« Previous · Home · Next »

We will be watching...

January 14, 2007 10:48 PM

... to see if 24's outlook becomes as liberal as some are suggesting it has.  Time Magazine reports:

As the war has dragged on and become less black-and-white, so has 24. In 2003 it featured a conspiracy to provoke a Middle East invasion using bogus WMD evidence. (Yellowcake, anyone?) Last year's villain was the President, who had his predecessor assassinated [ed. the President in last year's season was clearly modeled after Nixon, not the current President.  The similarities were obvious]. In the new season, a string of suicide bombings has led, chillingly, to federal "detention centers" for Muslims, much like in the liberal pre-9/11 movie The Siege.

Then there's Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), who has seen his wife killed, executed an innocent man to stop an attack, tortured people (sometimes mistakenly), been tortured and spent two years in a Chinese prison. Unlike James Bond, who just gets younger and tougher, by the new season Bauer is tired, disillusioned and wondering how much longer he can fight the Long War. His scars are not only physical; his work has cost him relationships and perhaps some part of his humanity. He has been changed and damaged by every compromise he has had to make. By extension, he forces us to ask if we have too.

He keeps fighting, of course (he has 24 episodes to fill), but for people, not politics. 24's ideology--Jack Bauerism, if you will--is not so much in between left and right as it is outside them, impatient with both A.C.L.U. niceties and Bushian moral absolutes.

Indeed, we are picking quite a bit of that up.  Tonight's episode was very good--but there are some disconcerting plot trends.  First, there was Jack Bauer getting squeamish about torture, and saying "I just don't know if I can do this anymore!"  What is this Jack, Oprah?  Don't be such a freakin' p***y!

And then there's the plot line about the FBI's investigation of supposedly legitimate charitable organizations.  This being 24, we don't know yet if these charitable organizations are actually all that charitable.  But the liberal line on such investigations certainly was trotted out during tonight's episode.  And done, I might add, in such a way that it suggested that the feds are actually doing such things now.  They're not, and in the case of many "charitable" organizations in this country, they should be.  For more on 24, the indomitable Debbie Schlussel is all over it. 

For those who don't have time to check out Debbie's word on the subject, please allow us to summarize:  The Patriot Act, which the left claims is the apogee of civil liberties erosion, simply affords the Feds the same investigatory rights that they already have when combating organized crime.   No more, no less, than an investigatory scheme that has already been on the books for 20+ years.  It's something to think about, the next time you hear someone on 24 complaining about it, or read about in the New York Times.

TrackBack

Comments

Post a comment