A timely post from http://www.vdare.com about the TV show "Designated Survivor." This follows this post about the "Mothers of the Movement." This follows this post about rap songs referencing Donald Trump.
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ABC’s Designated Survivor Portrays Police as Violent Islamophobic Killers

By Debbie Schlussel

Tonight’s episode of ABC’s “Designated Survivor” portrays police as violent attackers and killers of Muslims after a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. This false portrayal is despite the fact that neither police nor other Americans have attacked Muslims during 15 years of massive Muslim terrorist attacks and mass murders of Americans.
Last week, I watched the premiere of the highly-hyped new show, starring Kiefer Sutherland as a lowly cabinet secretary who becomes President when the President, the rest of his cabinet, and the entire Congress are killed in a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol during the State of the Union address. While the show got off to a great start, it became clear that Sutherland, as President Kirkman, is a weak, standard-issue liberal. And the generals are second-guessed as “war-mongers” who want to attack Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. Last week, I predicted on Twitter that there is NO WAY that the terrorists who attacked the Capitol will turn out to be Muslims, as Hollywood continues its endless pretzel-like contortions away from reality. (After all, Muslims would NEVER EVER attack America or the U.S. Capitol, right? See 9/11 and Flight 93 for fact-checking.)
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Now, longtime Wall Street Journal editorial board member and TV critic Dorothy Rabinowitz notes this regarding tonight’s episode:

The problem comes in the second episode, along with a suddenly increased capacity to resist everything about “Designated Survivor.” Here we come up against the show’s message, or more precisely its gross political tendentiousness: its vision of a vicious American nation, in the aftermath of the attack, hunting down its Muslim citizens; its pictures of police racing around Dearborn, Mich., dragging Muslims out of their homes, beating a teenager to death, all at the behest of the Michigan governor.
Not surprisingly, President Kirkman stands firmly against this brown-shirt brutality, a product of fevered writerly imaginations particularly loathsome to behold given the facts of history—in particular the actual terror attacks of 9/11, after which, through all their fear and rage, Americans comported themselves with the utmost dignity.

What’s even more laughable and devoid of any resemblance to reality is that the episode shows the “Michigan Republican Governor” instructing citizens to attack Muslims in Dearbornistan. Reality check: Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder is rabidly pro-Muslim, a butt-snorkeler of openly declared jihadists, refuses to specifically condemn Hezbollah (which murdered several hundred Americans) and HAMAS, and has opened an office to spend tax money to bring more Muslim “refugees” to that State (while at the same time publicly pretending he wants better vetting). He claims they will save Michigan’s economy and we “need” more of them here. (WE. DO. NOT.) On top of that, Michigan’s next likely Republican Governor, Attorney General Bill Schuette (a RINO cross-dressing as a conservative) held a huge fundraiser with Dearbornistan’s Hezbollah Muslims and won’t answer questions about it. This is the reality. ABC shows you the bullcrap.
(And as I’ve noted on this site, this isn’t the only ABC show currently on the schedule that bends over backward to portray Americans as rabid anti-Muslim bigots and terrorists as anything but Muslim. See “Quantico.”)
While I do not advocate wholesale, unprovoked violence against Muslims, they have no problem–as indicated by poll after poll–supporting wholesale, unprovoked violence against us. Terrorist attacks–and we’ve had many–are a different story. Those should have provoked something in Americans–particularly law enforcement, but never have because we are asleep, politically correct, and see ourselves as “humane” to the point of elevating and groveling to those who’d destroy us. And that’s why the Muslim attacks on us on our own soil have escalated in speed, especially in the last year or so. (That’s not to mention that our soldiers in the Middle East hand out candy and build roads for those who blow them up. And you pay for that.)
During World War II, German-Americans were loyal and quiet because they knew what would happen to them if they were not. There were very few Americans of German descent who openly supported or were involved in the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. They feared the consequences.
In contrast, today’s Muslims in America do not fear anything. In fact, they are laughing at us all the way to the next terrorist attack and the courthouse with their ACLU lawyers. Americans didn’t attack Muslim en masse after 9/11. Not after the Shoe Bomber. Not after the failed attempt on Times Square. Not after the Fort Hood Massacre or the San Bernardino Massacre or the Orlando Massacre. Not after Ahmad Khan Rahami’s bombs in New York and New Jersey and his Muslim co-religionist Dahir Adan’s stabbings in a Minnesota Mall. Not after Arcan Cetin’s murders of five in Washington State at Macy’s. (The only uprisings we see in America are those by the Black Lives Matter terrorists who loot, destroy, and murder cops, but the anti-Muslim attackers on tonight’s “Designated Survivor” are exclusively White, I’m told.) And American law enforcement never rounded up Muslims, even after the 9/11 attacks.
Unlike the portrayal in tonight’s propaganda episode of “Designated Survivor,” the attacks keep coming, but Americans haven’t risen up against Muslims. And federal agents and local police have done little (other than to bend over for Muslims).
Unlike what ABC’s propaganda prime time schedule tells you, we are actually a castrated, impotent country without the will to survive or do anything but just sit there and hold dumb, pointless candlelight vigils and war ribbons when the attacks happen.
Thank you, Mohammed. May I have another?
***
One last thing on this: as noted in my Tweet above, Kal Penn, a real-life Obama aide and mega-mucho-Islamopanderer co-stars on this. There is no way he would ever again be on a show where Muslims are the terrorists (he was briefly on “24” with Sutherland, but even there, the Muslims ultimately were terrorists for some White guys pulling their strings).

