Racist or Something 24

I've never watched this show. I've never watched it because I don't care to have Fox trying to scare me with fiction when I've got all this reality going on. Reality that's almost completely divorced from this show's premise.

CNN has an article up from AP about a Muslim organization, Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is quite upset with Fox and 24 for their depiction of terrorists who, this time, happen to be Muslims. I won't bother you with the show's disclaimers about using other groups, this is a thriller show with various villainous groups trying to do, I gather, very bad things to Americans. Oddly enough, the complaint isn't that the show is sensationalist crap built on tragedy and horror for the benefit of profiteering war mongers, no, the problem is that the villains are identifiable. Keeeerrriiiiipes....

No, I'm real far from being a PC sort of guy in this kind of thing, I value people by their behavior - first their actions and then their speech - so trying to get my knickers in a wad because the villains in a piece of fiction happen to belong to a group pretty similar to ones actually dedicated to harming the US is plain stupid. Fiction about gangs tends to have Hispanics followed by Blacks as the gang members, prison fiction tends to have large minority representation, oddly enough reflective of demographics. It is pointless to turn around and tell me how peaceful a religion Islam is, there are Hispanic and Black surgeons also, so what?

If these CAIR folks are serious about this, rather than fund raising, they should be actively kicking BushCo's butt. This fear and paranoia is a direct outcome of those people. OK, Fox is a piece of work for trying to capitalize on it, but what exactly were Hill Street Blues, Homicide, et al all about? I didn't notice that the influential movie Mississippi Burning had Black KKK'ers, seemed to be a bunch of white guys. Hey, anybody notice that the Democratic Party of Oregon has a Gun Owners Caucus despite the knuckle dragging GOP'ers image of firearm owners by some "liberals." You know what, there are knuckle dragging GOP gunowners and they're fair game.

Here's the point, if you belong to a group that has some bad actors it's pretty disingenuous to act as though having them portrayed as bad actors is bigoted. If you're afraid to go to the store, it's about something a heck of a lot more insidious than a TV show, like a government based on hate and fear.

You're Going to Feel Real Stupid

if the vote you didn't cast is the deciding vote for something you actually care about. Well sure, a 1 vote margin is pretty unlikely but the fact is that those uncast ballots are the deciding votes. For twenty years the minority of eligible voters have decided how things are going to be. Maybe in a democracy most of us ought to want it. If you're here, chances are you give a damn and have already voted or will, you're not off the hook. You have friends who don't and now you've got an argument to use.