…Not that I tend to have random thoughts about torture, you understand. But it just occurred to me that last night, during an episode of the riveting Fox show ?24,? the hero (Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland) was shown torturing the soon-to-be-ex-husband of his paramour, because the man was listed as the owner of a building from which terrorists were seeking to induce nuclear-plant meltdowns. During the same episode, another of the heroes (Tony Almeda, the disgraced but well-meaning former director of the Counter-Terrorism Unit) all-but-tortures a Turkish woman who is a co-conspirator in the plot.

Previous episodes have also featured the blunt use of physical force to obtain information, sometimes used on suspects who turned out to be completely innocent. Other shows also contained frank, matter-of-fact uses of violence or threats of violence to obtain information or confessions, including the old standby ?NYPD Blue.?

My point is this: rarely do the fictional perpetrators of such activity get punished. Usually, they are heroic figures who are praised for results. So I draw two conclusions. First, the viewing public may be predisposed to believe that extreme circumstances call for extreme measures, no matter what the official policy is or what they would admit explicitly. Second, why aren?t critics of Iraq war blaming Hollywood for creating a permissive climate for torture? They preposterously suggest that a White House memo seen by only a few help set the stage for abuses of Iraqis, but the audience for ?24? and ?NYPD Blue? and the like is far greater.