To: Senator John Edwards
From: Amanda Marcotte
Re: Job Offer
Dear Senator Edwards:
I am fucking delighted to accept your offer of the position of Official Blogger for the Edwards 2008 presidential campaign. Please find attached my fucking W-2 form.
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for this totally fucking awesome opportunity to help you take America back from fucking BushCo and the other fucktard bible-humping extremists that have turned this once great nation into a goddamn rape factory for their snakehandling Jesus Camp hatebots.
In closing, I am so fucking proud to be a part of this campaign, and fucking gratified to know that I'll be working for someone who fucking understands the importance of reaching out to progressive bloggers like myself. I look forward to contributing in any way I fucking can. You won't be fucking sorry!
Gina Khan is a British Muslim woman who lives near the men suspected of a plot to kidnap and kill a Muslim soldier. She says that its time to stop the radicals, and to stop being afraid of them
#7
Nono, let's revive an old tradition. First, install a crow's cage outside each mosque. Any time an imam in Britain is caught preaching jihad, he gets put into the crow's cage and left there. Anyone in a cage is fair game, throw rocks, hot pokers, whatever you feel like.
To the surprise of the Bush administration, the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Wednesday night to allow all 435 House members to see the classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq sent to the White House last week. The report is classified in part because it contains information about sources and methods used in intelligence-gathering.
The document will provide fuel for a House debate, scheduled to begin Tuesday, on a resolution of disapproval of President Bushs plan to boost U.S. troop strength in Iraq. Remarkably, each House member will be given five minutes to speak. The decision to provide such broad access to the microphones is based on the fact that each member got the chance to speak before the Iraq war began, according to House leadership aides.
In announcing the vote to allow all members access to the classified portion of the NIE, the committee said those examining it will be required to review the document in the Committee's secure offices in the Capitol and sign a secrecy oath. The members will not be allowed to leave with notes, congressional sources said.
The White House was not informed or consulted about the decision. Such access for members is rare but not unprecedented. The document had been made available to members of several committees with jurisdiction over the intelligence community, but other lawmakers would have needed to request permission to read it. The committee had received written requests from one Republican and one Democrat, plus some other informal inquires, and decided it would be better to allow blanket access instead of voting on each request, congressional sources said.
The report runs about 90 pages, and the Office of the National Intelligence Director released 3 1/2 pages of Key Judgments last week. The report, called Prospects for Iraqs Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead, was approved Jan. 29 by the heads of the governments 16 intelligence agencies. It paints a generally bleak picture of conditions in Iraq and warns that without successful efforts to rein in insurgent violence and political extremism, the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate at current rates for the next 12 to 18 months, the period covered by the report.
The decision raised fears among some Republicans that members not used to dealing with classified information might play fast and loose with what they saw. But Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: "It is critical that all Members of Congress understand the consensus view of the Intelligence Community on the gravity of the situation in Iraq and the consequences for U.S. troops and our long-term national security interests."
#2
Personally, I think that the administration might profit immensely by periodically releasing restricted information that is just interesting enough to be leaked, but would cause no serious harm.
Then modify each version of the same release with slight grammatical changes, carefully noting which congressman got which document.
By carefully documenting who all the leakers are, over a period of years, certain congressmen could be steered away from important classified material, could be used as pipelines for disinformation, and might even be used to discover foreign espionage activities.
Remember the malfunctioning water condensers on Midway Island.
You listen to enough announcement speeches, and you begin to get a sense of what's garnering praise in the focus groups, and what isn't. Here's what I figure the ideal speech would sound like:
Energy independence by [future date year]: I will figure out how later, but I think it will involve windmills. Perhaps tilting at them.
I will denounce the administration for being way too optimistic in its planning about Iraq, and offer my own plan for withdrawal, which requires LSD to achieve the wild-eyed optimism necessary to believe it will work without ending in an even bloodier mess.
Health care is a right, not a privilege, and thus, I am willing to throw out the entire concept of fee-for-service and compensation for health care workers out the window, and force doctors into treating patients for rates that I as Supreme Leader of America will deem fair.
