Big, Bad Muslims: Part Four—24: Season Six

"Yes, I have dark skin...Okay, of course I can play a Muslim."

Another Muslim character suffers a narrative fate similar to Ahmed Amar.

At 7am, we meet Walid Al-Rezani, head of the Washington D.C. Islamic-American Alliance (a thinly-veiled pastiche on the CAIR), and boyfriend of Sandra Palmer, the President’s sister. Harry Lennix, a Chicago-born American of Creole ancestry, plays Walid with sympathetic calm.

The FBI arrives at the IAA to background check its workers. Sandra tells them, “You’re in the wrong place. There’re no terrorists here.”

Walid wants to cooperate. “We can’t pretend we’re not under attack,” he tells her.

Sandra calls her brother, outraged. “I’m not some idealistic flag-burner and I understand you’re going through a very complicated situation, but once you start ethnic profiling it’s a slippery slope.”

            Later, the FBI returns to the IAA with a warrant and Sandra erases the IAA employee computer records. Instead of arresting her, the FBI detains Walid and takes him to one of Tom Lennox’s secret detainee camps.

While being registered, Walid prevents an American soldier from harassing a Muslim who refuses a cavity search. As a result, the soldier beats Walid. Later, as he walks the detainee common area, Walid meets the man he saved, Salhib.

“Have you talked?” Salhib asks.

Walid replies, “I have nothing to tell them.”

Salhib mutters, “I’ll tell you something, brother. Before this day is over they will all pay.”

With Salhib exposed as a potential threat, Walid turns informant.   

"Hey, guys. What's happening? So, hey, are any of you, like, terrorists?"

            Here, 24 misses a crucial opportunity to dissect the mandates once proposed by the Bush regime and expose them as civil rights abuse. Instead, the show justifies the Bush claim that the threat of terrorism exists everywhere. The detainee camp is not a springboard for even-handed political examination, but a paranoid playground populated by seemingly average Muslims like Salhib, who are in fact terrorists.

After joyfully beating Walid to “create his cover,” the FBI forces Walid to wear a wire. Then, Walid joins Salhib’s friends in the camp. When Salhib asks what the FBI wanted, Walid tells him they demanded information about Abu Fayed. Suddenly, Salhib’s group is a militant band of brothers, united and ready to strike the American enemy. When Walid spots one of the men talking suspiciously on his cell phone, it dawns on the FBI, “He must be talking to Fayed!” Walid pickpockets the phone and discovers the man had only been accessing Arabic websites reporting Fayed’s activities. “These men aren’t terrorists,” Sandra tells the FBI. Yet what the show leaves unsaid is that while these men are not physically involved, they ideologically support Fayed. This perpetrates the myth that violence against the West is a Muslim way of life.

Walid, here comes the pain.

Of course, Walid is caught slipping the phone back into the man’s pocket. Salhib hisses, “You’re spying on us? You’re worse than they are!” The group of exposed terrorist supporters pummels Walid until the FBI intervenes and rushes him to the hospital.

Thus ends Walid’s storyline and all hope that 24 would examine Lennox’s detainee camps with any critical insight. The CAIR was especially disturbed by this. Its Los Angeles representative, Sireen Sawaf, told the BBC News, “I do realize it’s a multi-dimensional show that portrays extreme situations…[but] the overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims…Watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn’t sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.”

24 tried to claim it made Walid sympathetic to Americans. Yet, in his last scene, after being beaten by Salhib and his cohorts, his loyalty to America is broken. “I’m ashamed for spying on those men,” he tells Sandra. This is the last the viewer sees of him. Sandra goes to the White House bunker and never mentions him again. Like Ahmed, Walid is forgotten.

In Part 5, I’ll discuss Hamri Al-Assad, 24’s most interesting Muslim character.

Walid: "I'm ashamed of spying on those men. And this band-aid is real itchy."

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.

Big, Bad Muslims: Part Three—24: Season Six

Bus bombing--morning commutes in L.A. are dangerous.

The action begins at 6am. Islamic terrorist groups have ‘victimized’ the United States for eleven weeks. At a Los Angeles bus station, a Middle Eastern man, late for work and distracted by news broadcasts of the latest bombing, chases a bus. The driver refuses to let him on, prompting the man to shout, “I have as much right to be on the bus as you!” Inside the bus, a wild-eyed man fingers an electronic device and the bus explodes.

