Last Saturday I wrote a diary largely agreeing and amplifying the criticisms of Keith Olbermann against the propaganda potential of the Fox Show "24".
Is "24" propaganda? Is it fear-mongering? Or is it a program-length commercial for one political party?
Since many people even in this "liberal bastion" happen to be big fans of the show - the response here was decidedly mixed. Some, echoing Taylor Marsh, even vehemently argued that Jack Bauer is a Democrat.
Certainly quality entertainment does exist in the eye of the beholder - but while doing some followup research I found not one, not two, but three articles written in response to Olbermann's "24" comments.
Me thinks Keith may have struck a very raw and exposed nerve.
Let's take the not quite so wing-nutty of the articles first. This one was from Eugene Kane at JSOnline.
I'm not a regular watcher of "24," the TV series that purports to follow the superhuman Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) in real time as he saves the country from terrorist attacks on a constant basis. To fully invest in the mythology of "24," you have to accept that Bauer has saved the nation at least five times so far. Each time he did it, everything happened in the course of a single day.
Busy guy, that Jack.
Agreed, this show, like many requires a herculean suspension of disbelief. Not to mention common sense, but then again so does "Two and Half Men". Americans are really good at it by now.
After I watched Sunday's season premiere - it concluded Monday night - it was apparent to me the appeal of "24" is similar to that of another top-rated series that became the favorite of political types.
Essentially, "24" is to conservatives what "The West Wing" was to liberals.
"The West Wing" was often considered a fantasy version of the Clinton presidency, as faux president Jed Bartlett (Martin Sheen) represented the best of Clinton's intellectual optimism without the nagging intern problem.
Generally speaking I would agree, "The West Wing" absolutely was liberal manna from heaven. But it wasn't Clinton, instead it was White House and presidency as we might wish it to be deep in our liberal heart of hearts, however that hopeful optimism was constantly dashed by bitter realities. Such as President Bartlett's ordering the assasination of high ranking foreign official who also happened to be a terrorist, the attempted assasination of his aid Charlie Young by Skinheads, and the kidnapping of his youngest daughter. They even did manage to slide the Lewinsky-like Scandal into the story only it didn't happen to the President, it happened to Vice President who promptly resigned only write his own tell-all book and return as a Challenging Presidential Candidate himself two years later.
One Thing: Barlett's White House never went through 9-11, other than as a special out of continuity episode which sought to point out that Radical Islamic Extremist like Al-Qeada are to devout Muslims as the KKK, Nazi's and Racist Skinheads are to Christians. That's a pretty liberal view of the situation I think.
Oh, and one other thing: They gave Republicans on the show a ton of respect. They differed strongly in their views with they many obvious libs on the show, but they were principled, tenacious and - heavens to mergitroid - HONEST! (How's that for a fantasy world, eh?) From Emily Proctor's plucky Ainsley Hayse to the Government Oversight Committee chief counsel who forced a witch-hunt against Leo McGarry to be terminated - they often put the needs of the country above partisianship. One even dressed down Josh Lyman as he fretted over Republicans taking advantage of Bartlet's decision to temporarily step down (while his daughter was missing)..."Anyone who thinks we would do that, has a particularly craven view of politics".
Would that we had Republicans such as these in real life, eh?
Like I said, Wishful thinking.
Similarly "24" - is a neo-con wet dream.
"24" is an alternate version of President Bush's America, a place besieged by imminent attacks but ultimately saved by the existence of a crack homeland security operative like Bauer who is unencumbered by rules or regulations.
Basically, "24" imagines an America so anxious about the next terrorist attack that ordinary citizens don't have to be manipulated by disingenuous color alerts or presidential warnings of doom and gloom. It's in their faces, all the time.
Hey anybody remember what terror-alert level we're currently at? I forget. It's all become a technicolor blur to me.
The show's popularity with some political types was highlighted last June during a forum on terrorism in Washington, D.C., by the conservative Heritage Foundation that featured Limbaugh as moderator.
The forum, called "24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does It Matter?" included Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and various think-tank experts. According to Entertainment Weekly magazine, radio host Laura Ingraham and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also attended.
Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Micheal Chertoff, Clarence Thomas all at the Heritage Foundation? And some of you thought Olbermann was going little overboard when he said the show had a massive appeal to the right wing-bats --- tsk.
You guys remember who Laura Ingraham - she's the one who asked her radio listeners to jam the phone lines of a Democratic get out the vote operation this past November. She likened Stem Cell research to "public executions for child molesters". And she's Dinesh (the cultural left caused 9-11) D'Souza's former college girlfriend.
