Several people on the
earlier thread about the TV show "24" have ripped the show as being ultra-right-wing propaganda, condoning the Patriot Act, torture, etc etc. Most (not all) of the people who went on about this have apparently either never seen the show or only seen a few episodes here and there. I'm a progressive Dem, Dean supporter, Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft hater and longtime fan of "24", and while I'm not entirely comfortable with the way these things are dealt with on the show, there's something which anyone new to the show HAS to understand right off the bat: THINGS ARE NEVER AS THEY APPEAR.
(more below, including spoilers from the 2nd season if you plan on watching the DVDs)
During the 2nd season, the Big Terrorist Threat came from a nuclear bomb being smuggled into the country, set to go off in downtown L.A., supposedly masterminded by not one but three Mid-Eastern nations (one of which was clearly supposed to be Iraq, though they never gave the name).
HOWEVER, while some Arab terrorists were indeed involved, it turned out that the nations in question were actually being framed--the bomb attack was actually masterminded by several bigshot white guy oil investor war profiteers (can you say Haliburton?); also, the black Democractic President--who was under tremendous pressure to order a full-out invasion of (Iraq etc.), decided to hold off and instead waited until all the evidence was in--and, therefore, did not illegally invade anywhere, but instead busted the actual bad guys.
In other words, the exact polar opposite of the real world.
In addition, there were also several Arabic characters who were good guys, one of whom who was killed by rednecks during a riot, and one of whom was mistaken for a terrorist when it turned out to be, in fact, his rich, white, blonde-haired American fiancee who was plotting the attack.
Now, that brings us to this season's opener and the issue of torture.
For those who didn't watch it, the basic setup is this: during an argument about foreign policy with his peacenik son, the Secretary of Defense and his daughter/advisor are kidnapped by what are presumably Islamic extremist terrorists and hauled off to wherever. The peacenik son, who isn't spotted by the kidnappers, is found by CTU (the fictional counter-terrorism organization...sort of an FBI/CIA/NSA hybrid) and brought in for questioning. For whatever reason, the CTU folks suspect that the son may have had something to do with his own father/sister's kidnapping.
Now, "24" has a long history of showing torture by both sides--the bad guys torture people cus, of course, they're the bad guys; they get away with having the "good guys" (CTU/Jack Baur/etc.) torturing suspects/prisoners by making absolutely certain that the audience is clear that a) the torturee is definitively guilty of being a murderer/rapist/terrorist/etc; b) that they have information necessary to stop the bomb/save the day; and c) that there is simply no other way of extracting said info in the time necessary to save millions of lives, etc. Obviously, I've never been comfortable with this aspect, but in the context of the show it is portrayed as "necessary" etc.
HOWEVER, of course, post Abu Gharib/Guantanimo and the Gonzales confirmation hearings in the real world, I've been hoping that the 24 crew would have the strength of character to face up to it--and so far it looks like they're going to do an appropriate counterpoint with the Sec. of Defense's son's character.
When he's brought in to CTU, they hook him up to a lie detector against his will--but they include a scene showing him being outraged about his civil rights being violated, pointing out that doing so is illegal and hasn't done anything wrong in any event.
Now, there's two ways that this storyline can play out. The first would be for them to be right about the son being a John Walker Lindh-type who betrays his own father. I hope that this isn't the case, since not only would it smack too close to the Patty Hearst-like fiancee I noted from season 2, but it would get the writers off the hook by letting them avoid the torture issue again.
The second way would be for the son to be telling the truth--that he's an innocent who's civil rights have been horribly violated. This would open up a VERY nasty can of worms on the show of extreme relevence to the issue in the real world.
FWIW, the teaser for tomorrow night makes it look as though this is indeed how they're going to play it out--with the CTU people torturing not just an innocent man, but one who's a U.S. citizen and the Secretary of Defense's son to boot. Then again, the very first thing I said is that things on the show are never what they appear, so we'll see what happens tonight...