            Minutes later in the White House Oval Office, President Wayne Palmer meets with his cabinet to dismiss a mandate created by Tom Lennox, his Chief of Staff, which would allow the government to hold Muslims in detention centers for questioning and possible deportation. Lennox says it will increase public safety and reclaim lost faith in the administration. Karen Hayes, the National Security Advisor, endorses the President’s refusal, stating it would destroy civil freedoms, to which Lennox growls, “Security has its price!”

Tom Lennox: this season's perpetual asshole.

            Meanwhile, CTU (Bauer’s Counter-Terrorism Unit) completes a shady deal. Abu Fayed, former partner of Hamri Al-Assad, the notorious Muslim terrorist, will give up Assad’s location if he can kill Jack Bauer and have 25 million dollars. Bauer, who killed Fayed’s brother, has been in a Chinese prison for the last two years, the twist on which season five ended. President Palmer, at his wits end with the attacks, agrees. CTU facilitates the deal with its newest employee, Muslim Nadia Yassir, who acts as translator between Fayed and CTU director Bill Buchanan.

Jack's Jesus phase.

            In another part of Los Angeles, a suburban family watches the morning news. A Culver City mosque has been bombed in retaliation for the bus bombing earlier that hour. Ray, the father, debates with his wife whether they should let their son, Scott, go to school.

Across the street, the FBI arrests Ahmed Amar’s father on suspicion of domestic terrorism. Stan, a neighborhood tough guy, intimidates Ahmed after the FBI leaves. Knowing Ahmed is his son’s best friend, Ray chases away Stan and offers Ahmed his home as shelter until his father returns.

Ray: father of a skater boy son, protector of neighborhood Muslims.

            24’s first stumbling block is Ahmed Amar, played by Kal Penn, the noted young Indian actor (yes, Kumar), and former member of the Obama administration. Popular for his stoner movie roles, his ethnicity is well known, and one cannot help laughing when he appears on screen. To be cast as a Middle Eastern teenage terrorist, Penn admitted in New York Magazine:

I have a huge political problem with the role. It was essentially accepting

a form of racial profiling…it’s repulsive. But it was the first time I had a

chance to blow stuff up and take a family hostage. As an actor, why shouldn’t

I have that opportunity? Because I’m brown and I should be scared about the

connection between media images and people’s thought processes? (Yuan)

Obviously, in accepting the role, Penn did not share the concerns of The Council on American-Islamic Relations. In Ahmed’s character, Muslims, even the quiet ones across the street, cannot be trusted.

At 7am, Abu Fayed reveals to Jack Bauer that he, not Hamri Al-Assad, is behind the attacks. Soon, Fayed calls Ahmed and asks him to deliver a package. Ahmed tells Fayed of his father’s arrest. Fayed replies, “If your father is meant to be sacrificed that is how it will be.” Ahmed nods. Of course, the slaughter of ‘infidels’ is more important than family.

Abu Fayed, this season Big Bad, chats with Kumar....I mean Ahmed.

Fayed continues, “I could have chosen other people. I chose you.” Not only does Fayed think Ahmed specially suited for the job, but he tells him he will kill him should he fail. Forget the idea that Muslims don’t kill Muslims and Arabs don’t kill Arabs.

The show reveals Ahmed’s motivations as ‘Arab Rage.’ “The roots of so-called ‘Arab Rage’ lie not in some purported cultural or religious peculiarity of the Arabs, but in the adherence by peoples of the Arab world to the universal claims of justice and equality which the rest of the world has propagated these two centuries past” (Halliday 22). None of 24’s Americans possess this deep-seeded anger (unless you count the depictions of “others” on this show).

After the phone call with Fayed, Ahmed tells Scott—remember, his neighborhood pal—he must leave. Scott says he is sorry about his father and that “the whole world’s gone crazy.”

Ahmed hisses, “The world’s been crazy for a long time. You just haven’t been paying attention.” He hurries home and tears apart the living room wall with a claw hammer (this begs the question: how did Ahmed’s father not know his son hid something behind the drywall?). As he removes a small box from between the wall studs, Stan, the neighborhood bully, bursts into his home. Ahmed pulls a gun and shoots Stan.

