Getting Their Jack On

There be some folks at NPR that love them their Jack Bauer. Why just last month, little Stevie Inskeep was getting his Jack on just thinking about wanting to hit an uncooperative prisoner. It's not just the guys at NPR either; Pam Fessler was pretty jazzed for Jack just last spring.

Now that there's a mood in the ruling class to sweep a few little unpleasantries under the rug and move on with the surging victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, you wouldn't expect NPR to miss the chance to get a little Foxy Jack back on the show.

So this morning Ari Shapiro enjoys a deep intellectual Fox commercial for 24.

We hear the Jack character at a Congressional hearing say, "Am I above the law? No sir, I am more than willing to be judged by the people you claim to represent. I will let them decide what price I should pay. But please do not sit there with that smug look on your face."

Shapiro comments that "this sounds like a real hearing that took place a few months ago with some Bush administration officials called to testify about torture." Ari must be thinking about NPR News' fantasy coverage (try to find it if you can) of the House and Senate hearings that actually did occur.

You have to love how even though Abu Ghraib and other US torture atrocities became public in 2004, Keifer Sutherland says "with regards to the torture aspect....Then obviously the events in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and everything else became a real focal point for us as a nation to look at what we were doing. So it only seemed sensible that we as a show would do the same thing." Kind of fits the pattern of all these criminals of the past 8 years experiencing conversions on the death bed of the Bush presidency...ugh.

But Ari mainly wants to plug the excitement of the show. He asks Sutherland, "Does your pulse jump when you hear that little ticking second sound?....Mine does!"

Patriot Act

What "premiered right after 9/11 but...was created before the attacks"? The Patriot Act, right? Yes, and Jack Bauer! According to Pam Fessler this morning, on NPR's scummy commercial for Fox TV's 24, it "premiered right after 9/11, but Jack Bauer's character was created before the attacks."

And who "is always...torturing people" and "willing to risk...the Constitution." Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Well, yes...and Jack Bauer, too!

Now, you might think that a legitimate news show covering a pro-fascist hero like 24's Jack Bauer would be interested in exploring how disturbing it is that a show like 24 has been so popular when it's sick values have had parallel expressions from the bunch of criminals running this country for the last seven years.

Of course that's expecting a lot of NPR. Instead of offering substance, NPR wants to lionize Jack Bauer. According to Inskeep "the 21st century has its own fictional hero [music from 24]. He's a ruthless counterterrorism agent who fights the clock to protect the nation." And Fessler has a hard time keeping her limited wits about her as she gets hot for Jack: "What is it about Jack Bauer that's so appealing?" she asks. She even asks the founder of a Bauer fan website if she's "bothered that we don't really have a Jack Bauer to save the day?"

In case any NPR listeners have a scrap of humanity or intelligence left and are thinking, "This is really sick," Fessler turns to pop culture pundit (pimp?) , Robert Thompson, to bolster her case. Thompson assures us "in a world in which we think that so much is out of control, it is incredibly satisfying to watch a human being who is so completely in control....If real life in the 'War on Terror' we are not going to be able to kick the enemy's butts in noticeable ways, then we are going to demand to see the enemy's butt kicked in our fiction." Fessler also takes comfort in the fact that fans of the show include Cheney and Chertoff!

Fessler manages to include ACLU officer Barry Steinhardt who is a fan of the show to reassure us that "it doesn't mean that you agree with everything that you enjoy; this is pure escapist entertainment." Then we get the morally bankrupt and stupid argument about torture not being utilitarian. "Steinhart points out that when Jack Bauer does it, it always seems to work" and then Steinhart chimes in "Well in the real world torture doesn't work [sounds of a torture session]." Well, I beg to differ. Torture works wonders. It worked for the US in helping Pinochet rule for over a decade, and for destroying Nicaragua, etc. I'm so sick of hearing how torture might be ok if it gave good intelligence. Who gives a crap? Shouldn't torture be condemned because it victimizes the innocent, benefits oppressors, and destroys the dignity of human beings and societies.

Imus Slime Us

On Wednesday's ATC, Melissa Block had a chance to do a little serious journalism on the return of bigot Don Imus to radio and TV. She interviewed RFD-TV president Patrick Gottsch about his decision to simulcast Imus' WABC radio show on his cable network.

Block notes that Imus was "...fired by CBS in April after he made derogatory remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team." She asks Gottsch, "Do you have any worries about taking Don Imus on board...many times before made offensive comments. Does that bother you? Do you worry about alienating your viewers?"

Gottsch answers, "Not at all...saw first hand what these folks [the Imus family] are like
I know for a fact that he's not proud of what happened earlier in the year. People make mistakes and I think he was the first one to admit he made a mistake and that's in the past."

That's it. I mean it. That's all the intellectual, professional thunder poor Block could muster. Does it bother you? Alienating viewers? Here's a few questions that might have made the interview worthwhile:

Why are you wanting to give a platform to a man who back in 1998 was unmasked on 60 Minutes as a racist. Or who referred to public TV journalist Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady." Why are you wanting to employ a repeat bigot, homophobe, and antisemite.

Seriously, do these NPR hosts do any preparation for interviews such as this, or just go in cold with a few questions and see what happens. It wouldn't taken more than 10 minutes to come up with a few concrete examples of Imus' career long behavior of airing bigotry for entertainment. Instead a listener to this interview comes away with a positive impression of Imus as a good guy who made a mistake and has paid his due--ugh...