I support our troops. I think their mission is wrong, doomed, illegal, and I will instinctively believe every tale of their misdeeds on al-Jazeera, but other than that, I support the troops.
As President, I will give you free stuff, and make sure somebody else pays for it.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/09/2007 12:18 ||
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#1
Iff I heard it correctly, O/REILLY > Arkin controversy > Arkin claims as per O'Reilly that US troops and servicemembers, in Iraq-ME or not, "ARE LUCKY THEY ARE NOT BEING SPAT ON", i.e. that US Milfors in general DESERVE TO BE SPAT ON??? Anyone else catch this today!?
Let me be clear. My typing may not be the greatest.
I may use the odd run-on sentence.
But I am 52 years old and have been voting Democratic since 1976 when first I voted.
I have a vested interest .
The interactive nature of the internet is truly extraordinary and while I am not following the contours of this premature campaign as closely as I might
But candidate Edwards has interested me since '04. I would have voted for him, had he been on the primary ballot in my state.
I voted Kerry in some large part due to the presence of Sen. Edwards .
So.... I am really disssapointed today.
I have a flirting relationship with the blogosphere and it came to my attention today that there was some bruhah about Sen. Edwards campaign.on the Michelle Malkin site.
I read her column which was 99% blog entries of one of the subjects of the bruhaha. Malkin made a few snide comments and conveniently provided the original web address of the inflamatory blog posts. So I clicked in.
I found three or four basic types of post.
There were the "look at my cats posts" pathetic stuff and I love cats.
There were her music and video posts which seem to be oriented to some kind of neurotic test, guage or ideal that she feeels she must meet in order to attain
some experience , that as a music lover, escapes me. It's some kind of compulsive list thing.
The third and by far most passionate posts were her "Men are oppressing me" posts which can take a wide variety. These are insulting to men and the relationship between men and women. Her passionate hypocrisy ( and there is a great deal of that) is only mitigated by the though that it seems that for this poor specimen of womanhood, feminism can only be experienced as a pathology.
The fourth is where she makes up funny names for the president. I wouldn't even read a jot if this person wrote about foreign affairs.
Her constant foul language and obvious stance of persecution are offensive whomever she thinks that she is skewering, and I am no prude in the foul language department.
The idea that no one on John Edwards staff can understand that things you write on the internet are on the internet, is flabbergasting. On the other hand, maybe the staffers knew the writings and find them agreeable to them. I don't know.
I just know that such people will be your filter to the intenet community ad the "face" they see in dealing with your site.
I registered and logged in to your site to post a comment, as a potential Edwards voter, that the public face might be better served by one who is more amenable to men as people and the other party as Americans, and Americans in general as fellow humans. Not some manic depressive cat-fetishist who is also a hostile pathological victim regardless of her actual status.
So I wrote a paragraph.
The paragraph was removed very quickly. My words were removed from the thread and I don't appreciate it. Your protection of advocacy, free speech and dissenting opinions runs one way, and senator Edwards has been seduced into this way, into this mindset f the people that tried to do in Lieberman.
I am logged in to your site. My posting is blocked.
To be banned in one post from this kind of site is unacceptable .
My deleted post and blocked access are a direct renunciation of all the freedoms that all the good people are espousing.
I realize now that it certainly wasn't my words, since much worse sets of words by common standards survive the edwards blog editing process.
As I was making sure that my post has been deleted I came across this for instance:
"This cunt is Daddy's property and he won't have some hooligan scuff it up for some silly reason like his daughter wants it. Even though the wingnuts haven't progressed to men paying brideprices (or at least I hope they haven't), fatherhood is still constructed as a sort of pimphood. "Respect" for women isn't constructed as anything close to viewing women as full human beings with agency. You're still an item to be bought and sold, but Daddy respects you enough to keep you locked up and "pure" so that he can sell you unused to the worthiest bidder."
This is a quote, I guess from Pandagon. Nice.
So it isn't the words it's what I said.
You all make the same mistake again.
It is all on the internet .
I fully intend to make this an issue in every forum available to me.