From that point on, Ahmed becomes a volatile, wild-eyed madman.

Hearing the shot, Scott rushes into Ahmed’s house, sees Stan’s body, and Ahmed takes him hostage. Marching him back across the street, Scott asks him why he is doing this; they’re best friends.

“Friends?!” Ahmed shouts. “You can’t even pronounce my name. It’s not Ahmed. It’s AH-Med!”

First, Penn’s overacting is hilarious. Second, Ahmed will kill friends and innocents because they mispronounce his name? Oh, yeah, the irrational Arab!

"Go ahead! Call me 'Ahmed' again!"

            Taking Scott’s family hostage, Ahmed demands Ray, the father, deliver the box to his contact in exchange for another package or else he will shoot his wife and son. Ray, with wonder in his eyes, says to Ahmed, “You were a terrorist all along.” Well, yeah! He’s Muslim!

Ray complies with Ahmed and delivers the box to Ahmed’s contact. The man opens it, says there is not enough money inside, and demandss higher payment. Ray, in a fit of rage and fear, kills the man and takes the package. This scene exemplifies a thread throughout this season: contact with Muslims will inevitably cause rational Americans to lose their senses and harm not only themselves, but each other.

"I'm sorry," says Ray. "A Muslim made me do it!"

            Ray, with the package, demands Ahmed release his family or he will destroy whatever is inside it. Ahmed compromises, and releases the mother. She flees the house, calls Ray, and they decide to call the police, who then call CTU. Soon, fresh from escaping Fayed’s men, Jack Bauer and his partner Curtis Manning are on their way.

            As promised, Ray delivers the package to Fayed (the big bad terrorist) and is soon taken hostage. Fayed calls Ahmed and orders Scott’s death: “He’s seen and heard too much.”

Make your own caption, I guess.

Meanwhile, outside, Jack and Curtis sneak upon Scott and Ahmed. Just as Ahmed is ready kill Scott, Jack bursts in and shoots him. Scott tells Jack of the conversation he overheard between Ahmed and Ray about where his father took the package, but it is too late. The package, a detonator to a nuclear bomb, is used to explode the device. Ray is killed in the blast, leaving a kind, American family fractured by Muslim intrusion.

In Part 4, I’ll continue my dissection of season six’s other Muslim characters.

An actual affecting moment in the show--Fayed bombs Los Angeles.

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.

Big, Bad Muslims: Part Two—24: Season Six

The show's most uber-patriotic DVD cover.

If Jack Bauer represents American ‘values’, then 24’s villains reflect his global ‘others’.

In season one, Serb warlords try to kill the first African-American presidential candidate. Season two sees Middle Eastern terrorists financed by American oilmen attempt to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. Mexican cartels and a vengeful Mi-6 agent spread a lethal virus in southern California during season three. Terrorist group Crimson Jihad (what a name—ooohhh, like blood!) kidnap the Secretary of Defense, rupture a nuclear power plant, shoot down Air Force One, and almost destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear missile in season four (damn, those guys had a plan).

In these seasons, 24’s villains were less of a vehicle for pushing politics and more focused on providing Jack Bauer strong antagonists. Playing it safe like this was a strength and weakness. Yet that changed in season five.

            Season five (2006), 24’s best, had Russian, British, and American terrorists take hostages, release nerve gas, and attempt to kill the Russian presidential family. All were violent, greedy, and blinded by anti-American ideologies. That is, until the season’s big twist. The true villain behind the attacks was the President of the USA, who believed provoking war between Russian dissidents and its military would gain America Asian oil interests.

24, once a simple thriller, moved into the realm of political commentary and succeeded wonderfully. Although it rightly condemned its villains, each was allowed to speak, to touch the deeper issue at hand. Here, 24 questioned the Bush administration at the height of the Iraq War and did so not in black-and-white terms, but in prevalent grey. It made a continual thematic point to state even hardliner patriotism can be treason. Flawed, human, characters and sharp, economic writing elevated the season to critical acclaim. It won Best Drama Series and Best Actor at the 2006 Emmys.

President Charles Logan: Yes, this dude's an asshole.