Homeland: A Show For Liberals Who Root for Islamic Terrorists, Blame America First; Obama Loves It

A very interesting post from  www.DebbieSchlussel.com about the TV show "Homeland." This follows this post about Che Guevara.  This follows this post about some of the music that was poplular during 2011. This follows THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!




Homeland: A Show For Liberals Who Root for Islamic Terrorists, Blame America First; Obama Loves It

By Debbie Schlussel



Last week, the Showtime series, “Homeland,” cleaned up at the Emmy Awards. And, tonight, its second season debuts. A few weeks ago, I bought the DVD for the first season and binge-watched the entire thing. While the show is very well done and suspenseful, it’s a show written and produced by liberals who blame America for Islamic terrorism and who tend to root for–and definitely sympathize with–the Islamic terrorists. The people behind the show said as much, last week, in promoting the show’s second season. And it’s no coincidence that this is Barack Obama’s favorite show.


For those not familiar with “Homeland,” it’s based on a TV series by Israeli liberals in which a suspected terrorist is among Israeli soldiers returning home from a stint as prisoners of war in Syria. One or more of them has been turned, according to intelligence. And so it goes with Homeland. CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) gets a tip from an informant in Iraq who is about to be put to death because she cannot save him. The tip is that an American soldier in captivity there has been turned into a terrorist. She forgets about this, until months later, Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis) is found after being held hostage for eight years. Mathison believes he’s the terrorist, but no one believes her. And she’s secretly hiding that she is bipolar and on medication surreptitiously given to her by her sister, who is a doctor. (Oh, and she’s a desperate, lonely woman who cannot keep her pants on, especially with the people she most shouldn’t sleep with, such as people she suspects are Islamic terrorists.) We learn by the third episode that her suspicion was correct and that Brody has converted to Islam and is secretly praying in his garage, so his family won’t find out.


