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Today I responded to Alex Berenson, novelist and sometimes writer of the television series “24”. I sent a response to his article “The Writer’s Room at “24” which appears in today’s Week In Review section of the New York Times. Here is a link to the article. Should you wish to respond to him – here is a link to page to contact Mr. Berenson. Click on the link that says “send an email to Alex Berenson.
Here is my response to Mr. Berenson:
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Dear Mr. Berenson,
I am appalled but unsurprised at your blithe article, The Writer’s Room at “24” , which occupies major real estate in the Week In Review section of today’s New York Times.
Although I am unsurprised to hear that the writers of “24” are a scotch drinking, cigar smoking, Maserati driving group of men in their 40’s and 50’s (according to the cliché grande” in your article), I will take issue with only one thing - the most important statement in your piece. It is this paragraph: “This real-time approach is also the reason that Jack so often resorts to torture. He doesn’t have time to develop a rapport with the terrorists he captures. He has to break them immediately.”
Torture is very effective at “breaking people”; people talk all the time when they are tortured – it is not very effective at eliciting accurate information and seldom does and certainly not immediately. Regardless of the “Ticking TV Show Scenario” or any other of the sanctimoniously violent bedtime stories that the writers of “24” have invented, the reason that Jack Bauer so often resorts to torture is ratings, which have been achieved at the expense of the facts and the larger truth. Torture is ineffective at eliciting accurate information – a fact which the Dean of West Point, General Finnegan, and a group of professional military interrogators unsuccessfully tried to communicate to the writers and producers of “24” when they met with them in November of 2006.
The unfortunate, non-artistic problem with your contention that “like most of life, “24” is best served unironically, at full speed ahead” is the fact that “24” has had a huge and morally corrosive effect on American opinion about torture and American actions in the use of torture. That is not true of “every television show”, but it is true of “24”.
“Spitball” that.
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Fascinating 