In 2007, the stakes were incredibly high for its sixth season. 24’s producers, buoyed by the response to season five’s weighty matters, decided to tackle a delicate subject: Muslim extremists operating in America. The stakes were high, but the slope was too steep.

            Obviously, 24 used Muslim terrorists in seasons two and four. The difference between those seasons and season six are paramount to condemning season six’s depictions. In season two, the terrorists worked for American oilmen for profit, not for ideological gain. They had no real political purpose, only greed, grounding their actions in a universal temptation the American viewer could accept as applying to everyone. In season four, Crimson Jihad, led by Habib Marwan (an excellent Arnold Vosloo), proclaimed the exact purpose for their attacks in a homemade video:

People of America, you wake up today to a different world. One of your own

nuclear weapons has been used against you. It will be days and weeks before

you can measure the damage we have caused. But as you count your dead,

remember why this has happened to you. You have no knowledge for the causes

of the people you strike down or the nations you conquer. You choose to meddle

in their affairs, without respect. You follow your government, unquestioningly,

toward your own slaughter. Today, you pay the price for that ignorance...Unless

you renounce your policies of imperialism and interventionist activities, this attack

will be followed by another...and another after that.

Crimson Jihad criticized the Bush regime’s foreign policy. Marwan, intelligent and well spoken, killed only when necessary, and Vosloo, so charismatic in the role, captivated the screen. Although Marwan was evil, he was not a Muslim stereotype. His religion, like the terrorists in season two, was moot. His motivations were purely political, and for much of the season, largely ignored.

Nevertheless, when his character emerged, The Council on American-Islamic Relations cautioned the show on how it portrayed Muslims. In a BBC News statement, the CAIR said: “Repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice.” Kiefer Sutherland appeared before 24’s next episode with this announcement:

Hi. My name is Kiefer Sutherland and I play counterterrorist agent Jack

Bauer on Fox’s ‘24.’ I would like to take a moment to talk to you about

something that I think is very important. Now, while terrorism is obviously

one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is

important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly

beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism.

So in watching ‘24,’ please bear that in mind. 

Yes, a nice sentiment, maybe weightless, maybe forced. Still, such intention was lost on the creative team behind the show’s sixth season. Religion—evil, evil Islam—is the only motivation of its Muslim villains.

24: Season Six has, coincidentally, six major Muslim characters. All become mired by Middle Eastern/Muslim myths. As discussed by Edward Said in his seminal work, Orientalism, the roots of Islam’s clash with the West was caused by its misconception and demonization by Western powers. Robert Irwin summarizes Orientalism as the “discourse of imperialism…[one] that constraints everything that can be written and thought in the West about the Orient and more particularly about Islam and the Arabs…The West possesses a monopoly over how the Orient may be represented…[carrying] implications about Western superiority” (3). Bernard Lewis, in From Babel to Dragomans, states “[The West is] accused of distortion, not just distortion of this or that individual theme, but a systematic, deliberate distortion conducted as a profession or, more precisely, as a conspiracy” (437). I don’t buy the conspiracy part of Lewis’ assessment, but feel rather that now ignorance has fallen over our views of the Middle East. When it comes to artistically depicting the region and its people in accurate (ie: multi-faceted) light, unfortunately we often find laziness and a reliance on outdated archetypes. 24’s Muslim depictions in season six explicitly exist in Orientalist branding. Specifically, the show depicts a ‘backward’ behavior considered abnormal to the West which inhabits these strange ‘others’ Jack Bauer must defeat.

Return for Part 3, where I’ll begin to analyze season six as it unfolds.

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.