Speaking of Stem-cells lets not forget how Limbaugh was pimp-slapped by Michael J. Fox.
Whether or not it's by design, although I think it is, it's hard to deny that this show gives people like Limbaugh a Full on Wingbat-Chubby.
Some speculate one reason "24" is such a favorite of the Bush crowd is that Bauer is presented as a guy with no qualms about torturing his prisoners in order to get information as quickly as possible. In light of criticism the Bush administration gets for its torture policies, it doesn't take a think-tank expert to see why some hail the show as a breath of clean air.
Ya think?
With the loss of Congress, conservatives need something to hold onto these days. By ramping up the terrorism threat to excruciating levels, shows like "24" serve a purpose for those who never want the rest of us to forget how close we may remain to disaster.
Except, of course, instead of Jack Bauer we've got that other guy.
Ouch. Did you have to remind us? Just when I was feeling good about 'ole Jack being out there fighting the good fight to protect us from all those evil doers. Go Jack GO!
For the most part I agree with Eugene's analysis and I've quoted it at length to offer as a level setting device, because we're going to need it as I look at the second article - this one from Investors.com
The anti-war left hates the Bush administration with such a passion it refuses to recognize how dangerous our enemies in the Muslim world are. Now they hate the TV show "24" because it dares to remind us.
In fact, liberal outlets are calling it right-wing White House propaganda. "Dick Cheney is a big fan," snorts Time magazine, ignoring that the executive producer of "24" is a registered Democrat. It also breathlessly notes that Rush Limbaugh likes the show, so much so he planted "a full-on mouth kiss" on one of its star actresses at a Heritage Foundation forum on terror. That seals it for the left.
You know you're dealing with Wing-nuts here, cause they just can't help themselves from making shit up. This has nothing to do with Limbaugh kissing Chloe on the lips - (by the way ick.) it's got to do with those pesky Civil Liberties thingees you guys tossed out with the baby bath water.
It's serious. Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's liberal poster boy, actually suggested that the producers of "24" are conspiring with Cheney to keep the public alarmed so they can keep torturing and spying on Muslims.
He and a recent guest who wrote a book bashing Fox, the network that airs "24," dismissed its apocalyptic new season as far-fetched. As if Muslim terrorists would ever blow up buses or subways or attack cities with radiological weapons.
Oh man, these guys are so weak. Robert Greenwald did not "write a book" bashing Fox, he made a documentary about Rupert Murdock and the right-wing bias in Fox News Channel. Y'know the place that wants to find the Happy Insurgents now that Dems have taken over Congress. Cuz like - Dems and Terrorist are natural allies - with the "Hating America First" and all that...right?
Gee, where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah. JC Watt's
"Democrats don't care about national security".
And it's not like Fox News has colluded with Republicans on fear-mongering or anything in the past. Oops - yes, they have.
On October 19, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the release of a new advertisement, titled "Stakes," that features clips of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists making threats against the United States and clips of explosions, with a ticking clock and a heartbeat playing in the background.
According to the RNC press release: "The ad highlights the high stakes America faces in the global war on terror by using the words of the terrorists themselves as they describe their intention towards the United States." On October 20, the RNC announced that it "has purchased advertising time on national cable news outlets to air the ad on television on Sunday, October 22." The broadcast and cable news networks, however, have already played portions of the ad several times as part of their news programming -- essentially giving the RNC the opportunity to fearmonger on their airwaves free of charge.
And It's not like they regularly deciminate right-wing talking points to all their coorespondants at Fox news.
And it's not like Fox News still plans to air portions of ABC's libelous debacle "Path to 9-11" that were so outrageous they had to be pulled from the broadcast under legal threats from President Clinton and Richard Clarke, and that this is such an egregious act of propaganda that it has even upset Bauer's ass-kicking predecesor and Hannity Stand-in Chuck Norris
Of course not.
Move along now - nothing to see here. Move along.
What really sent them over the edge, however, was last week's episode showing Muslim terrorists incinerating Los Angeles with a suitcase nuke. No Muslims living in America would ever do that, scoff Islamic apologists. A mushroom cloud? Sounds like more Bush-Cheney fear-mongering!
So those that point out that even after thousands of innocent Americans have had their phones tapped, email scanned, cell phones bugged, financial records examined and mail opened - all without a warrant - that we don't have any active Sleeper Cells in America (according to the FBI) are "Islamic apologists"?
