Ticks and Chicks

[Thomas_Antje]

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070213/edtwo13.art.htm

Ticks and Chicks

Confused.

In the hit TV show 24, torture almost always works. As a bomb goes tick-tick-tick, agent Jack Bauer plunges a knife into a terrorist's shoulder to extract information that will stop the imminent explosion.

In real life, ticking-bomb scenarios like this almost never occur, and torture rarely works. Suspects will make up anything to stop the pain or humiliation. And torture often gets out of hand; photos of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq caused incalculable damage to America's image.

Now it turns out that some military officials are concerned about U.S. interrogators confusing fiction with reality. In a bizarre testament to the influence of pop culture, the top commander of West Point and three top interrogators met last year with the producers of 24 to try to get them to quit showing torture in such a flattering light. Their argument, according to an account in The New Yorker, was that TV torture was affecting interrogators' training and attitudes.

Here's a suggestion: If there's a problem with U.S. interrogators, the way to stop it is not by rewriting a TV show but through training, supervision and punishment. The fact no one above the level of staff sergeant was convicted for the Abu Ghraib abuses, for example, sent a much stronger message about tolerance of torture than a TV show.

Redeemed.

Back in 2003, when President Bush was riding high in the polls and the Iraq war was imminent, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines told a London audience that the band was "ashamed" Bush was from their home state of Texas. Maines' comment enraged many of the group's fans (that she said it overseas further offended sensibilities) and triggered angry boycotts.

The Chicks paid a price commercially for mixing politics with performance, but they never recanted. On Sunday, they won five Grammy awards, propelled by a song with the defiant lyrics: "I'm not ready to make nice; I'm not ready to back down."

Whether the music industry professionals who awarded the Grammys were making a statement beyond artistic merit is hard to ascertain. What is clear, however, is how the trajectory of the Chicks' comeback mirrors the rise in anti-war sentiment. That sentiment has gone mainstream and is reflected even in once unquestioningly pro-war country music. Last year's Darryl Worley song I Just Came Back (From a War) refers to "a land where our brothers are dying for others who don't even care any more."

If Bush is worried about losing the country on Iraq, the vibes from the music world ought to be as concerning as the latest polls.