How to counteract 24, and a one-act that attempts to do it

Ryan Sager (via the Dish): "We’ve come to intuitively believe that virtually every torture situation is a ticking time bomb and that torture always works. Because that’s [what we see in the movies and that's] our most salient experience with the issue."

I've recently been reading some David Foster Wallace, and specifically an essay he wrote about the effects that television has had on our society. While I was reading this essay, I kept thinking about how most people derive their ideas of terrorism from shows like 24. Liberals wishing to combat this should work to counteract this perception within the media--my idea would be to mock 24 mercilessly. The good news is that it might be the most mockable show on television: it has hardly a trace of ironic self-awareness that might deflect the mockery, and is rather an overheated, earnest, and frequently unbelievable and ridiculous show that's borderline fascist. (And McArdle can bite me--there's only so many terms one can use to a show so authoritarian, militaristic, xenophobic, etc. I'm not using fascist here to invoke the holocaust--think in the Franco sense), and I get the sense that 24 will eventually wind up being a sort of punchline like Miami Vice, an embarrassing symbol of the excesses of its era. That is my dream.

So, I think having a scene like this in some popular show or movie satirizing 24 would go a long way:

INT. GITMO INTERROGATION ROOM. LT BAUER and MOHAMMED, a suspected terrorist, are talking.

LT. BAUER: You're gonna talk, Mohammed, God as my witness.

MOHAMMED: Allah will triumph over your God, infidel! And my name is Razib ibn Faisal, idiot!

LT. BAUER: Very well, Mohammed. Now I'm gonna torture you. (He makes a scary face.) Yup, that's right. According to John Yoo, it's legal!

MOHAMMED: I will never talk!

LT. BAUER: Okay. (Picks up a belt-sander.)

MOHAMMED: Okay, I'll talk! I'LL TALK! The bomb is in a yellow Ford Pinto parked under Chase Manhattan headquarters.

LT. BAUER: (incredulously) Why a Pinto?

MOHAMMED: Of course, because nobody would ever go close to such a thing, for fear of exploding themselves!

LT. BAUER: Ah ha! Well, that wraps things up. I just have one question.

MOHAMMED: Yes?

LT. BAUER: Why did you give it up so easily? If you had held on for another 20 minutes, we'd both be dead, and you'd get your 73 virgins, and we'd be able to milk this storyline for another episode. Now, we're going to have to come up with some bullshit subplot about my daughter or something, and you're going to be lucky to get your wife for eternity.

MOHAMMED: Which one?

LT. BAUER: The oldest one.

MOHAMMED: (horrified) Oh, NO!

LT. BAUER: Hell yeah, son! Don't mess with the U.S. of A.!

CUT TO: INT. CAPTAIN'S OFFICE

CAPTAIN: Bauer, where is the prisoner?

LT. BAUER: In stockade. Why?

CAPTAIN: Because that Pinto he sent us to didn't have a bomb at all! Just a bunch of wires and Play-Doh!

LT. BAUER: I don't understand. I thought I asked very clearly for him to TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS! And I brought out the trusty beltsander! This shit always works!

CAPTAIN: Oh, you blew this one, Bauer. Do it again, and I'LL HAVE YOUR GUN AND BADGE! Luckily, we had good intelligence sources tracking the cell that located the bomb in a Sbarro's in Times Square. We defused it in time.

LT. BAUER: (After a beat) That is shocking.

CAPTAIN: Mmm, yes.

LT. BAUER: I mean, why would you get some sort of assembly line-manufactured industrial foodstuff chain restaurant when New York has the best pizza in the world? Terrorists, ha! More like Philistines!

CAPTAIN: Well, they are tourists!

LT. BAUER claps a hand over his boss's back, and both laugh heartily.

THE END

The Six Keys To A Successful Life

by George W. Bush

Hey, I'm an optimist. Y'all know I'm a good Texas boy--got that good ol' Texas optimism. In Texas, we're the doers--the can-doers, I mean--and you got to believe that you can get that tree stump out of the ground or it's not gonna...um...you just gotta believe! That's all, end of discussion.

So, since I've been a role model to so many people, people are always asking me, "Hey, George, how do you show leadership? Hey, George, how do you do it? I want to know." Well, that's a good question. You see, I attribute most of my success to genetics--as in, I happen to be genetically related to one of the most notable Republican politicians of the 20th century, that's what I'm talking about. I also got my dad's nose. Noses are funny. But I guess my advice is to be the child of a really rich, successful person if you want to be successful, because God knows that that's the only way to get ahead anymore! Wait, this thing ain't taped, is it? I don't want this showing up in the next g-damn Michael Moore movie. Okay, movin' on.

