that some portions of the Geneva Convention are quaint. President Bush personally approved shipping unnamed prisoners to undisclosed prisons in compliant Third World countries, where we can just keep them until they rot and beat them at will.
I don't know that those actions are going on, of course, but I see no reason to think they're not. Openness to torture has been a feature of this administration for at least three years.
And why not? The dilemma is usually posed this way: Suppose the three people you loved most were in a building where a bomb was going to go off in one hour. You held the man who knew where the building was and how to disarm the bomb. Wouldn't your prissy reservations about torture go right out the window?
There are two problems with torture, besides the obvious one. One, it doesn't work. John McCain was tortured for six years, and never said a thing. Do you think that Islamic radicals believe in their cause less than John McCain believed in his? And here's the second problem: You can't be sure you're torturing the right guy. If someone says, "I don't know," and he really doesn't know, then you've spent a lot of precious torture time for nothing.
And it is in this context that I want to mention Fox's torture-o-rama television program, "24." This show is not one of those cookie-cutter cop/forensics shows. This show is like doing nine lines of cocaine and washing it down with a dozen Red Bulls. This show is like nothing else on television. This show makes no sense.
In the first season, the writers did not know how the show was going to end when the first episodes began airing. They made up the second half on the run, and it showed. Characters appeared and disappeared more or less at random. All of a sudden: Dennis Hopper! What? People did stupid things for no reason at all. When the writers got stuck, they inserted some sort of computer mumbo- jumbo -- "I'll use the interface to bypass the coordinates!" someone would yell. Everyone yells in this show, when they are not talking in a menacing whisper.
In one cherished episode, the writers could not think of what to do with Kim, the designated babe in peril, so they tossed in a mountain lion. A mountain lion! It's like, dude, why not an elephant? Let's get Dali-ed up and go out on the town!
Also, no one eats on this show. I just noticed that this year. They're all up for 24 hours, and they don't eat. They drink coffee, of course, and whenever any of them has a really bad scare, he is handed a glass of water. "Marlene, get Agent Smithy a glass of water!" It has a powerful calming effect, that water.
In this, the fourth season, not an episode has gone by without a torture scene. Naturally, the bad guys did some torturing -- they're Islamic extremists, of course, leading to another Cherished Moment when Kiefer Sutherland, the star of the show, appeared in a public relations spot to explain that not all Muslims are bad and all Americans should love them very much.
But the good guys do torture too. They do it, of course, because they have no choice. They pretend to be reluctant for about 10 seconds, but we know they are sociopaths and are just dying to get on with it. So, if you have a nasty, suspicious mind, you think: Fox Channel, good guys torture, not-so- subtle political agenda.
But here's the thing: So far, the good guys have tortured nobody but the wrong people. They tortured the son of the secretary of defense -- don't ask -- and he knew nothing. They tortured one of their own data analyzers, and it turned out she was innocent too. Then they tortured the estranged husband of the daughter of the secretary of defense -- no, seriously, don't ask -- and he turned out not to be guilty either.
The one actual guilty person they did capture alive, they took to the enemy hideout because they needed her thumb -- didn't I say not to ask? And she was immediately shot dead. So the message of this show is the federal agents are (a) very stupid, (b) mindlessly violent and (c) unable to find their donkeys with both hands and a flashlight. Is this really what Fox wants to tell the American people?
Original from San Francisco Chronicle by Joh Carroll 3/15/2005
