COSTELLO: Is it, as Newsweek magazine calls it, “a neocon sex fantasy”?
GORDON: “24” is just your worst nightmares realized. If “24” is true then everything the neoconservatives have been saying all along is true.
COSTELLO: As in a terrorist network working inside the United States, sending suicide bombers to subways and shopping malls, ordering up dirty bombs assembled right in California. And a hero, Jack Bauer, who is decent like John Wayne, yet often ignores international law, torturing terrorist to get vital information.
CARAFANO: Jack Bauer is kind of a metaphor for all the great people that we have out there every day really are, you know, working hard to make us safe.
RUSH: Right on.
COSTELLO: The Heritage Foundation so admires “24”‘s plots, its group sponsored a forum in June called “24” and America’s Image in Fighting Terrorism, Fact, Fiction, or Does It Matter? On the panel, terrorism experts, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
COSTELLO: Also invited, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who so loves “24” he’s posted a review of this season on his website.
RUSH: So what?
RUSH ARCHIVE: I am literally in awe of the creativity of the brains behind the program.
COSTELLO: Feeling the neocon love of the program, possible presidential candidate John McCain made a guest appearance on “24” last season. The Heritage Foundation wants to make it clear it believes “24” is in the end just a TV show, but its hero, Jack Bauer, does for the 9/11 generation what James Bond did for the Cold War generation.
RUSH: The 9/11 generation? You people at CNN have done your best to pretend there wasn’t a 9/11, otherwise how could they even do this report? “24” is now a show by and for neocons? And did you notice the disdain with which she pronounced my name the first time she mentioned it? “Rush Limbaugh, who so loves ’24’ he posted a review of this season on the website.” So what? That must be a transgression of some kind. You had to hear this to believe it, folks. Just trying to describe this to you, you wouldn’t have gotten the impact. They think this is all a fantasy and 9/11 never happened, and they say that McCain became a fan to pander to neocons? I know a little bit about that, and I can just tell you that’s the furthest thing from the truth there could be. He’s a genuine fan of the program. He called and wanted to go out there for a set visit and they gave him a cameo. People just miss the whole point of it.
Well, why is the left so afraid of this, other than CNN’s obvious jealousy? They want to be the only network to show mushroom clouds, but how in the world can you find disdain with this show? These people are looking at it as an attempt, as propaganda to poison the minds of a bunch of you people that they consider to be mind-numbed robots. Okay, so this season of “24” has all that she described. A terrorist network inside the US, we’ve had that. Including suicide bombers to subways and shopping malls, haven’t had that, but we’ve had bombers attempting to blow up LAX — they were caught. Who knows what else has been stopped that we haven’t been told. We’re not going to tell everybody everything we’ve stopped, give them our techniques for doing so.
Who knows what we’ve stopped out there? We can’t brag about it, antiterrorist specialists cannot brag about their successes, they live in a lonely world. Dirty bombs assembled right in California? You know, we had a bunch of terrorists attending flight schools telling instructors they had no desire to learn how to land. They were still taught to fly the airplanes, and what did they do with them? A variation of the scenario has happened. And yet these people find “24” to be nothing more than propaganda and an outrageous attempt to generate fear — as though 9/11 shouldn’t have caused any fear, shouldn’t have caused anybody to get concerned and vigilant. These people are so concerned about this, about “24”. These are the same people that blew a gasket when the Dubai Ports deal was announced. I mean what the hell was wrong with the Dubai Ports deal? The Dubai Ports Deal apparently to these people, just as bad as the TV show “24”. Now, gets better. This is yesterday on PMSNBC. The infobabe anchor Contessa Brewer was talking to PMSNBC analyst Craig Crawford about how the show “24” may affect the public’s perception of the Bush administration.
CRAWFORD: Sure. But I do — have always thought this show was a fascinating dovetail into the Bush administration agenda on the war on terror, which is to keep people afraid. I mean, if Franklin Roosevelt when he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, this administration says give in to your fear and let us protect you. I think the show is very entertaining. But I do think whatever their motives, I doubt they’re actually have political — a political agenda at this show, but they are in a sense war profiteering —
BREWER: Okay, well let me ask you about this.
CRAWFORD: All wars have profiteering. I think they’re playing to popular notions that the Constitution just gets in the way of catching the bad guy.
RUSH: Come on! War profiteering? Ever heard of Stephen Spielberg and Schindler’s List? You ever heard of Michael Moore and that genuine propaganda film of his? Clinton Eastwood, is he war profiteering with his Iwo Jima movie, Craig? What a ditzy thing to say. These people are scared to death. You know what they’re really frightened about? If these four episodes that already aired had aired in October, they think that the Democrats would not have won the election. That’s how frightened they are and insecure. All of this indicates that they know they’re on the wrong side of the war on terror, and so they have to do what they do to everyone that threatens them, and that’s destroy their credibility and try to destroy them personally rather than argue the substance of issues. This is funny as it can be.