Online Journal Editors' Blog

The Bush administration has so badly fumbled their mandate that one of their greatest propaganda weapons has turned against them. The Fox television series "24" has shifted from being the most unapologetically gung-ho entertainment voices for Bush's anti-war/police state "war on terrorism" to nihilistic, angry, and decidedly anti-Bush fare.

The series now features an openly corrupt, murdering US president who is spineless, ignorant and evil, and guided by a cadre of criminal advisors, one of whom is a transparently obvious Dick Cheney clone, another a Karl Rove-type advisor, and scores of Scott McClellans, etc. Anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, has been "betrayed" from within his own intelligence community. The US government, particularly the intelligence-military apparatus, is a snake pit, deeply corrupt and crawling with double and triple crossing untrustworthies blowing things up, and ordering murders of their own people, over cell phones.

And in this season's "shocking" story line, a former president (an African-American Democrat) has been murdered by the current (Republican) Bush-type president, whose evil operatives are engaged in an elaborate cover-up. Middle Eastern "terrorists" have already blown up part of Los Angeles, but they are no longer the focus. Now it's back to peace-hating Russian "terrorists" -- the kind of predictable "Die Hard", "La Femme Nikita" type villains that were popular during Clinton-era Hollywood.

There is no better way to read the American psyche than through its entertainment garbage. That being the case, America is outraged at the Bush administration.