As much as I a had the potential and intent to become an Edwards supporter ( and I did), I shall now be actyively campaigning against him
Good job KosKids.
See you at the polls, if you show up ( we all know that they don't so that is a mistake too)
Love,
Jim
#4
I have been laying low here and LGF and trying to work, but this thing got to me.
Do I have to say that RAntburgers are the friendliest bloggers I know ?
Thank you Fred or whomever.
So they wrote me back and I answered.
For your edification:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 10:25 AM, David Pierucci wrote:
Hi James,
Thanks for writing in about this. About your blog post, neither Senator Edwards nor his staff is responsible for dropping blog entries. Entries are voted on by users and are dropped if they receive enough down votes. If you'd prefer to write something that people don't vote on, please submit a diary, instead of an entry.
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
I appreciate your taking the time to write back but you are wrong.
#1 My entry had 2 positive votes, and was deleted within 20 minutes.
Entries with higher negative numbers survive, so what you have said is evidently not true.
#2 My posting priveleges have been blocked since that moment.
I am logged in. The reply fields are missing and any move i make says log in.
Then it says I am logged in already, but there is not one part of being a logged in user that is accessable to me.
Not a post, not a reply, not a diary.
That after one post and 20 minutes.
It does not speak well of your inclusiveness, and despite your attempt to push it off on the other bloggers, it is apparent that someone put hands on my account specifically.
Thank you
Jim
National Intelligence Estimates are not supposed to be amusing. And the latest NIE on the situation in Iraq was uniformly grim. But the document's determined effort to split the difference on the use of the phrase "civil war'' did verge on the comical. One can only imagine the interagency wrangling that produced the classic bureaucratic compromise: "The Intelligence Community judges that the term 'civil war' does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict'' but "nonetheless, the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict.''
In other words: yes, no, maybe. Multiple civil strife, but way too messy to rank with the classics such as America in the 1860s or Spain in the 1930s.
I don't deny that this is a fair application of "civil war'' to the current situation. What I note with dismay, however, is how important -- and absurdly irrelevant -- the application of certain loaded words to the current situation has become.
What is striking is how much of the debate in Washington about Iraq has to do with not the war but the words. Who owns them, who deploys them, who uses them as a bludgeon. NBC's announcement last November that it would henceforth use the term civil war -- a statement far more political than analytical, invoking the same fake authority with which the networks regally "declare'' election winners (e.g., Florida to Al Gore, Nov. 7, 2000) -- set the tone of definitional self-importance.
Words. We had weeks of debates in the Senate about Iraq. They eventually went nowhere, being shut down (temporarily) by partisan procedural disputes. But they were going nowhere anyway. The debates were not about real fighting in a real place. They were about how the various senators would position themselves in relation to that real fighting in that real place. At issue? With what tone and nuance and addenda to express disapproval of a troop surge that the president was going to order anyway.
When it came to doing something serious about the surge, the Senate ducked. It unanimously (81-0) approved sending Gen. David H. Petraeus to Baghdad to do the surge -- precisely what a majority of the senators said they did not want done.
If you really oppose the surge, how could you not oppose the appointment of the man whose very mission is to carry it out? Yet not one senator did so. Instead, they spent days fine-tuning the wording of a nonbinding, i.e. entirely toothless, expression of disapproval.
A serious legislative body would not be arguing over degrees of disapproval anyway, but about the elements of three or four alternate plans that might actually change our course in Iraq, something they all say they desire. But instead of making a contribution to thinking through how the war should be either prosecuted or liquidated, they negotiate language that provides precisely the amount of distancing a senator might need as political insulation should the surge either succeed or fail.
Words. The Democrats are all in favor of "redeployment'' and pretend that this is an alternative plan. But the word redeployment is meaningless. It simply means changing the position of our soldiers and, implicitly, changing their mission. But unless you're saying where you're redeploying to, and with what mission, you've said nothing. It's a statement of opposition, yet another expression of disapproval of the current strategy -- much like an empty, nonbinding congressional resolution -- until you say whether you want to redeploy to Kansas or Kurdistan.