I guess my next bit of advice is that you gotta work hard. I work really hard. Y'know, some days, I actually work from morning to night. A lot of people probably wonder what a typical day is like for the Prez Nigh Stays (sorry, that's how we Southerners pronounce President of the United States. I know-it's kind of catchy!). Well, I usually wake up around nine, nine-thirty. The Secret Service has orders not to enter the bedroom until 10:00. You never know what me 'n Laura are going to be up to...just kidding. Sex is gross. Anyway, by 10:30, at the latest, I'm in the Oval Office, listening to advisors, tending to the interests of the country. Then, at 11:00, you know what it's time for: LUNCH! I always order the same thing--chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy, and arugula salad (are you blue staters HAPPY!). I usually don't drink liquor, although I confess I'm a little blattoed right now. Am I slurring too much? No. All right. So I usually take a long lunch, because who's going to say anything? I'm the President! My Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, is always shooting me icy looks once 1:45 comes, but less often when I'm eating with heads of state, so I try to do that all the time. Josh always gives me these things to bring up, like "trade violations" or "nucular [sic] proliferation", but I'm just a simple country boy and I like to just talk with other people, figure out what they like and don't like, and if one of the former is America, we start trying to take them out. Then I...wait, did I just say...which one means the first one, former or latter...shit. OH, NO, I mean dadgum. Yeah. Wait, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, lunch. Nice, long lunch, steak, strawberry lemonade. By 2:00 I'm back in the Oval. That's usually when that douchebag Bob Gates comes in. He's the Secretary of Defense. I so miss Rummy--he'd come in and tell jokes about John Kennedy screwing interns from back when Rummy was in the House. But with Bob it's always "Sir, we have to talk about force protection," "Sir, Guantanamo is causing us so many problems," "Mr. President, our troop levels in Iraq are unsustainable," blah blah blah. I totally tune out. When he starts asking questions, I alternate between yes and no, and I look very thoughtfully at the paper in front of me, which more often than not is yesterday's crossword puzzle. I have my secretary cut them out of the Washington Times, then wait a day so that I can see the answers. Anyway, that's another one of those keys--make sure you alternate between yes and no when you're totally zoned out and/or drunk. You see, that way it doesn't seem like you're totally ignoring what they have to say, but you're not giving them what they want, either. I used to start with a yes, then move on to a no, but I learned that one the hard way after some Democrat asked me if I believed that global warming was real. Wait...wait a goddam minute, aren't I supposed to have six of these things? Ah, shoot. Okay, let me think--could you go back and number them for me? How many more of these I gotta do? So there was optimism, the thing about being rich - good one, huh?, the thing I was trying to prove by talking about my day, and the yes and no thing--wait, was there another one? No? Okay, I can do four more, no big deal...

Can you believe that so many people hate me? Why? I know you all think it doesn't bother me, but it does. I'd love for Democrats to love me. I'd love to be the great compromiser again. Sometimes--screw you, I'm not crying, I just have a frog in my throat--sometimes, I just wish we all got along. Why does it gotta be this way? I know that the base is the base, I know that. I know that. I just want to be popular, like I was after 9/11. Boy, was I good or what? Everybody was together, the New York Times was praising me, everyone was saying how good a leader I was for not marching to war...I miss those days so much.

Okay, I'm better now. And that was off the record, by the way.

So, two more things...two more...hmm. Nothing's really coming to mind. How about we go through the rest of my day. So after my daily meeting with Bob, I take my daily nap. Sometimes I do it before Bob leaves. You would not believe how pissed he gets at that. I remember one time I had dozed off and he banged his hand on the desk and shouted, angrily, "Mr. President, THERE ARE HUMAN LIVES AT STAKE HERE! AMERICAN LIVES!" You have to be able to react fast to shi--er, stuff--like that. So I jumped up, grabbed him by the lapels, and yelled back, "I DO, BOB! I THINK ABOUT THEM EVERY DAY!." That really surprised him, and he backed down. I think he felt kind of bad. Hey, wait, wasn't that a good tip? React quickly? Put that down. Whew! Now I've only got one more to go. So, after Bob leaves, and after my nap is over (we're talking about 5:30), I head down for dinner. This is usually with some well-known celebrity or someone like the Girl Scout that sold the most cookies. I remember when that she was down here I made sure to get a whole bunch of money from Jeff, the head of my Secret Service detail, and I went down a little before dinner to buy some of those peanut butter cookies. She didn't have any on her. I joked that she must have cheated to win the contest if she couldn't even sell me a cookie. I was just joking, and she totally started crying. Even my little "crazy guy" dance didn't work. Actually, that made things much worse. I had to exempt her parents from the income tax this year to make up for it. That's okay, because [Office of Management and Budget Director Rob] Portman says we can audit them and find some loophole to double their payroll tax or something. I dunno. I don't know much about economics.

