The Show Bloggers Love

When I was in college in the late 1980's I made a bet with a liberal friend. I was arguing that Hollywood was so liberally biased that he couldn't name a single character on prime time television that was an obvious conservative hero, with the exception of Alex P. Keaton, who was often the butt of the liberal writers jokes. He thought a long while, then stated, "the Equalizer." After he mentioned the title character about the CIA assassin with a strong sense of right and wrong and an appetite to get the job done, I conceded. Then he conceded to me that the exercise had made a point with him. While there were plenty of liberals on TV, there were very few conservatives.

That's probably why the show 24 is a favorite among conservative bloggers. 24 is a show that feels Republican. The bad guys get shot, and the treatment of criminals that are being interrogated falls between John Ashcroft and Hermann Goring levels.

I don't generally enjoy TV drama, but 24 grabs you with its breakneck pace and drags you along for the ride. It has the comic book realism of most special effect extravaganzas, the lighting of most noir picks and a body count that is estimated somewhere between 500 and 4,000 for the first three seasons.

24 deals with an elite anti-terrorist agent, Jack Bauer, who like the Equalizer will stop at nothing to get the job done. The first three seasons, Jack served a Democrat in (or running for) the White House. This season the new president is a Republican. His cabinet has poked fun at Michael Moore as Jack is fights Islamic terrorists. The first three years there were a few Islamic terrorists, but for the most part, the villains were white or Hispanic men.

So, predictably, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is protesting the show, suggesting it is responsible for branding all Muslims as terrorists. To which I say: Shut up and get a life. This is a TV show. No one who watches it thinks it is real. Of course that won't happen. CAIR has had several meetings with the FOX network, and the network will begin to air PSAs during the show suggesting that all Muslims are not terrorists.

On Martin Luther King day it is a good time to reflect on the progress of race relations in this wonderful country. The fact that NYPD Blue can show the arrest of a black man for a violent crime without a torrent of criticism from the NAACP is a good sign for all Americans. Unfortunately that dynamic does not yet exist between mainstream and Islamic American cultures yet.