Words. Consider "surge.'' It carries an air of energy, aggression and even hope. That, in fact, is a fairly good reflection of Petraeus' view of it -- not just more troops but a change in the rules of engagement, with more latitude to fight, less political interference by the Iraqi government and a much tougher attitude toward foreign, especially Iranian, agents in Iraq.
The opposition prefers "escalation,'' as featured, for example, in the anti-surge commercial that aired in certain markets during the Super Bowl. The main reason for using escalation, of course, is that it is a Vietnam word. And the more Vietnam words you can use in discussing Iraq, the more you've won the debate without having to make an argument.
The problem with this battle over words is that it is entirely irrelevant to what is happening in Iraq. There will be real troops on real missions regardless of what label they are given. The country is engaged in a serious debate about exactly what strategy to pursue to either prosecute the war or withdraw in an orderly fashion. The Senate might consider putting such a debate on its agenda.
. . . it is significant that in Mrs. Clinton's case, for the past 30 years, from 1978 through 2007--which is to say throughout most, almost all, of her adulthood--her view of America, and of American life, came through the tinted window of a limousine. (Now the view is, mostly, through the tinted window of an SUV.)
From first lady of Arkansas through first lady of the United States to U.S. senator, her life has been eased and cosseted by staff--by aides, drivers, cooks, Secret Service, etc. Her life has been lived within a motorcade. And so she didn't have to worry about crime, the cost of things, the culture. Status incubates. Rudy Giuliani was fighting a deterioration she didn't have to face. That's a big difference. It's the difference between the New Yorker in the subway and the Wall Street titan in the town car.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/09/2007 06:41 ||
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#1
They never owned a house until they bought in Chappaqua.
#2
Please, God, please. Let them be the two to square off when the dust settles. I've gotta believe that even NYC would favor Rudy over the "new import to NY State," Madame Hitlery.
Posted by: BA ||
02/09/2007 10:40 Comments ||
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#3
Since Rudy IS popular in the northeast, and Hillary has anti-bitch forces against her, I doubt she can carry 5 states against the Rudster.
With any included intelligence, Rudy will run with a contract with America and therefore bring in large majorities in both Houses.
So many targets, so many hits. Heh.
A person from Mars reading the latest communication from the Hamas/Fatah summit in Saudi Arabia might conclude there is something very wrong with the West that would inspire the Palestinians to say such crazy things.
Reuters ran the account of the agreement by its reporter Mohammed Assadi. In it, we are told by Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad, thanks to Saudi talks with the Americans and Europeans, there is a good chance to "market this agreement" in order to "win back Western aid halted because of Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel."
But then the Hamas spokesman warned, "They cannot ignore this agreement and impose their own conditions."
Of course immediately Nizar Rayyan, "a senior Hamas leader" is reported as assuring that "Hamas would never recognize Israel and that the deal on the government does not change the movement's position." In his own words, "We will never recognize Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination." Flip, Flop. FLIP, FLOP. English, ARABIC. Typically paleo actions.
And what is the source of the internecine killing on the West Bank? The Reuters article goes on to announce that the sanctions, in the mind of Palestinians, "were partly to blame for the violence that has killed 90 people since December."
Consider the logic of the Palestinian position: A group dedicated to destroying the only stable democracy in the Middle East announces that it wishes to "market" an agreement to restore American and European handouts, whose cutoff is supposedly responsible for their own civil war on the West Bank. paleo......logic, a true contradiction.
We should ask the following:
What has America done to suggest to a terrorist organization that it has an inherent right to American taxpayer money because it has found a way to market or soft-peddle its intention to destroy a democracy? The money quote of Hamas is the key phrase "they cannot..." Only in the Middle East does the recipient announce to the benefactor the conditions of the hand out.
Why would any Arabs want any money from the US, when the latest Zogby poll, we are told, reveals that the United States is the least popular country in the Arab collective mind?
Surely a proud people would logically announce, "We do not wish one cent of tainted American money"? And surely they would not suggest the lack of such tainted American money leads them to kill each other.
And why, with $500 billion in excess petrodollars floating around the Middle East, is a few hundred million from the US, that is pouring money into Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, seen as the make or break subsidy that either ensures peace or leads to war?
