Fox TV's '24' Sanitizes Torture as "Necessary Evil"

Tonight's edition of Fox Tevevision's 'crisis-in-a-day' thriller '24 is a blatant apologia for torture:

To thwart a terrorist plot, hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his Counter Terrorist Unit have shot a suspect in the leg while interrogating him; subjected the son of the defense secretary to high-tech sensory disorientation; stun-gunned a suspected but innocent colleague; and used a lamp cord to shock information from a businessman.

For 24's producers, in their fourth season of constructing a save-the-world scenario that must be completed in one day, the use of torture is about “real-time” drama, not politics.

“It goes with the 24 conceit that we need information and don't have days to break this person. Sometimes we don't even have hours,” executive producer Howard Gordon says. [USA Today]

If that last comment sounds like a gung-ho Pentagon statement defending torture in Iraq, then you are hardly surprized, are you? Apologists for the inhuman detention treatment in Iraq have made just such excuses. This is Fox after all. Here's another tidbit of Bush'ist propaganda to conclude:

“Jack Bauer is a tragic character. He doesn't get away with it clean. He's got blood on his hands,” Gordon says. “In some ways, he is a necessary evil.”