Given this storyline, you’d think I would like this, right? Well, while the story is entertaining and enjoyable, the back story is not. That’s because thread running through the first season of Homeland is that the sole reason Brody turned to Islam and terrorism against America is that the Vice President–who is running the CIA and the drones operations–is an evil creep who deliberately blew up over 80 “innocent” Islamic kids at a school, including the son of a terrorist, whom Brody was teaching English (and seems to love more than his own son back in America). Yup, it’s the usual “it’s all America’s fault they hate us” crap. They also deliberately made sure that audiences were primed to root for the Marine-turned-secret-terrorist to blow up the Vice President and many other top American officials with a suicide vest and made them angry when he wimped out after the wires accidentally disconnected. (I must mention that CIA agent Mathison’s handler is the real-life anti-Israel, self-hating Jew Mandy Patinkin, who openly supports boycotting Israel and then makes money on the side singing Jewish songs to old Jews who don’t know better, at Jewish community centers across North America. That’s another reason I don’t want to like this show, though his real-life views on Israel accurately mirror the real-life anti-Israel vehemence at the CIA.)



If a good deal of this sounds familiar, that’s because Howard Gordon, the far leftist who co-executive produced “24″ is at the helm of “Homeland.” He’s the one who put the pronouncements against torture and other liberal memes into “24,” especially toward the end of the show’s run. And Gordon and star Lewis (who plays Brody) want to make sure you know that. In fact, they want us to know that Brody’s vest would have exploded, but instead, they wanted to explore the “love story” and show us how a CIA agent can still love a man she knows is an Islamic terrorist. And, despite the fact that Brody is a terrorist who tried to detonate a vest and blow up the Vice President of the United States, USA Today asks, “he’s Muslim, but is he a terrorist?” and instructs us that he’s merely “a quiet villain,” which means what . . . kinder, softer Bin Laden soldier?



It gets even more barf-inducing. Israeli executive producer Gideon Raff:



I was very intrigued by the relationship between Carrie and Brody, and I didn’t want that to go away yet. . . . Knowing that he’s a terrorist and still being able to love the character is something that’s weird and bizarre and very interesting to explore as an audience.



Huh? Stupid women and the terrorists who bleep them?



Executive producer Howard Gordon wants us to know that the terrorist is not such a bad guy. He doesn’t “really” want to do it, and he’s not evil.” ‘Cuz, hey, trying to blow up the Veep is not “black and white or good or evil.”



He’s not an acolyte; he does it begrudgingly. It’s not as simple as black and white or good and evil.



See, terrorists aren’t that bad. Hmmm, somewhere near Fort Hood, a defense lawyer is thinking, “Quick! Get Howard Gordon a place on the Nidal Malik Hasan jury.”



And Damien Lewis, the terrorist himself, wants you to know that Muslims are good guys.



My initial instinct was to resist it. I said, ‘If we were just having a U.S. Marine go find Allah and then become a violent jihadist I think it’s irresponsible. Really? All Muslims want to blow us up? And there are enough dumb people out there who believe that already.



Yeah, ‘cuz a member of the American military who’s a Muslim would NEVER EVER do that, right? Quick, book this moron on the Hasan jury, too.



Gee, and you wonder why this is the favorite show of the highest-ranking Islamo-pandering terrorist-lover in America:



Even President Obama has called Homeland his favorite show, describing to Lewis at a White House dinner last spring how he’s watched episodes on Saturday afternoons while the first lady and their daughter played tennis.



“I have a tremendous sense of gratitude,” Patinkin said the morning after the Emmy sweep. “For the show to be so embraced, it’s like raising a child and seeing the world love your loved one.”



By the way, Claire Danes wants to make sure we know that Americans are just paranoid wackos about Islam.



We feel vulnerable for the first time, and that creates an incredible anxiety and sometimes even paranoia.



We see Muslims all over the world attacking our embassies and murdering our officials. They blow up buildings with planes and murder 3,000 Americans. And they shoot up military bases. But we’re making a big deal out of nothing. We’re paranoid! Right?



Gee, Claire Danes and the cast of Homeland, thanks for the tip.



If you want to see a much better Showtime series on Islamic terrorists infiltrating America, rent Sleeper Cell: Season One and Sleeper Cell – American Terror: Season Two (And see my posts on that series, here and here.)



Get Yours . . .

24 - Jack Bauer?