Couldn't Hamas simply instead ask Iran, to cut back a little on the rockets to Hezbollah, and send it instead a few million for groceries?
And if impoverished, where does the money for all the machine guns, rockets, RPGs, and explosives come from?
And does any Reuters reporter grasp the irony that it is precisely the US cut-off of this subsidy that at last has made Hamas pay any lip-service at all toward reconciliation? Uh, NO.
This bathos summarizes what infuriates Americans the most about the Middle East-a sort of infantile, passive-aggression, in which America is alternately blamed, then shaken down for cash, libeled and simultaneously beseeched. going, Going, GONE! Ouda da park and over da lights!
Worse still, is not just the fact that Fatah and Hamas act in such a bizarre manner- but rather what is it about us that has led them to believe that it will work? One word: Mediacrats.
And what would be so difficult about something like the following request to the Palestinians: please issue a statement recognizing Israel as a sovereign nation and renouncing terrorism, and then the US and Europe will consider aid in a degree commensurate to that offered by the Arab League? Period. ROLFLMOA. commensurate with the worthless arab league. Ker-POW!
What is an offense? Must claims to an offense have any relationship to reality? Does the "offended" party have the right to respond in any way, including with violence?
These are questions that were, or should have been, asked with respect to the "cartoon riots," in which Muslims in many countries violently demonstrated against cartoons depicting Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. In the same vein, a German opera that depicted a number of religious figures was cancelled for fear that it might offend Muslim sensibilities.
Numerous smaller incidents of Western self-censorship with respect Muslim sensibilities abound, while Christian and Jewish societies continue to subject themselves and their religions to withering criticism, parody, and self-doubt.
Violence and bullying, in other words, has worked. The more violent the Muslim world becomes, the more likely the West is to see the side of the "offended" party and question its own actions.
The Muslim world's tactic of combining claims of offense, followed by intimidation through violence is not new to Israelis. We have been victims of it for years, and we are seeing it again right now.
In Gaza, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and elsewhere, Muslims are up in arms about what even a moderate like Jordan's King Abdullah called "a threat to the foundations of the Al Aksa mosque."
"What is happening is an aggression, we call on the Palestinian people to unite and protect Jerusalem," said Muhammad Hussein, the top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for the Islamic world to "retaliate" and make Israel "regret" what it had done.
What is Israel doing that has sparked such violent threats? Some years ago, the pedestrian ramp leading up to Jerusalem's Temple Mount fell apart. Now municipal authorities plan to build a permanent ramp to maintain access to this holy site, and are conducting, as required by law, an archeological salvage dig to make sure no artifacts are destroyed in the process.
All of this is completely outside the Temple Mount platform, and bears no relation or threat to that structure, let alone to the Aksa mosque. Why would Israel dream of undermining the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site? The claim that Israel is doing so is patently absurd, as anyone familiar with the area can immediately see.
So how can the Muslim world be awash in violent threats based on an entirely fabricated pretext? Must there not be something to it?
The answer is that Muslim indignation is taken as self-justifying, and the more violent it is, the more the Western victims of it tend to question themselves.
The US State Department, instead of rejecting outright the claims that Israel was threatening a holy site and condemning Muslim extremists for incitement to violence, said it was seeking "clarification." "As always, we urge all parties to exercise great care when deciding whether and how to engage in any activity near sensitive religious sites," the spokesman said.
In other words, the State Department is at best agnostic on this "debate." If anything, its statement is directed against Israel, since who else is engaged in "activity near sensitive religious sites"?
This is scandalous, but perhaps less so than our own defense minister, Amir Peretz, who has written to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asking that work on the site be immediately stopped. Why? Because security officials complained that this construction is causing foment in the Arab world at a sensitive time.
But why do these officials not think to ask why this foment is happening and how to prevent it from repeating on the flimsiest of pretexts? How many times will we and our allies capitulate to baseless violent intimidation?