Big, Bad Muslims: Part One—24: Season Six

James Bond. Jason Bourne. Jack Bauer. Contemporary film and television’s top spies epitomize Anglo-physical perfection: blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, toned bodies. 24’s Jack Bauer, however, is the ideological anomaly. While Bond battles international megalomaniacs and Bourne defends himself from his country’s own agents, Jack Bauer remains quintessentially hawkish. Unlike Bond, he’s unconcerned with sex or witticisms (he tells the women in his life ‘I’ll be right there’ before running off to fight terrorists and smiles maybe once per season). Unlike Bourne, he’s unapologetic in his use of violence (when he decides to hack off his daughter’s lover’s hand to defuse a bomb in season three, he doesn’t even blink). Unlike both Bond and Bourne, he often sacrifices friends, family, and coworkers for the American good (like killing his boss to stop the spread of a lethal virus). Truly, Bauer embodies post-9/11 neoconservativism: a strong America assured of itself and uncorrupted in its ‘values’. Always, Bauer battles the ‘other’, a seditious force intent on taking American lives and civil liberties. In characterizing the villains of its sixth season, the show exploits the fear of Muslim terrorists operating freely on American soil. 24 could be accused of simply embodying the Bush administration’s homeland agenda but for its reliance on Orientalist stereotypes uses harmful parody to color its Muslim characters.

To understand 24’s conservative agenda, one must grasp its hero. In a 2005 USA Today interview, the show’s producer, Howard Gordon, said Jack Bauer “taps into the public’s ‘fear-based wish fulfillment’ of having protectors…who will do whatever is necessary to save society from harm.” This usually involves torture. “‘[Bauer] is a tragic character. He doesn't get away with it clean. He’s got blood on his hands,’ Gordon says. ‘In some ways, he is a necessary evil’” (Bauder). Calling him an anti-hero undermines Jack’s political importance in the fear-mongering Bush-era in which he was born. “The disturbing appeal of Jack the Torturer reflects a wounded and frightened national psyche, a desire to lash out at those responsible for 9/11, and the frustration of a superpower unable to defeat a ragged band of terrorists” (McCormick 17). Bauer’s dramatic core, however, is similar to the Hollywood cowboys of Wayne and Eastwood. Though a government agent, Jack distrusts politicians and bureaucracy, and operates by his own moral code. Yet, after saving the day, he most always returns to government service.

"Hey, brother. Long time no see" - Jack's brother discovers family reunions aren't what they used to be.

In post Abu-Ghraib America, 24 takes great strides to prove that for whatever diplomatic laws Jack breaks, he suffers for in his personal life. Through eight seasons and a TV movie, Bauer loses a wife, coworkers, friends, and estranges his only daughter. His politics, however, remain 24’s driving force. Jim McDermott humorously dissects Jack Bauer in America. “Yes, he tortures prisoners and shoots co-workers in the head, but he’s not a bad person. He’s just caught in a bad situation” (23). Still, the show enforces his rationale: his ends justify his means. “[Jack] demonstrates what few may care to admit: in the war on terror, the conservative movement has become willing to sacrifice principle to passion and difficult moral reasoning to utility” (Dougherty 9). Jack Bauer is not “America”. He does, however, represent values 24 believes sacred, ones entrenched in American lore: self-sacrifice, results before diplomacy, and an unbending “sense” of right and wrong opposed by those too weak to do what is “right”.

In season six, 24 cherry-picks this sense of right and wrong with abandon. A New York Times column “compared 24’s focus on domestic terror threats to the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq” (Bauder). Whether Jack Bauer is a sadistic sinner or patriotic saint, in the 24 world America is unique, and its villains need to clearly wear the black hat or else its sense of right and wrong might be complicated by nagging realism.

In Part 2, I’ll examine the villains in previous seasons of 24 and how they adhere to us vs. them U.S. geo-political archetypes.

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.

Oliver Stone Speaks at Kent State University

Two weeks ago was the 43^rd anniversary of the May 4^th Kent State shootings. To celebrate, the university opened the May 4^th Visitor's Center, an interactive multimedia museum in Taylor Hall, and Friday night had PBS’ Gwen Ifill host a discussion panel about the shootings’ significance in local and national history. Events continued throughout the weekend, one of which my wife and I were fortunate enough to attend Saturday night in Cartwright Hall. Academy-award winning writer/director Oliver Stone spoke to an auditorium of five-hundred students, faculty, staff, and local residents about the importance of the shootings and his use of history in his films. It was an interesting evening, one that got me, my wife, and students talking.

