Soccer Dad

24 endorsement

Ace of Spades reports on Joel Surnow's Q & A session. Surnow, is the producer of hit series 24 and is a self-proclaimed conservative. Interestingly he claimed that Hollywood isn't as "monolithically" liberal as people would assume.

Surnow claimed -- oddly, I thought -- that it wasn't really the case that Hollywood was liberally biased in choosing what films to make, though his other comments seemed to contradict this. While it's true that it's hard to get a conservative film made, he said, it's also true that it's hard to get any film at all made, and also hard to get "very liberal" films made, too. Though, to argue with him, while he may be right about it being very hard to get "very liberal" films made, they 1) still do get made (see the various anti-war bombs dudding at the box office) and 2) if it's equally hard to get a mildly conservative movie made and a "very liberal" film made, obviously, there's bias there: mildly liberal movies get made all the time.

But also of note, he endorsed a candidate.

As has been noted elsewhere, Surnow finds it "nuts" that the country actually seems to be considering electing Hillary Clinton as president, and himself supports Giuliani. His wife (who sat with us during the small roundtable) is also a conservative, incidentally.

Outside the Beltway isn't impressed.

While I’m dubious of the power of endorsements to sway voters, especially in presidential contests, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. This actually reinforces my sense that Giuliani is a loose cannon not to be trusted with the keys to our nuclear arsenal but, given the popularity of Jack Bauer’s methods, this could well bolster Giuliani’s reputation in the minds of swing voters.

Huh? Bauer is a fictional character. To suggest that his rule breaking is somehow akin to what a current candidate would do is incredible. Even the loosest of candidates for political office will be more restrained than Jack Bauer.

Still what I find interesting is this. (I'm a newcomer to the series and am currently at 6 hours into season 2.) The beginning of the second season starts with a scene of torture. A man if being forced to give information. It's very unpleasant to watch. It's also more than a little jarring when it becomes clear that it's the good guys doing the torturing. However, the information is used to locate a ticking bomb.

I'm not going to say that every method employed to stop that bomb is something I'd approve of. However the torture at the beginning of Season 2 of 24, seems quite reasonable given the circumstances. Especially, when, a few hours later we see a scene of President Palmer at a briefing. At the end all we see is the President and the estimated casualty figures. It makes you go back and think, given the stakes isn't any tactic acceptable for stopping it.

My guess is that the average viewer won't find the opening scene excessive but necessary and unpleasant. While the editors of the NY Times or Washington Post might well decry the scene for it depiction of violating the rights of the prisoner or somehow sullying what the United States is about, I suspect that most people, in retrospect would find it justified given the stakes involved.

(I won't make the same argument for all of Jack Bauer's methods, which really can only be justified by "ends justify means" arguments. And yes, I know, there are those who claim that torture often extracts false information. Here, we see that the information was indeed accurate. Is it true that torture often doesn't work? Are "ticking bomb" situations different?)

I'd have to think that most people would consider the good guys correct for their extreme methods and would find questions about the legitimacy of those methods misplaced. For all the outrage over Judge Mukasey's refusal to answer the question about waterboarding, I suspect that the view that extreme methods may be justified in "ticking bomb" cases, is rather mainstream.

24.