You guys know I’ve sided against the torture-philiacs on the Right. I believe that the fight to stop torture and stick to the interrogation techniques described in the Army Field Manual is one of the critical political battles of our time.
But I have a message for Hollywood: Shut the hell up and stop helping us.
Last week saw the opening of the movie Rendition. Critics lavished praise, but more sensible voices pointed out the film was preachy and poorly made. It’s not polling well on IMDB either.
Tonight, it got worse. My wife and I like to watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Correction, we used to. It’s declined dramatically in the last few years.
Tonight’s episode was a dramatic turd about doctors supervising torture. It was a preachy, shrieking, out of place piece of garbage. (Question: where was the cause to bring in the SVU cops?) The episode had legal plot holes you could drive a truck through. But plot wasn’t the point. It was just an excuse for the actors to deliver impassioned monologues. I’ve never seen a bunch of people so pleased with themselves.
If you want to preach, preach. If you want to lecture, lecture. Don’t sell us poorly-written preachy lectures as thought it were entertainment. You do discredit to the debate when you rush out movies that are poorly made and wallow in simplistic black and white morality.
Whenever I see these preachy screeds oozing out of Hollywood, I feel dirty. It’s as though by siding with them on an issue, I’ve become contaminated by their ego. And I’m not the only one. At least half of the people who support torture do so because liberal elites oppose it with such smarmy self-righteousness.
Listen up, Hollywood. Every time you put some piece of crap out there to comment an issue, you drive people to the other side. Shut the hell up until you have something useful to say.
Torture is a debate. There are millions of people in this country who honestly believe it is a good idea. You are not going to persuade them by talking to them as though they were mentally-retarded eight-year-olds. Points have to be given and conceded; arguments have to be countered and defeated. Slapping a bunch of bumper stickers together and calling it a script does not add anything to the issue.