            The KSU shootings took place during an on-campus student protest of Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. What happened next is well-known: riots and looting of businesses on Friday May 1^st and the arson of the ROTC building on Saturday the 2^nd. Eventually, the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others. Two of the dead were merely hurrying to class. One was an ROTC member. The shootings led to protests throughout the country and the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the dead Jeffery Miller is forever engrained in our cultural memory. Prior to the shootings, Nixon called the protestors “bums,” to which Allison Krause’s father famously retorted, “My daughter was not a bum.” Neil Young would pen “Ohio” about the massacre, and the KSU shootings provide a key sequence in Oliver Stone’s 1995 bio-drama Nixon. 

Talking to community members about the shootings will invariably give you different opinions. No one says the students “deserved it.” It was a tragedy, but many feel slighted that the protests overshadow the destruction caused to the community during that week, most of which was committed by student activist groups from around the country. Considering the Justice Department’s dismissal of a 30-year old audio-recording that purports to show the ONG’s order to shoot was based on gunfire manufactured by an on-campus FBI informant, we may never know what really happened.

Still, four kids died.

That was Oliver Stone’s point throughout the evening. What led to their deaths? How have we moved on? What did those kids die for?

Stone maintained they died in the social-civil war between “those who asked questions” and Nixon’s “moral majority.” He emphasized that he was born into an Eisenhower-Republican household and enlisted in Vietnam because he felt it was his duty to fight communists. He was told all his life by the educational and political machine they were our enemy and threatened our way of life. If you’ve seen Platoon or for that matter any of Stone’s work, you know that war changed his ideology. Even after the KSU shootings, Nixon won a landslide election in 1972. Stone said those numbers show that Nixon could lay claim to the majority, as “immoral as they might have been.” The importance of the students’ deaths was that they died during a time when our country fought among ourselves ideologically.

Who won? Well, the military industrial complex is stronger than ever, and we have more influence and control abroad. Who do you think?

Stone made sure to point out how history changes depending on whom guides cultural memory. Ronald Reagan knew that the first Gulf War might erase the soured-impact of Vietnam, and that with a new enemy to fight, the old grudges would be laid to rest. The cultural fears after 9/11 and initial enthusiasm for the Iraq War only enabled media and government agencies to propagate American exceptionalism and imperialist policies. Stone cited recent polls that show 51% of American young people feel the Vietnam War was justified. This flabbergasted him, and was one of the reasons he co-wrote and produced the Showtime documentary series The Untold History of the United States. He was appalled by what his kids were taught in schools, and hopes to change it.

During his one-on-one discussion with a JMC professor (I forget the guy’s name, oops) Stone did not want to rhapsodize about his movies. He doubts his films have made any real cultural impact. When asked which of his films he likes best, he replied he can’t pick a favorite. Each is one of his babies. Stone spoke of media bias at length, ripped Time Magazine and Walter Cronkite, and made it known Obama has continued the policies of Bush, Jr., albeit with different rhetoric. He said in his travels it has been enlightening to see how America is viewed abroad and encouraged students to get on the internet and learn to find out what foreign and domestic policies are actually doing, and to combat disinformation. “We’re dealing with some real scum,” he said, which got cheers and giggles from the crowd. He finished by repeating that the KSU shootings should always be commemorated by this campus so that we—maybe I’m going too Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young with this—teach our children well. If not, then the immoral majority will have won, and those kids will have died for nothing.

After the talk, I milled about the lobby with my wife and students. A few of my kids—ah, listen to me, calling them “my kids”—were put off by Stone’s “strong opinions.” However, most said his words inspired them to question what they are taught. In days since, many went to the Visitor’s Center and were deeply moved. They all talked about the draft board, where you can “get your number” to see if you would’ve been drafted in Vietnam. Many would have been, and they were deeply disturbed.

The question Stone has me pondering is—What is history? Is it concrete? Moldable? Without witnessing an event, will we ever know the exact details? Is history a stone thrown into a pond and can we only be sure of its impact by studying the ripples?

It was an exciting night. When I met Mr. Stone, he signed a copy of his Untold History and posed for a picture. I don’t know what I said to him, probably fan-boy rambling about how much I like his movies, but after he signed my book, he told me I seemed like a very nice young man. I’ll take that.