Right.
But if anyone's divorced from reality, it's these apologists. Even their own favorite analysts warn that al-Qaida is preparing to carry out nuclear terrorism here. One of them, Michael Scheuer, works for CBS News. The former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit penned a book, "Imperial Hubris," that slams Bush over Iraq. He writes columns for such venues as AntiWar.com.
Yet even Scheuer is sure bin Laden is plotting a nuclear attack against us. The first step, he said, was getting a green light from Saudi clerics to kill up to 10 million Americans with such weapons. Then bin Laden offered the U.S. a truce and even recently invited President Bush to convert to Islam — all in keeping with jihadi military doctrine. And on at least two occasions he has directly warned the American people.
I happen to like Scheuer's detailed analysis on Bin Laden and have read "Imperial Hubris". What they're saying here is true - except for that fact this is what Bin Laden wants to do - not neccesarily what he Can do. And if wishes were dollars we'd all be millionaries.
Here's an idea, if we want to stop Bin Laden - why don't we friggin go get Bin Laden in Pakistan?
In my original post I compared "24" to Showtime's "Sleeper Cell" pointing out that the latter while addressing the exact same subject as "24" was much more grounded in reality. In the final episode of this season, it's FBI hero Darwin Al-Hakim (oh look, he's a Muslim! Ooohh Scary!) actually went all the way to Yemin to track down the bad guy - cuz that's where he was. Fancy that.
He didn't get him, but he made an honest try - unlike the reality of George Bush who didn't do Jack-Squat when everyone from the Clinton Admistration - including Clinton himself - was telling him that Bin Laden were a serious threat, and he didn't pay any attention.
Now of course he's like Chicken Little - the sky is constantly falling. But Bin Laden is still nowhere to be found. How convenient that his Boogey-Man is always ready to pop out of his cave in time for another round of let's strip away a little more of the Constitution.
Anyway, back to the wingermen.
Time thinks Fox should use "24" to "improve America's image in the Muslim world." Instead of, what, depicting reality? The terrorists' religious ideas already have been sheltered enough from criticism. (So much so that the new Democratic chairman of House intelligence doesn't even know whether bin Laden is a Shiite or Sunni Muslim.)
Neither does George Bush.
Or that author for that matter - I'd wager.
For the record, he's a Sunni. Hezbollah are Shiite.
If Fox is shocking or scaring the public, good. That's part of informing the public in wartime about the larger Islamic threat — not just abroad but at home, from sleeper cells hellbent on nuking us and martyring themselves so, yes, they can please Allah and redeem their heavenly virgins.
Just keep chanting along with me - "Hysterical Fear is good... Hysterical Fear is good..."
Too bad Hollywood didn't air shows before 9/11 that depicted Muslim men at flight schools interested only in learning to fly planes and not land them.
No, it's really too bad that nobody listened to the FBI Agent in Pheonix who was saying exactly that to his superiors.
Hollywood however only depicted suicide bombers and Sleeper Cells in New York blowing up buses in "The Siege" with Denzel Washington. Except that in that Movie the result was the declaration of Martial Law, the stripping away of civil liberaties, the erection of a Concentration Camp for Muslims, Torture and Murder. Those crazy Hollywood people and thier fantasies - what won't they think of next?
Maybe something like the movie "Wag the Dog" where agents of the President concocted a phony war with a fake hero to distract and manipulate the populace.
Again, it's not like the Bush Administration has done anything like that with people like Jessica Lynch or Pat Tillman. Nooo... it'll never happen.
Except that it already has.
Oh, and there actually was a TV Show that depicted a plot to fly an airplane into the World Trade Center which was shot and aired prior to 9-11. That show was the Pilot Episode of "The Lone Gunmen" - only in that "X-Files" spinoff the plane was being remote piloted by members of the government intent on starting a War in the middle east by blaming the crash on muslim terrorists. Not unlike Bush's own plot to paint a U.S. plane with UN colors and taunt Saddam with it until he took a bite and we'd have an excuse to invade.
Not that we needed a trumped up, phony, bullshit excuse or anything...
Someone has to think outside the box, unrestrained by political correctness. Kudos to Fox for doing what even the supposedly Islamophobic Bush administration doesn't have the nerve to do.
Oy vey. I simply don't have the words - and that's saying something for a motor mouth like me.