What is going on now, of course, is a rerun of the violent riots of September 1996, over the opening of an additional exit to the then already existing Western Wall Tunnels, well outside the Temple Mount. Today this tunnel is a popular tourist attraction. It too had as much to do with the "foundations" of Al Aksa as does the reconstruction of the World Trade Center in New York.
Radical Islamist intimidation tactics will continue to multiply if the West, including Israel, does not show minimal respect for itself and the truth. Western condemnation of extremist threats should be swift, universal, and unequivocal. This time the victim happens to be Israel; next time it could be anywhere else.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/09/2007 00:00 ||
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By Scott MacLeod
Back in Beirut for the first time since the recent disturbances, I'm struck by how much things have remained the same and by how much has changed.
I was living in West Beirut 23 years ago today when Syrian- and Iranian-backed opposition Muslim militia groups staged an uprising against the American-backed government of the day. It was a milestone in the long civil war, marking a solid victory for the opposition groups and a defeat for the U.S. efforts to rebuild Lebanon on its terms. After an artillery shell slammed into the building next door that night, we slept in the basement of the newspaper building where I worked. The city was riverting to a crazy and dangerous combat zone, with gunmen taking over the war-battered streets. Within a few weeks, the U.S. Marines were gone and the government capitulated to the opposition demands. Incredibly, and sadly, history is repeating itself now. Syria and Iran are backing Hizballah in its efforts to bring down the American-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Like in 1984, there is a sense that the fate of Lebanon is not in the hands of the Lebanese but of Syria, Iran and the U.S.
Yet, dinner with an old friend in Ashrafiyeh last night helped illustrate what has changed. There were no gunmen or checkpoints as I went across the former green line from my old neighborhood in West Beirut. Though downtown business is badly hurting due to last summer's war and Hizballah's confrontation with the government, the shell-pocked buildings have long been replaced by a gleaming city center that is the envy of the Arab world. Two decades ago, the crackling of thunder would have sent me diving for cover, thinking that it could be incoming mortar fire, but last night the thunder was just thunder. Over a steak and onion soup, my friend made some observations that showed how the Lebanese spirit has changed, too. In a word, people are not so frightened of the opposition and its Syrian and Iranian backers. They know they may not be able to stop Hizballah from getting more aggressive, or prevent another pro-democracy leader from getting assassinated, but they are not willing to be cowed. Lebanese are supporting Siniora not because he's some militia leader representing a sect, which he is not, but because he is standing up for a free Lebanon and seeks to represent all Lebanese. Unlike Amin Gemeyal's government in 1984, which was mainly supported by Maronite Christians, Siniora, a Sunni, is strongly supported by Sunnis and Druze as well as Christians.
When Hizballah called a general strike two weeks ago and tried to prevent people from going to work, my dinner companion told me, she would have none of it. Instead of sitting frustrated or afraid at home, she got into her car and got stopped at a Hizballah road block. She cursed them and ordered them out of the way, at which point a kindly gentleman in another car came over to calm her down and explain that eventually they would let her pass so she could get to work. My friend replied, "I don't care about going to work! I'm here to fight what they're doing!" Then one of the road blockers jumped on the hood and kicked in her windshield. She drove it around like that for a couple days as a badge of honor.
It's true that the crisis is largely out of Lebanese hands, and has many weary people once again looking to escape. But paradoxically the country is more united than I remember it in the 1980s, bound by a broad common purpose rather than merely narrow sectarian interests. This is no doubt the reason that Hizballah is looking increasingly uneasy in its opposition role. If it drags the country to civil war, it won't be so much sect versus sect, but Hizballah versus Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/09/2007 00:00 ||
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This is a long article, but a fascinating read! New show coming to Fox News on Feb 18, with hints of Rush backing. This is a good "over lunch" read ... if you are a "24" fan!
WHATEVER IT TAKES
The politics of the man behind 24.
by JANE MAYER
Issue of 2007-02-19
Posted 2007-02-12
The office desk of Joel Surnowthe co-creator and executive producer of 24, the popular counterterrorism drama on Foxfaces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad, after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. A few years ago, Surnow received it as a gift from an Army regiment stationed in Iraq; the soldiers had shared a collection of 24 DVDs, he told me, until it was destroyed by an enemy bomb. The military loves our show, he said recently. Surnow is fifty-two, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a soul patcha smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip. When he was young, he worked as a carpet salesman with his father. The trick to selling anything, he learned, is to carry yourself with confidence and get the customer to like you within the first five minutes. Hes got it down. People in the Administration love the series, too, he said. Its a patriotic show. They should love it.
