Sharkjumping for couch potatoes - in 24 easy lessons!

This is the year I've reluctantly had to give up what used to be a favourite guilty pleasure - watching '24' has unfortunately become an activity too unpleasant for a Sunday evening, or indeed any evening when I'm not strapped into a chair by force and put under severe duress.

In previous seasons, Jack Bauer's endless quest to beat the clock against a variety of baddies intent on using a bomb/ nuke/ virus/ nerve gas against the good people of LA County (and the rest of the US of course, but we never seem them. Ever.) has been tipping slowly over the edge into self-parody, but this is the season when one of the more unpleasant undertones of the show has simply stepped forward and become the main theme.

Given the admittedly tough task of breathing new life into a format that seemed revolutionary, but has become stale and jaded, the producers and writers of the show have not so much decided to jump the shark as make the entire show a commercial for a shark-jumping school! In earlier seasons, you would wince at the torture scenes, but the plot points and the relative rarity of the use of torture would convince you that given a 'ticking bomb' and 'no other choice' even an honourable man like Jack Bauer had no choice. It's a tough world we live in, the bad guys don't support Amnesty International etc etc - you know the song.

But this year, different things seem to have combined to make the show more than a touch repellent. Torture is no longer the last option, it's usually the first - imagine Jack yelling, 'Chloe, we don't have the time' and you have pretty much the only excuse the writers use for every scene. The apogee or nadir, depending on your point of view, is the episode where after already torturing various baddies this season, Jack starts on his brother, who's revealed as the shadowy villain behind many nefarious evildoings! From last season even!! Apart exposing the lack of ideas of writers who have absolutely, completely and utterly run out of ideas, it just confirms that the show has taken a conscious turn towards being unapologetic propaganda for the kind of utterly dysfunctional and ineffective thinking that has characterized the 'War on Terror', but which is apparently de rigeur if you want to be called a patriot in Right wing America today.

Where does one start to deconstruct the hokum that this is the only way to fight terrorists? This piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on the producer Joel Surnow does an excellent job of simply laying out the facts that are quite damning. Let me break down her article and present the best bits.

Let's start with the premise - the hypothetical 'ticking bomb' scenario is one where a terrorist or some generic Central Casting evil type has a ticking bomb stashed secretly somewhere, which will kill thousands/ millions (of Americans, of course!), unless our hero/ heroine can nobly overcome their wussy liberal impulses and torture (yeah, I said torture! Wassamatter with you, you want millions of Americans to die??) the baddies, the bomb will go off. Of course, this is the only premise behind 24. Ever.

So, how often has this happened in real life? Plenty often, if you believe the Republican and Right wing faction who always argues that without Abu Ghraib and the extraordinary renditions to 'black sites', any number of these ticking bombs would have gone off. Right?

Wrong! No terrorism expert has ever been able to point out a real-life example of this actually happening. In a delicious irony, this scenario first popped up in fiction and in a French novel no less! The story of Jean Lartéguy’s 1960 novel “Les Centurions,” set during France's brutal suppression of Algerian freedom fighters/ terrorists (take your pick) invented this scenario pretty much as an excuse to make French liberals feel less queasy at what La Republique was doing in their name! It was, needless to say, not backed up by fact, either in Algeria or anywhere else since.

But, you say, but even in some other cases, even if the bomb is not going off right away, there are certainly cases where torture can get information that will save lives, right? So, if anyone objects to torture, they must be wimpy liberals who can't see the larger picture for all the Amnesty protest signs, right?

Let's do a little quiz - Who visited the creative team to tell them that they'd 'come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” [Mr. x] said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”'

Which cheese-eating surrender monkey said this? Ah - that would be U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Hmm.

Let's try another one: who 'said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. [Mr. Y] told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”'

Who's the bleeding heart wimp that says this? Oh, that's only Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point. Oh-kay...

Anyone else attended the meeting? Who's this: He 'replied that torture was not an effective response. “These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out,” he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!”'

