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June 20, 2007

"24" – The Bad and the Ugly (and Maybe One Good Thing)

I've written before about the impact of the television show "24" on our soldiers, resulting in an increase in willingness to torture. The show has also influenced Americans toward more acceptance of torture as a necessary tool to be used in protecting our country's interests. Never mind that our own military long barred its use specifically because it was likely to produce unreliable information (of course, Rumsfeld rewrote the rules to allow it). We've even had the Republican presidential candidates display Bauer-envy. And now Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has succumbed to the torture siren song. The fan of "24" stated last week at a legal conference in Ottawa that "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives."

His comment came in response to a remark by Justice Richard Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada, who said, "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " It sent Scalia off on what can only be described as an insane rant:

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes." …

Generally, the jurists in the room agreed that coerced confessions carry little weight, given that they might be false and almost never accepted into evidence. But the U.S. Supreme Court judge stressed that he was not speaking about putting together pristine prosecutions, but rather, about allowing agents the freedom to thwart immediate attacks.

"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.

Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."

I'm scared. When a television show can influence the views of a Supreme Court justice, we're in big trouble.

The only good legacy of "24" that I can see is that perhaps it has softened up the American people toward the concept of a black president. On the other hand, both of the black presidents on the show have been the victims of assassination attempts, at least one of which was successful, specifically because they possessed what any right-winger would describe as a naive anti-torture integrity, and neither knew how to choose a decent vice president, so perhaps even that is a mixed bag.

Posted by Becky at June 20, 2007 11:57 AM