A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

Yesterday the question was: Is this, at long last, the end of the long-running torture infomercial “24″??

Today we know the answer: It is not just NO, but Hell NO!

As one TV critic aptly put it:

…”In the days leading up to the series finale, there was great speculation that Jack Bauer would die in the end.
The producers and writers obviously knew better than to let that happen. Besides a 24 movie in the works, there are the residual elements that benefit from a breathing Jack Bauer as opposed to killing him off.
For example, when the inevitable eight-season DVD package hits the market, people are more likely to invest those hard earned dollars in something that keeps their favorite character alive in their imaginations and in any other configuration likely to follow.
Will there be 24 novels, cartoons, comic books, video games, and action figures? Of course there will be, and they will be more marketable with fans thinking Jack is out there somewhere in the world.”
You can read more here.

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Two weeks plus two days til the ignoble end of the torture show “24.”

As it prepares to depart, let’s take a moment to recognize New Yorker writer Jane Mayer. No journalist has done more than she to expose both the criminal reality of US torture, and the impact of “24″ on both the reality of those crimes and the selling of that criminality to the American public.

In fact, the impact of her work was such that in last year’s season opener, the producers struck back by inserting a character, “Blaine Mayer” (get it?) as a self-righteously ridiculous senator “interrogating” the heroic Jack Bauer about his torture tactics which “saved the world.”

Sutherland, above, “testifying” about torture; Jane Mayer, right, who told the truth about it, and still does.

Mayer was asked about this by a blogger, and responded:

“If [the producer] was honest about the debate over torture, he’d cast the critics of Jack Bauer as the heroes of the show, and they would be the stand-up military men, the proud FBI agents, and the lawyers inside and outside the government who have risked their careers to say that as a country, we’re better than this. They’re the real protectors of America.”

Read one of her articles about torture and “24″ here.

BTW don’t just sit there and nod: check out the Quaker Initiative to End Torture here.

Best news I learned today: The TV Torture Training show “24″ will end on May 24.

This is not really “news,” as the cancellation was announced in late March. But my network TV has been off since mid-2002, and the pony Express rider carrying word to NC from Richmond got lost in the Great Dismal Swamp, where he was kidnapped by mercenary trainees for Blackwater (now called “Xe” — and no, I can’t pronounce it either), and just escaped yesterday.

Anyway, as this video, “Primetime Torture,” from Human Rights First shows in a mere 14 minutes, “24″ has done an excellent job of making torture acceptable conduct for US agents and officials.

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Presumably star Kiefer Sutherland has made a boatload of money from his 8 seasons as torture-popularizer in chief. But even spending every penny of it on Betsy Blake’s organic Quaker detergent wouldn’t be enough to wash away the permanent stain on his reputation, and that of this country, and (should be) his conscience. Shame, shame shame!!