Having spent last week fasting, meditating, flagellating, and otherwise chastening and prostrating ourselves for the important job at hand, this week we’re busy tacking, gluing, hot-waxing, tucking, nipping the new issue–and we’re sure you’ll agree that all this radio-silence at the blog is going to be worth it. (Hint: Nudity! Much nudity!) But something I wanted to point out while briefly on the hustings. As you know, dear reader, there are two sorta inexplicable tangents we indulge in around here, just because you are powerless to stop us–(a) the occasional thoughts on modern ice hockey, and (2) the TV series “24.”
Well, you cannot have failed to notice that Fox programmed the first four hours of the new season of Kiefer Sutherland’s real-time name-taking and butt-kicking on Sunday and Monday nights. I found it kinda creepy that the first episode, on the eve of MLK day, featured former president David Palmer getting assassinated in a hotel room by a sniper. That was either wicked foresight or accident–but wicked in any case. Also, it seems clear that the show will continue to dwell on dangerous issues that tend to give red-state Americans a lot of bad ideas. (Like how its funny that anyone who gets tortured is obviously guilty–otherwise why would we torture them, duh! I don’t normally get all moral and snobbish like this, but what the hey. It’s really pretty frightening to ponder what a full-throated Bush apologist would make of this show, while pantywaist lefties like myself can’t keep track of all the “teaching moments.”) This season’s Pandora appears to be the modish topic of the relativity of truth and the fabrication of reality. Already a main element of the story line is the constant, improbable, high-tech maniupulation of information–particularly digital media. There is something perfectly meta about this, given how the show itself has shamelessly manipulated our emotions for five years now.
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