George W. Bush !! Torture !!!! '24'??

In the online edition of Newsweek, Evan Thomas writes about the effectiveness of torture and cites the TV show '24' as a touchstone of what American's assume torture is.

"It’s probably not too farfetched to say that what most Americans know about torture comes from watching the TV show “24.” (There is even a Web site called The Jack Bauer Torture Report.) Jack and his comrades and enemies have at various moments on the Fox television program used electrical wires, heart defibrillators, old-fashioned bone breaking and chemical injections to wrest information from their captives. In one episode, Agent Bauer forced a terrorist to watch streaming video—staged—of his child’s execution. The terrorist talked."

Uh huh. In fairness, Evan goes on to write about how wildly inaccurate '24' is and how torture, by and large, does not work. But with a lead in like that how do you take the rest of the article seriously? If you're going to start like this, go full force. Here's my revised and upgraded opening paragraph for Evan Thomas:

"It's probably not too far fetched to say that what most Americans know about torture comes from watching the movie "Lethal Weapon". Gary Busey as Mr. Joshua, with a lot of help from his hentchman Endo, hook a car battery up to Mel Gibson. (There is even a website dedicated to Endo. Did you know he played Ghengis Kahn in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?) Mel Gibson sure got his in that movie, huh?"

Just trying to help Mr. Thomas. But the question that's not asked is, is this really how average Americans get their information regarding U. S. policies? Really? Am I just being optomistic when i assume that your average, everyday regular Joe and Jane can watch a TV show or a movie and think "wow, what horrible dialogue, plot and acting? why am i wasting my time on this piece of shit ENTERTAINMENT?". Are we really at a point where we assume that what we see on TV, no matter what it is, or how obviously fake it is, that it is actually fact?

That might actually explain a lot. That's probably why people keep voting Republican, right? Because Jimmy Smits won the election, and Alan Alda lost, so we need to balance out the the branches of power. Makes total sense.

My point: I think Evan Thomas is vastly underestimating the intelligence of the average person. I think your average person knows that '24' is as real as 'The A Team' or 'Snakes on a Plane'. I don't think anyone draws any sort of conclusion about torture based on a TV Show. But hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe people really are that stupid. What do I know?