Big hat tip to

1/12/2009
JACK BAUER IN A POST BUSH WORLD
CATEGORY: "24"
This article originally appears in The American Thinker
After a nearly two year sabbatical, the series 24 has returned – much to the delight of the political class in America which seems to have made the long-running drama a litmus test of where one stands on issues relating to war, to executive power, and to the role of the United States in a dangerous and unpredictable world.
Indeed, while conservatives have claimed the show as their own since the series debuted shortly after the 9/11 attacks and embraced Jack Bauer as an authentic American hero, liberals have also admitted to watching the show and deriving satisfaction from the action-packed portrayal of America at war with terrorism. For the left, however, the criticism about methods employed by Bauer to glean information from terrorists as well as questions about the exercise of executive power by the president have usually accompanied their professions of devotion to the series.
But what attracted most of us to 24 at the beginning was the moral certitude exhibited by Bauer. The black and white, good and evil portrayal of the war was lauded by the right and virulently criticized by the left even while they watched the exploits of Bauer along with the rest of us. The point of view taken by the show was intellectually and emotionally satisfying; that decisions made by the hero, which found an echo in actions taken by our government over the years, were portrayed as necessary if not morally correct and that the tactics employed by Bauer and the executive branch to safeguard America were ultimately proven to be justified by events. It is a slant that has sparked debate and criticism on the left even as they were as mesmerized by the plot twists, the high end production values, and the character of Jack Bauer himself.
This was what originally cheered conservatives about the series; the means used by Bauer and the government to get information and stave off disaster were legitimized by the fact that the circumstances were so dire. The ticking clock, the potential for mass murder, and the harrowing prospect of unimaginable destruction all combined to give Jack a “Get Out of This Moral Conundrum Free” pass when he would use unconstitutional methods to extract information from Americans and foreigners alike. No angst-ridden soliloquies by Bauer over whether what he was doing was right were heard in the first 5 seasons of the show. Jack’s sense of duty, patriotism, and a fanatical desire to win, made any such attempt to view the inner conflict within Bauer over what he was becoming a superfulous exercise. He simply did what he had to do to prevail and save America from the terrorists.
But something began to change on the show during the last two seasons when the series reflected the changing attitudes of America herself toward the war against terrorism, the Bush Administration, and the use of torture on detainees in our custody. And it was the development of the character of Jack Bauer that pointed the way to a much more nuanced, troubled, and ultimately self-loathing hero who began to hate himself and the men who were ordering him to violate the law, more often for self-serving reasons than because the country was in peril.
This descent into darkness was precipitated by the loss of virtually all of his family, friends and colleagues over the years to various gruesome deaths until, having been forced to wade through rivers of blood and subsume any moral uncertainty he might have about what he was doing, Bauer began to pull away from the everyday, sane, world he inhabited the first few seasons. He morphed into something of an avenging angel who killed in order to mete out his own brand of rough justice as well as to achieve ultimate victory over the villains. His capture, torture, and two year incarceration by the Chinese (revenge for being wrongfully blamed for a Chinese official’s death) hastened and exasperated these feelings of “otherness” that drove Bauer to the edge. He became a blunt instrument employed by evil men to protect them from blowback resulting from their own evil designs.
Finally, in last year’s much criticized season, Bauer began to question his methods for the first time, having been forced to endure torture himself at the hands of the Chinese. By this time, any extra-constitutional action he took was to satisfy his own personal agenda and not exclusively out of patriotic devotion or a heightened sense of duty.
Perhaps no other television series in history has sparked such serious debate about these issues as well as America’s role in the world and our ability to be both a force for both good and evil. Serious forums involving intellectuals and constitutional experts have convened to discuss the implications of what Bauer does in order to succeed and defeat the terrorists threatening America. Numerous articles in newsmagazines from Newsweek, to The New Republic have been written about Bauer discussing his impact on our culture and politics.
One such article by Jane Mayer appeared in The New Yorker last year where the politics of Joel Surnow, one of the creators of the show, were examined and the issue of torture was highlighted by describing a meeting on the set of the show between interrogation professionals and the cast and crew.
Jack Bauer may be the first fictional character ever to be accused of inspiring real life war crimes. This charge was not made by some obscure left wing blogger but by U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with several senior FBI and CIA agents who have conducted thousands of interrogations in their careers. Their verdict was simple and straightforward; the torture scenes in the show were affecting the way that cadets at West Point as well as troops in the field were approaching the interrogation of prisoners.
Finnegan said that he’d like to see a show “where torture backfired.” All the experts agreed that torture, even when used in the show’s “ticking bomb” context, would never work. They pointed out that the fanatics, knowing that the bomb would go off soon, would simply hold out, secure in the knowledge that their suffering couldn’t last much longer.
They also pointed out that terrorist prisoners actually looked forward to torture as the first step towards martyrdom. An interrogation professional would never use it and would, instead, take the opposite tack of trying to build a relationship with the prisoner, drawing him out gradually by gaining his trust. Besides, the “ticking bomb” scenario itself was totally unrealistic and would never happen in the real world.
It is a dubious proposition that a fictional TV character would cause our soldiers to forget their training and their upbringing just to imitate Jack Bauer. The evidence is purely anecdotal, presented by people with an obvious agenda. But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that they felt compelled to speak out against Bauer’s almost casual approach to violating the law and their concern that people get the wrong idea about the best way to interrogate prisoners.
The profile of series producer and co-creator Joel Surnow is a fascinating glimpse into the reasons why the show was such a success. An unabashed conservative, Surnow’s fingerprints on the series were obvious the first 5 seasons the show was on the air.
An example of Surnow’s influence is this telling exchange in season 4 between Bauer and the ruthless, fanatical Muslim terrorist Habib Marwan who has targeted a cruise missile to hit somewhere in America and Bauer, having captured him, questions him in order to discover where the missile is headed:

Jack: You and I both know all I want to do right now is kill you. But I have my orders. You win. I’ve been instructed to ask you what you want.
Marwan: What I want is already happening.
Jack: The death and destruction is a means to an end, Why don’t we just skip to the end?
Marwan: To the end?
Jack: Everything you did today you did for a reason, for your people. What do you want to change?
Marwan: I have no desire to have a political discussion with you..
Jack: You tell me where the missile is headed, you help me stop it and I’ll guarantee you’ll talk to the President. Believe me, he’ll have no choice but to listen. You have a chance to get what you want.
Marwan: I already have agent Bauer. After this day, elected officials and the American people will know that they can’t intervene in our lives, in our countries with impunity. Besides, your President sees me in only one dimension – evil.
Jack: As you see us?
Marwan: Yes…and vulnerable.

This might be termed the classic conservative position with regards to our enemies as well as a subtle critique of the liberal point of view about how to fight the war. The implaccable terrorist who seeks only death for his enemies speaks in a language not understood by those who want to ask him what he wants, what his grievances are.
Contrast that exchange with this summary I made of Jack’s conversation with the former Secretary of Defense and father to the love of his life Audrey Heller at the end of last season who was so terrorized by the Chinese while in their custody that she has become catatonic. (The exchange occurs in the last 10 minutes of the finale):

