I've got to think it's no coincidence that recently there has been a notable increase in the amount of torture used by government agents on Fox's drama "24." It seems that the Gonzales torture memos have been read and taken to heart at the Los Angeles C.T.U. (Central Terrorism Unit).
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We're not quite at the halfway point in this season of "24," and already four characters have been tortured by government agents.
- First Richard Heller, the comb-challenged son of the Secretary of Defense, was subjected at C.T.U. to a long session of some high-tech kind of torture that involved sensory overload.
- Then Sarah Gavin, a techie at the C.T.U. falsely accused by a mole in the organization, was tortured by having a taser held to her neck.
- Next Dina Araz, a Muslim terrorist plotter, was tortured by a nameless C.T.U. agent who twisted her wounded arm to increase the pain and extract a confession.
- Most recently, agent Jack Bauer tortured businessman Paul Raines by ripping a power cord from a lamp and holding the live wires against Paul's flesh.
I'm only half-joking when I say that this uptick in fictional torture is a case of art imitating life. It appears to me that the writers of "24" got the same message from the Bushies that the guards at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan got: that in the so-called war on terror torture is acceptable. The elevation of Gonzales to Attorney General has only reinforced this message.
Although the writers of "24" evidently understand that torture is now officially tolerated, this doesn't necessarily mean that they believe that torture is okay. Fans of the series will note that in every one of these torture episodes on "24," the use of torture produced no useful information.