Which wussy lawyer type is this now? Only Joe Navarro, one of the F.B.I.’s top experts in questioning techniques, who's conducted over twelve thousand interrogations. I assure you, while it feels like Jack's done more in this season alone, he hasn't come close. And Jack is fictional, by the way.

Hmm. Let's get real here folks - have you been in Iraq? Well have you? Why don't we hear from someone who has and then see how these theoretical warriors' bullshit stands up, eh?

Ok - let's hear from Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in Iraq. What does he say?

'He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as “24” circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.” He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture “victim,” in a similar intimidation ploy....“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence...If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”
Lagouranis told the “24” team what the U.S. military and the F.B.I. teach real intelligence professionals: “rapport-building,” the slow process of winning over informants, is the method that generally works best... Cochran and the others from “24” worried that such approaches would “take too much time” on an hour-long television show.

So let's get this straight - after trying to scare the pants off you by telling you that this could happen to us all unless someone like Jack Bauer saves us at the last minute, they then admit that showing the actual techniques which could save lives would 'take too much time' - so essentially torture makes for a snappier plot device. Can't argue with that, eh? So, some guys in the Army ape the show and get rubbish intelligence in return - time to trot out that old cliche about how people can always distinguish between television and reality. So nice when an old liberal argument can be used to shut them up. So what if the evidence suggests plenty of young impressionable troops ape exactly what they see on the show? Still in the 'reality-based' world are we?

But the funniest response of all is from the show's chief brain Joel Surnow - his right wing links and connections are a matter for a different day, but why don't we listen to what he has to say to the meeting with the military, a meeting that he ducked out of?

'“We’ve had all of these torture experts come by recently, and they say, ‘You don’t realize how many people are affected by this. Be careful.’ They say torture doesn’t work. But I don’t believe that. I don’t think it’s honest to say that if someone you love was being held, and you had five minutes to save them, you wouldn’t do it. Tell me, what would you do? If someone had one of my children, or my wife, I would hope I’d do it. There is nothing—nothing—I wouldn’t do.”'

Ah - so we now know that Joel Surnow knows more about torture working than the Army, the FBI and people who've actually had to do it. (It should surprise no one that he's bosom buddies with Rush Oxycontin Limbaugh, who's always pro-war, any war, but stays far from the possibility of ever fighting one himself!) Using the hoariest cliche in the book, he does a classic bait-and-switch. If someone had my wife and children, yes, I'd do anything to save them too. But - you moron - what you're being told is that torture would NOT WORK! IT WOULD NOT SAVE THEM!!

It is unwittingly revealing of the mentality of Surnow and the entire Republican Right wing 'torture 'em now!' crowd that this statement clearly disdains any argument about the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of torture - the one and only rationale left is that it makes them feel more manly. With his wife and children under threat, what else would a manly mannish man do, but lash out and blindly torture someone, anyone? So what if it wouldn't work? So what if it would almost certainly give them incorrect information and therefore doom said wife and kids? Pah - that stuff is for wimps! Cue gravely voice and spliced shots of the Stars and Stripes - I love my family as much as anyone, but if they have to die for me to save them, so be it ... (sniff)

The entire Iraq war has been all about a bunch of draft dodgers and war profiteers seeking to compensate for their lack of any actual manhood by sending others into a senseless war that has strengthened Al Qaeda's cause immeasurably and make the Middle East even more toxic than it was to begin with. To have to watch a TV show by another hack seeking to display his cojones - no, I'm sorry, even Jack can't torture me into doing this anymore!

RIP Ms Ivins

(Photo courtesy: The Texas Observer)

Molly Ivins is dead. Here's the link to the story. Many good and heartfelt pieces have already appeared to mark her passing.

Read Joe Conason at Salon here - (subscription or clicking on an ad required). There's also an excellent obituary in The Guardian as well, here.

Many longer and better obituaries will be written about her - since many of the networks covered her death and even President Bush (a contemporary of hers from their high school in Midland, Texas) saw fit to weigh in with a few words, it is safe to assume many hypocritical things will be said too, but I do want to put down some thoughts on why I think the loss of this funny, witty, sharp lady is a loss for us all.