Barack Obama: The Politics of Promising Too Much

“Yes We Can.” You couldn’t go anywhere in the U.S. between September and November 2008 without hearing that campaign slogan, which became a chant, and eventually a catch phrase. While traveling in Pittsburgh this summer, I saw a hipster doofus, apathetic to politics of course, a conforming nonconformist, wearing a t-shirt mocking Obama, on it, “Yes, You Can’t.” Now, herein lies the inherit flaw in that mockery: yes, he can’t, because he is not a supreme dictator. He does not regulate every government policy. He does not override all branches of government. He is part of the checks and balances. For example, I once overheard a Tea Partier state, “We don’t have NASA anymore because Obama ran out of money.” Never mind the harebrained idea that somehow Obama personally funds NASA. And never mind the economic history leading to the spending cuts in the space program. There are too many factors involved in that decision to lay the blame on a single person. This holds true no matter the problem. And, truly, the American people, if they understand and support their democratic republic as they claim, can’t have it any other way. So, yes, Barack Obama can’t. And he shouldn’t have to.

            Obama, once our media darling, has become the Right Wing whipping boy for everything wrong with the United States. I concede that the Left Wing gives him too much credit, but let’s stick with a healthy dose of Right Wing crazy shall we? Obama is a radical Muslim, secret Kenyan, Malcolm X’s love child. He smokes cigarettes, plays basketball in a do-rag, and is only good at public speaking. He fucked up the economy. He wasn’t really responsible for taking out Osama bin Laden. And, he’s a shade darker than the white majority, who are perfectly fine with adapting to global economics and power and realizing they are, in fact, the minority. Okay, now we’re done with “the crazy.”

            I’m not going to detail Obama’s presidency or his policies. That’s not my issue; although I have sympathy for the man in that he inherited a country so entrenched in corporate greed, global policing, and class warfare that it will take a massive, nonpartisan movement to correct it. My issue is with the public backlash on Obama and the complete one-eighty it has taken since his election in 2008. I blame two parties: the campaign system and Obama himself.

            The presidential campaign in 2012 will only further demonstrate my point that our politicians’ media campaigns are absurd. They are worse than a high school class election. There you can at least meet the candidates face-to-face. You know who they really are, even if the election is no more than a popularity contest. And that’s all the 2012 presidential election will be, a popularity contest. Yes, there will be issues at stake. There will be "hard talk" about these issues. The candidates’ campaigns, however, will have to bow down to the media in order to continue the sensationalizing of American politics. Gotta keep those ratings up. Sell, sell, sell!

Unfortunately, this is exactly the three-ring circus in which Obama partook. Study that campaign and you’ll find more propaganda than our country has seen in a long time. The Obama posters, bumper stickers, and pop art were geared toward heaping the thrust of change onto one man’s shoulders. Obama accepted this without question. He stepped into this role and he promised too much. Yet, is he at fault? If this is what it takes to win an election in this country, why not play the game in hopes that when you secure power, you’ll stick to your guns and do what you say? Here is the tightrope on which Obama teeters, the politics of promising too much.

Again, who is to blame? Do we blame our president for saying what we wanted to hear? Or, do we blame ourselves for allowing the media firestorm to continue? At what point to do we vocally and physically oppose the popularity contests and demand actual, honest, intelligent debate? At what point do we turn off our TVs and silence the media? Peter Travers of Rolling Stone asks all of us to stop complaining about this summer’s crappy movies because, after all, we’re paying to see them and thus funding the corporate machine. Can we afford to pull the plug on how we’ve let candidates be elected? Can we afford to allow them to actually tell us the truth? Can we allow ourselves to hear that in bettering this country there are no easy answers and voting along party lines only inhibits the process? I don’t have any answers to these questions. It’s up to all of us, as citizens, to find our own. But we need to stop blaming the man we elected to fix our problems, because we allowed ourselves to be blinded by his promises of change.

Pickers Can't Be Choosers

“Am I a Christian?” No. While I agree with many of Jesus’ teachings, I don’t buy he was the Christ, the only Son of God. Aren’t we all? Don’t we each share divine power if not in body, then in mind and soul? I’m skeptical of religion, but still have a willingness to believe. Like the poster in Fox Mulder’s office, “I Want To Believe.” I believe Jesus was a political badass who challenged Jewish religious authorities by decrying the very hypocrisies freethinkers do to our churches today. It got him killed. (The running around three days later with fresh, bloodless wounds I’ll tackle in another post). I don’t have many problems with mainstream Christianity or Christians. Yet, I cannot condone the actions of groups, especially the Christian Right, when they fly in the face of their own teachings and defeat themselves with their own logic.

