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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Friday, December 12, 2003
Prime Time Politics Somebody, probably Calpundit, noted that the ending to last season's 24 seemed strikingly naive in the current climate. In last year's story line, it was actually taken as a given that for the US to invade a country on the basis of false intelligence and no real provocation was unacceptable, and that agents would risk their lives and Presidents their authority to prevent it. Such sentimentality seems absent so far in this season. The hero of the story, Jack Bauer, is now a junkie. President David Palmer, the moral heart of the series, has authorized the payment of a bribe, then rescinded at the last moment. Last week, a CTU agent who turned out to be a traitor (it is apparently firm policy at CTU to assign all key investigations to traitors) was being interrogated by an agent when a third man entered the room. From the dialog it was clear that the third man was known to both agents and worked for CTU as a professional torturer.
For 24, American values now seem to mean much the same as they mean on The Practice, where Nathan Newman recently noted a lawyer speaking these lines:
You're a foreigner; take your hand off the girl or I'll get you declared a person of interest, which means you'll be locked up forever without so much as a trial. Don't think I kid you. This is the United States of America. So where has morality fled to this season? Apparently to The West Wing. Not the liberals working for President Bartlett, who in the season opener responded to the kidnapping of Bartlett's daughter mainly by worrying that it could be an opportunity for the Republicans to push through their legislative agenda, but to the Republicans, who screamed bloody murder about the excessive size of the federal budget and actually meant it. Republicans who want to actually cut the budget instead of talking about it? That plot line is so implausible it wouldn't play on Alias . |
