I recently heard an NPR Morning Edition report on Jack Bauer and 24. The thrust of the piece was that Jack Bauer's on-screen torture antics were viewed as nothing more than harmless entertainment by the show's producers...EVEN AFTER
The dean of the military academy at West Point was concerned that some cadets took him too seriously — concerned enough that he visited the producers of 24 in late 2006. He asked if they could tone it down a little, if they could make Jack Bauer's violent tactics not quite so effective.
Bob Cochran says the show's producers took the comments under advisement, but that little has really changed. It is, after all, just a TV show, he says.
"I think the army is responsible for training its own people," Cochran says. "We're not. And they should be able to explain the difference to their own people between fantasy and reality."
Guess what? Turns out that smug producer of All American torture fantasy is as full of _hit as Bush,Cheney and the Chickenhawks.... cuz it just so happens that the Boys in Guantanamo looked at good ol' Jack for inspiration....
The same NPR piece has top ACLU attorney, a big fan of Bauer and 24, commenting on the difference between show biz fantasy and torture reality..
Bauer's adventures are admittedly fun to watch, admits attorney Barry Steinhardt.
"But it doesn't mean you agree with everything you enjoy," Steihardt says. "This is pure escapist entertainment."
Steinhardt is a top official with the ACLU, and in the real world he's challenged many of the difficult choices Chertoff has made. But like Chertoff, he's a huge 24 fan. Steinhardt says the show reminds him of the cowboy movies his grandmother took him to when he was 5, when the hero would rush in at the end and save the day.
"But the difference between being 5 and 55 is that, at 55, hopefully you learn that the lone-cowboy mode doesn't work," Steinhardt says. "It doesn't ... protect us, and it certainly doesn't protect our civil liberties."
Take torture, for instance. Steinhardt points out that when Jack Bauer does it, it always seems to work.
"Well in the real world," Steinhardt says, "torture doesn't work."
It turns out that Bush,Cheney,Rumsfeld,Gonzales et al (as I hope the indictment reads)are also fans of Jack Bauer... and this little piece I just read on Josh Marshall's TPM connects the dots between the Hollywood producers head in the sand myopia and the reality of life for prisoners in US interrogators' not so delicate hands...TPM Muckraker Report on the Jack Bauer Connection
Muckraker cites a Vanity Fair article where Phillipe Sands details the direct involvement of top admin and Justice figures in the merry pranks going on at Guantanamo...
There are plenty of highlights, including an admission (finally) from a Pentagon official that Jack Bauer provided inspiration. Diane Beaver, a lawyer who worked underneath Major General Michael Dunlavey, the first commander at Gitmo, told Sands in an interview about brainstorming meetings (which included representatives from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the C.I.A.) held at Gitmo in September of 2002 about possible interrogation techniques. The military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) program, meant to train U.S. soldiers to resist torture used by the bad guys, was one inspiration. But:
(TPM quotes from the VF article)
Ideas arose from other sources. The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. "We saw it on cable," Beaver recalled. "People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular." Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. "He gave people lots of ideas."
Brilliant... just f...ing brilliant Mr. Big Shot Producer Cochran... I hope that when the indictments come down, you are at least named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Just don't go to sleep thinking your are not in any way to blame for REAL human suffering and degradation. (of course we KNOW there will no indictments for this crew)