Ok, now that we've swam through that dreck, time to get some crackers and clear our palettes for this next article from Newsbusters - which champions itself as "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias". Snort! That's a good one!
The night after the four-hour, two-night season premiere of Fox's 24 ended with a "suitcase nuke" being set off by Middle Eastern terrorists in a Southern California warehouse, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann saw a nefarious plot to aid President Bush: "Is 24 just entertainment or is it propaganda designed to keep people thinking about domestic terrorism to keep us scared?" He demanded Tuesday night: "Gripping drama or thinly veiled propaganda?"
Ok, enough of the sexy intro - let's get to meat of it.
Olbermann then posed a series of absurd questions to Robert Greenwald, producer of the comically anti-FNC movie, Outfoxed.
At least they were paying enough attention to note that Greenwald made a movie - instead of "writing a book" - although there isn't all that's "comical" in Outfoxed, more like tragic. I've seen it. I doubt they have.
His options for Greenwald: "Is 24 propaganda? Is it fearmongering? Or is it a program-length commercial for one political party?" Olbermann soon proposed that "if the irrational right can claim that the news is fixed to try to alter people's minds or that networks should be boycotted for nudity or for immorality," then "shouldn't those same groups be saying 24 should be taken off of TV because it's naked brainwashing?" Suggesting some sort of Fox-White House conspiracy, Olbermann tossed up: "But does this not begin to look at this point like the blurring of the lines here," between fact and fiction, "is deliberate?"
Well, at least their quotes are accurate. But if they'd actually seen and comprehended Outfoxed, they'd understand the context of the question -- that movie depicted the efforts of pro-right wingers such as Rupert Murdock to manipulate how the news was reported to give it a right ward slant. This doesn't require a conspiracy between Fox and the White House - unless of course you subscribe to the notion that any anti-left and pro-Bush viewpoint has to be part of some dasdardly WH directed plot. Viewpoints like say - "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias" for instance?
Are Newsbusters themselves a part of this vicious conspiracy?
Will their nefarious plans succeed?
Stay tuned and find out. Same Wing-Bat Time. Same Wing-Bat Channel.
Of course, back in September the premiere hour of CBS's Jericho ended with a nuclear explosion caused by a terrorist attack on America. But that never bothered Olbermann. TV.com's page with a plot summary, and an image of the atomic cloud: "After a nuclear disaster caused by several terrorist attacks destroys most of America, residents of a small Kansas town must come to terms with a new and very different reality."
Yeah, well maybe that's because nobody gets regularly tortured or has their extremities bitten off on Jericho. And by the way about that show - nobody knows yet exactly who dropped the bomb.com, how many their were - although it seems that it was probably too many for twenty guys with box cutters - or how much of the American infrastructure is still in tact.
Jericho is a distopian apocolyptic mystery. "24" isn't.
In previous seasons, the hero Jack Bauer manages to prevent the ultimate goal of the terrorists, but setbacks occur along the way. And that's all that happened in Monday night's show. During a raid to capture a group of terrorists, one managed to set off the suitcase nuke taken from Russia, but while it is the biggest attack in 24 history, with 20 hours to go in the series which will air Monday's at 9pm ET/PT through May, it is surely not the much deadlier ultimate goal of the terrorists which Bauer and CTU will strive to thwart.
No, it's not - because that suitcase bomb was apparently only the first of five that were apparently smuggled into the U.S. through our shitty-ass port security.
Wouldn't it have been nice if somebody (John Kerry, 9-11 Commission, Democratic Congress) had thought to beef that up some? Oh, there I go mixing fantasy and reality again - silly me.
To finish up Newsbuster goes on the post almost the entire Olbermann Transcript through two commercial breaks in order to document his "paranoia".
The idea that people who are trying to make us more scared, are calling people who are noticing their attempts "paranoid" is just weird on too many levels.
In the end "24" is just a television show. Some people like it, some don't. I happen to feel that Eugene hit the nail on the head - the show has a certain synergy with the fear-based perpective of neo-cons - just as "West Wing" was similarly simpatico with the hope-based perspective of Liberals. This observation is not a quality judgement on either show, it's simply a matter of their appeal.
I myself have been a rabid fan of both shows, but that doesn't mean I can't take a step back and look at either one of them with a more critical eye. Olbermann had a right to his criticism - which I think was directly on the mark - and the others have right to their comments, particularly since they happen to prove him correct with the shrill desperation of their response.
Naturally, opinions vary - but facts do not. Let's just all try and remember the difference between the two.
Vyan
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