So, dah dah dah, eat dinner, blah blah blah...oh, yeah, after dinner, Laura and I talk for a while. I love it when we talk about T.V. and stuff like that. It seems like she's getting more and more, well, political these days. She used to ask me to fire Rummy all the time, and one time I said, "Sweetie, I love you, I really do. You're amazing. But since I used to run companies and you used to run libraries, you probably don't understand how firing people works. You can't just fire somebody for no reason. You have to prove that they're incompetent." I could tell by her silence after saying this that I had made her feel stupid, so I offered to tickle her feet right afterward to make her feel better. She just stomped off. I'll never understand women.

Anyway, after that, I put on my P.J.'s, hop into bed, and get some rest. Hey, HEY, there's number six: always get enough sleep. Whoo hoo! I got six of 'em! That was fun. All this talkin' 's got me tired. It's a good thing I've got a big meeting with Bob coming up!

The Lion and the Publisher: A Play in one act

INT. PUBLISHER'S OFFICE

The PUBLISHER is sitting behind his desk, reading a manuscript while reclined in his chair. He picks up a cup of coffee and takes a small sip before he hears his secretary on the intercom.

SECRETARY

Excuse me, sir, but Jonah Goldberg is on the line.

PUBLISHER

By all means, put him through.

SECRETARY

Right away, sir.

The Publisher picks up the phone.

PUBLISHER

Jonah, my man! How are things.

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Never better, my friend.

PUBLISHER

That is good news. It has been ages since you've been by to see Gracie and the kids.

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

I know. I'll try better.

PUBLISHER

I'm just giving you a hard time. So, why are you calling?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, I'm writing a book and I'd like you to publish it.

PUBLISHER

A book? Splendid. I would love to publish it. What is it about?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, it's called Liberal Fascism, and it's about how liberals are really fascists - well, not really fascists, but they sort of act like them in some ways, or at least they sorta look like they act like them in some ways. It's going to be revolutionary.

PUBLISHER

(laughs for thirty seconds, with a deep, booming resonance) Dear Lord, that is outstanding. It sounds like it will be hilarious! Do you have a chapter on why Sean Penn is a fascist?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Two, actually.

PUBLISHER

Fabulous stuff. Yes, we'll put that under our humor imprint. I say, Jonah, there are simply too few funny conservatives these days. It will be terriffic!

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Um, I think you misunderstand.

PUBLISHER

How so?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

It's not a comedy book, it's a serious intellectual argument.

PUBLISHER

I don't understand.

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

I actually believe that liberals are fascists. Well, maybe not Nazis, and not necessarily like any fascist regime in history, or even any imagined one, but there some things that fascists do that liberals also do, and I think I need to call attention to that.

PUBLISHER

So you actually think...I thought...wait, when we were having Cucumber Sandwiches at the Harvard Club last week, you said that people calling other people fascists without cause was one of your greatest pet peeves. Why, then...

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, I just thought that some of the things that liberals do are kinda like what fascists do--you know, like going to Whole Foods.

PUBLISHER

That doesn't make any sense.

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, I can always change the subtitle.

PUBLISHER

But what's your argument? Do you claim that liberals want to seize power, end democracy, and start a bunch of wars? Who would want to do such a thing?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, not that they want to do that per se, well maybe they want to. Sure they want to, but they aren't going to...they don't want anyone to be great, they just want everyone to be special and to have self-esteem, like a kintergarten classroom.

PUBLISHER

That doesn't make any sense.

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

But you'll publish it?

PUBLISHER

Eh.

[This was a fictionalized account of what might have transpired between Jonah Goldberg and his publisher when he first sold his new book, Liberal Fascism. Here is the factual version.]

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, I'm writing a book and I'd like you to publish it.

PUBLISHER

A book? Splendid. I would love to publish it. What is it about?

JONAH GOLDBERG [o.s.]

Well, it's called Liberal Fascism, and it's about how liberals are really fascists - well, not really fascists, but they sort of act like them in some ways, or at least they sorta look like they act like them in some ways. It's going to be revolutionary.

PUBLISHER

Sold.