{"id":7410,"date":"2006-05-15T10:40:14","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T14:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7410"},"modified":"2006-05-15T10:40:14","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T14:40:14","slug":"is-24-a-republican-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/is-24-a-republican-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Is ’24’ a Republican show?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t realize conservatives considered “[tag]24[\/tag],” the [tag]Fox[\/tag] action\/drama, a [tag]Republican[\/tag] [tag]show[\/tag]. According to TNR’s Christopher Orr, it’s a fairly common sentiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

American hero [tag]Jack Bauer[\/tag] is an ex-swat, ex-Delta Force commando working for the Los Angeles branch of the (fictional) Counter Terrorist Unit ([tag]CTU[\/tag]), an elite, high-tech CIA spin-off. As befits his training, he is a man of action: decisive, aggressive, and disinclined to play by the rules when he feels they’re getting in the way. He never wavers, second-guesses, or gives in to criticism, instead doing whatever needs to be done to safeguard American lives, regardless of the costs.<\/p>\n

[tag]Conservative[\/tag] fans of the show frequently note the similarities between Bauer’s disposition and that of a certain White House resident, and they claim that “24”‘s popularity is evidence that, whatever the polls may say, Americans want someone like [tag]Bush[\/tag] to defend them in these troubled times. Buchanan has gone as far as to pronounce the president our “Jack Bauer in the war on terror.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mrs. Carpetbagger and I have been watching the show for a while now, and it’s never occurred to either of us that Bauer’s life-saving heroics resembled President Bush’s national security policy in any way. Well, aside from the fact that they’re both largely based on [tag]fiction[\/tag].<\/p>\n

It’s always been rather disconcerting that characters on the show seem willing to torture just about anyone at the drop of a hat, but in terms of political ideology, “24” has struck me as relatively neutral. TNR’s Orr actually believes the show tilts towards the Dems, suggesting that GOP fans of the show are missing key indicators.<\/p>\n

Yes, there have been characters on the show who seem hatched from an Ann Coulter fever dream: a terrorist-coddling lawyer from “Amnesty Global” who prevents a much-needed interrogation; the secretary of defense’s petulant lefty son, who has to be chided for his “sixth-grade, Michael Moore logic,” et cetera. But their population is dwarfed, in both number and significance, by the cast of liberal bugaboos:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

the shadowy businessmen who nefariously appear to pull the strings of more than one president; the vice president so eager to start a war in the Middle East that he uses the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove the more cautious president; and so on. It’s also hard to imagine it a coincidence that David Palmer, the wise, stalwart, honest president of the early seasons, is a Democrat, and that the Republicans who succeed him are a scandalmonger and a Nixonesque weasel who ultimately proves to be at the center of a conspiracy to manufacture evidence that will enable the deployment of U.S. forces abroad. “[tag]24[\/tag]” may swing right more often than such one-sided liberal wish-fulfillments as “The West Wing” and “Commander in Chief,” but, on balance, its schizophrenic mix of political provocations still leans to the left.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That point about the Republican presidents seems particularly noteworthy. In previous seasons, the Jack Bauer character could count on the White House to be a key ally in whatever counter-terrorist activity he was up to on a given episode. This year, there’s a Republican president with a dangerous combination of dishonesty and a thirst for near-dictatorial power, who can’t be bothered to deal with constitutional limits in his ends-justify-the-means approach to national security. In fact, the fictional president this season is so desperate to start a war, he’ll used trumped-up evidence to justify a military strike that he decided was necessary regardless of the facts.<\/p>\n

Wait, that sounds kind of familiar….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t realize conservatives considered “[tag]24[\/tag],” the [tag]Fox[\/tag] action\/drama, a [tag]Republican[\/tag] [tag]show[\/tag]. According to TNR’s Christopher Orr, it’s a fairly common sentiment. American hero [tag]Jack Bauer[\/tag] is an ex-swat, ex-Delta Force commando working for the Los Angeles branch of the (fictional) Counter Terrorist Unit ([tag]CTU[\/tag]), an elite, high-tech CIA spin-off. As befits his training, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}