Surnows production company, Real Time Entertainment, is in the San Fernando Valley, and occupies a former pencil factory: a bland, two-story industrial building on an abject strip of parking lots and fast-food restaurants. Surnow, a cigar enthusiast, has converted a room down the hall from his office into a salon with burled-wood humidors and a full bar; his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, sometimes joins him there for a smoke. (Not long ago, Surnow threw Limbaugh a party and presented him with a custom-made 24 smoking jacket.) The ground floor of the factory has a large soundstage on which many of 24 s interior scenes are shot, including those set at the perpetually tense Los Angeles bureau of the Counter Terrorist Unit, or C.T.U.a fictional federal agency that pursues Americas enemies with steely resourcefulness.
Each season of 24, which has been airing on Fox since 2001, depicts a single, panic-laced day in which Jack Bauera heroic C.T.U. agent, played by Kiefer Sutherlandmust unravel and undermine a conspiracy that imperils the nation. Terrorists are poised to set off nuclear bombs or bioweapons, or in some other way annihilate entire cities. The twisting story line forces Bauer and his colleagues to make a series of grim choices that pit liberty against security. Frequently, the dilemma is stark: a resistant suspect can either be accorded due processallowing a terrorist plot to proceedor be tortured in pursuit of a lead. Bauer invariably chooses coercion. With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets.
The shows appeal, however, lies less in its violence than in its giddily literal rendering of a classic thriller trope: the ticking time bomb plot. Each hour-long episode represents an hour in the life of the characters, and every minute that passes onscreen brings the United States a minute closer to doomsday. (Surnow came up with this concept, which he calls the shows trick.) As many as half a dozen interlocking stories unfold simultaneouslyfrequently on a split screenand a digital clock appears before and after every commercial break, marking each second with an ominous clang. The result is a riveting sensation of narrative velocity.
Continue reading for visit from the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, with who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country.
And read for this: Surnow said that he found the Clinton years obnoxious. Hollywood under Clintonit was like he was their guy, he said. He was the yuppie, baby-boomer narcissist that all of Hollywood related to. During those years, Surnow recalled, he had countless arguments with liberal colleagues, some of whom stopped speaking to him. My feeling is that the liberals ideas are wrong, he said. But they think Im evil. Last year, he contributed two thousand dollars to the losing campaign of Pennsylvanias hard-line Republican senator Rick Santorum, because he liked his position on immigration. His favorite bumper sticker, he said, is Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism & Communism, War Has Never Solved Anything.
#2
Fascinating, indeed, Sherry. I look forward to Mr. Surnow's answer to Jon Stewart's Daily Show, which I find increasingly obnoxious. It is interesting, though, that the dean of West Point and professional interrogators who came with him to meet with the writers argued strenuously that physical torture is generally ineffective at extracting useful information, and that the repeated use of it on the show was making his job as an instructor of the future Army officers more difficult. We've argued about the use of physical torture here at Rantburg, too, and the point was raised that there are much more effective ways to elicit information, so effective that in some cases the subject doesn't even know that he's done so.
#3
That is a long read, but a good 'un. Thanks for the find, Sherry.
I don't appreciate the slight at the troops in the article, though. A more subtle version of Kerry's the troops are dumb "joke." While I don't doubt that a few troops here and there *may* have watched 24 and "tried out" some of Jack's tactics for extracting info, I seriously doubt it's anywhere near the level of concern that the article makes it out to be. I think even "dumb" 18 year olds can separate fact (on the ground in Iraq) vs. fiction (24).
Posted by: BA ||
02/09/2007 13:27 Comments ||
Top||
#4
I've got that same bumper sticker on my car. And I live in Marin County. It gets some great reactions.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