            Last year an openly gay judge overturned Proposition 8 in California. This summer New York passed laws allowing gays to marry. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy will soon be obsolete. Lots of conservatives, at least the ones confident enough in their opinions to blab them all over TV, these same people who’ve long attacked homosexuals, have made it known homosexuality is wrong, and letting homosexuals marry degrades the institution of marriage, and in turn, rends the very social fabric of the United States. I want to focus first why they say homosexuality is wrong, according to their biggest supporter: God.

            Using the Book of Leviticus, they quote the passage (20:13) wherein God decrees men lying with other men are an abomination and such acts punishable by death. Women lying with other women aren’t mentioned. Apparently, God likes lesbians (he is a man, right?). Also, notice homosexuals need to be killed for their crimes against the Lord. Okay, this is what the Bible says. The Christian Right quotes it correctly. What is at the heart of their argument is the Word of God. Obviously for them, he is the be-all, end-all authority. What he says flies every time, all the time. No matter what we on Earth or here in America think, no matter how times change, our word cannot supplant God’s because God’s word is law.

If that’s the case, and the Christian Right are really, as they claim, keeping God’s sacraments in the United States, then his word should be followed to the letter, no matter what “word” that may be. There’s no picking which of his words to follow. If he said it, you do it.

A webpage found at www.answersingenesis.org tells all stringent Christians how to win a debate on ethics in these cases. They claim the Word of God must be followed at all times because it is an unbreakable, unchangeable word. The words of men, however, should not be followed because they are unstable. Men make their words law and have systems set up to change those laws whenever they feel like it. Since these laws are governed by man, man decides which to keep and which to follow. He picks and chooses. According to the above website, Christians can win debates against secularists or atheists (or people with common sense) by bringing up these points. It continues with how to end all rebuttals: what’s in the Bible is rock hard because it comes straight from God; what is in man’s hands is malleable and thus, unstable, because it comes from man. Obviously, we cannot live in an unstable world of unstable laws.

            Basically this amounts to “I’m right and you’re wrong.” If that’s the case, and they follow the Word of God as closely they claim, where are the blood sacrifices of animals in their churches, also found in the Book of Leviticus? What about burnt offerings of fruit and grain? If they claim to follow the Word as they say, they better have big-ass beards because they’re not allowed to shave them. They cannot eat shellfish. They cannot eat pigs. But pork is great! Yeah, well, “That no eating pork stuff is a Jewish thing. It’s in the Old Testament.” If they’re citing Leviticus, then they better follow all of its rules or else they’re no better than those people who they claim turn God’s words into man’s laws and make them unstable and ultimately destroy them. You don’t hear the Christian Right crying for gays to be killed. No, that would be bad publicity. That would be too extreme. No, they’ll tolerate gays, but they can’t get married. Oh, and Leviticus also says hate and intolerance is a sin. It, like homosexuality, is an abomination before God. So hatred thrust toward gays by the Christian Right is precarious for them. Not only do they flout human laws of decency and compassion, they ignore God’s law. While no one may punish them for their hatred (it gets good ratings), I’m surprised the Christian Right isn’t concerned with the Big Daddy in the Sky. With all the hatred they throw about, they should know, since they study the Bible so deftly, he will damn them for eternity.

            If gays are going to hell anyway, then why be worried what they do on Earth?

            If gays degrade the institution of marriage, why allow divorce? Larry King and Hugh Hefner’s multiple marriages degrade the institution exponentially with every divorce.

            If being gay is unnatural, why is there evidence of homosexuality in the natural world, such as with bears, elephants, rats, buffalos, chickens, lions, penguins, gulls, frogs, snakes, turtles, moths, octopi, wasps, crabs, monkeys, and gorillas? Isn’t the natural world the very basis of natural concepts? If anything, it’s unnatural for a percentage of a species not to be gay.

            I’m also surprised at the Christian Right’s lack of knowledge of American history, or maybe, what history they pick and choose so well. Does this quote ring a bell?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…”

Ah, but I’m forgetting—that phrase was written by a man, and thus, unstable!