Heller is at his home talking on the phone when he hears the door open. He knows right away who it is. It’s Jack, who in one of the most obvious breaks in the real-time continuum in the show’s history (how did Jack get from the shore to the Secretary’s house so quickly on foot), has come for Audrey.
He’s not going to get her. But Jack lets Heller have it with both barrels. He’s just seen his father die and felt nothing. He blames Heller and people like him for what he has become: “The only thing I have ever done is what you and people like you have asked of me,” which is as telling a statement about who Jack Bauer really is that has ever been uttered on the show. Jack is a creature of those who created him. And in order to do as they have asked through the years, he has become what he most hates.
Heller tries to fob him off with platitudes about what the country owes him. Jack’s having none of it. “I’m not interested in what you think the country owes me. I want my life back.”
That last line was delivered almost plaintively by Jack. He wants to be normal again. He wants to live in a sane world. He warns Heller not to send anyone after him, that he’s “very good at disappearing” and “pretty good at killing, too.”
But Heller is brutal. “You’ll get back into the game,” and Audrey will suffer for it.
It is then that Jack realizes that Heller is right, that he is, in fact, cursed. Anyone who comes in contact with him is doomed.Gone is the certainty that Bauer is in the right and fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. This is a Jack Bauer who now sees that only death will release him from the demons that haunt him—a consequence of his using brutal means to achieve his ends. In a very real way, Bauer’s journey from duty-bound patriot to this troubled, torn, and cyncial soldier can be traced to the altered perceptions of the American people and their loss of faith in our efforts in Iraq, the president, and America’s mission to bring freedom to the world.

You may recall that it was the summer of 2005 when sectarian bloodletting rose to tragic heights in Iraq, turning a majority of citizens against the war. And the federal response to hurricane Katrina proved to sour most Americans on the Bush Administration. It is no accident that the following year on the show, with a terrorist threat to unleash chemical weapons on several American cities in the offing, we discover that it is the president himself who is in on the plot while Bauer, having left government service, is drawn back in for personal reasons – the death of his friends at the hands of the plotters. The killing of one of those friends—the ex-president whose life he saved from assassins in the show’s first season – drove him to execute his murderers in cold blood. Even Bauer’s few remaining friends were shocked and at the end, tried to save him from his own dark impulses – all to no avail.
This was not the Jack Bauer the audience had come to know and love. Nor was the traitorous president, seeking to gaurantee the flow of oil to America, the kind of white-hat chief executive we had become used to. The cynicism of the show seemed to match the growing sense of unease and dissatisfaction in the country with the direction of the war and the Bush Administration.
Then last season, with Bauer fighting not only terrorists but his turncoat father and brother (ultimately watching both of them die), the personal became the political. While the show was rightly criticized at mid-season for losing focus, Bauer’s fall into a deep pit of anger and hopelessness as well as his sense that he was betrayed by higher ups set the stage for this year’s incarnation of the series.
Judging by the prequel to the season that aired in November – the 2 hour movie Redemption - Jack’s past will indeed come back to haunt him this upcoming season as he will be forced to confront his inner furies as well as his past actions. No matter how the plot plays out, this will be a much different Jack Bauer than the one we met 7 years ago. It can hardly be otherwise. We are a much different country than we were then. We are sobered by our experience in Iraq that while apparently winding down to a successful conclusion is nevertheless seen by a majority of Americans as an effort we should never have undertaken in the first place and not worth the cost in blood and treasure. We have less faith in government, more suspicion of what it does in our name. And the belief that we must bring freedom and democracy to the dark places of the world has taken a hit as well.
In short, the native optimism that has made us such an exceptional people has been shaken. It shouldn’t surprise us that this should be reflected in the Jack Bauer character. Television, if nothing else, tends to reflect trends rather than create or lead them. In this respect, season 7 of 24 will no doubt mirror the mood of the country in the post-Bush era; a determined effort to take a respite from history and the last 8 tumultuous years here and abroad. This yearning for “change” resulted in an historic election where the people rejected what they saw – rightly or wrongly – as more of the same and elevated to power someone with very different ideas than Jack Bauer started out with about how to fight the terrorists.
Many conservatives will probably scoff at the Jack Bauer who will emerge this year. But Bauer remains perhaps the most fascinating single character on television and watching him as he tries to redeem himself in his own eyes will no doubt prove to be “must see” TV.
UPDATE
Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers and those of you from other blogs!
As you may know, voting for the Weblog Awards is drawing to a close. If you feel so inclined, please follow the link and vote for me in the “Best Conservative Blog” category. Your support is appreciated.
By: Rick Moran at 4:44 am