Why am I, a 35 year old Indian man who grew up in India, far from Austin Texas, who spent two years living in the USA (admittedy during a time that included the 2000 presidential election!) and who now lives in London, close to tears at the death of a writer who spent most of her professional life covering Texas politics?

Because after I discovered her through her incisive and funny biography of George W. Bush, ‘Shrub’ (co-authored with Lou Dubose), it was clear that here was a political writer who had an acutely tuned bullshit meter and had a killer sense of humour as well. That book made me gasp and laugh in equal measure and in later years, her comment on her old schoolmate (something along the lines of - Don’t complain America, we told you what he was like and you *still* voted for him!) seemed more prophetic than ever. After ‘Shrub’ I started reading every online column she ever wrote. I live in a different country now and have changed laptops ten times or more since 2000, but if it doesn’t have a link to her latest column and a local folder full of her older columns, it’s not mine.

Because the more I read her work, going back to the collections of her political writing, ‘Molly Ivins can’t say that, can she?’, ‘You’ve got to dance with them what brung you’ and ‘Nothin’ but good times ahead’ and ‘Who let the dogs in’, her pieces on politics were perceptive, funny, unashamedly liberal and always fierce in the defence of what she thought was right. I made sure I read ‘Bushwhacked’ (also co-written with Dubose) as soon as it came out - darker and grimmer, Molly simply catalogued what the Bush years were doing to her country and let the people in her book speak for themselves. When I came to the chapter on Priscilla Owen, one of Bush’s candidates for judicial confirmation, I nearly wept on a London bus.

Because she was a one-woman lesson in how to conduct political debate and the god of the putdown, but never descended into the illiterate name-calling that usually characterized her counterparts on the right. Her immortal take on the Texas legislature, the august body that gave the world Tom DeLay and George W. Bush, was simple - "Whee, here we go, the lege is back in session! And many a village is missing its idiot."

Because, during the last seven years, it often felt that apart from some lonely outposts of honesty such as Salon, hers was the only voice in the mainstream American print media that had the honesty to tell it like it is. She was the first and for a long time, the only person in the media to highlight the essential incompetence of George W Bush and his administration. Long before the rest of the media found and then ignored it as if it were irrelevant, she pointed out Dubya’s career of incredible incompetence, his habit of ‘failing upwards’ and being bailed out by ‘friends and family’ because his last name made them rich. While White House correspondents rolled over and played nice in the hope that the Republicans would tickle their tummies, talk show hosts were played for rubes by Bush, Cheney and gang and came back for seconds, when the rest of the media tried to avoid the taint of liberal bias by fawning over the liars and grilling liberals who dared to question, Ms Ivins kept writing her columns with humour and verve, often asking and answering to herself and to the rest of us - why bother? In November, we remembered why.

Because even as she was obviously counting her days down, she remained fierce to the end, openly scoffing at the sudden embrace of civility and good manners in politics by the Right that was curiously timed – after they had had their butts handed back to them in the November mid-term elections.

Because in the end, what you were left with was the memory of a woman who loved her country and countrymen deeply and passionately and because she believed in the power of human beings to do good, she used her considerable intelligence and enormous wit to keep nudging, poking and goading them to do so.

In a column by a writer in the Guardian, Simon Hoggart, who knew her, I found out a few years ago that she had cancer. That explained the gaps between columns that grew longer but also triggered a sense of apprehension for the health of someone I had never met and would not meet . Somehow, at a gut level, I loved this lady and wished she would keep writing at least as long as I lived. I wrote her the occasional mail about her column - always wishing her well and hoping she was well - I don’t know if she ever got them, but I hope she did.

I’m happy she lived long enough to see the poisonous DeLay discredited and his machine in shambles, Bush and his administration in disarray and Cheney exposed for the bullying fraud that he is. Long after the hate merchants of the right-wing are turning to dust six feet under and their reputations even further underground, we will still be laughing and crying at Molly Ivins' work - I can't think of a greater tribute to her.

But who will speak truth to power now? Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann - your time is now.