In his January 30 syndicated column, Cal Thomas attacked “ideologically decrepit” Iraq war protesters and claimed: “Unlike Vietnam, the Islamofascists won’t leave us alone if we leave Iraq before stability is established.” Discussing the possible consequences of exiting Iraq, Thomas referenced Fox Broadcasting’s TV series 24: “Watch the TV drama ‘24′ for what could be our prophetic and imminent future with a nuclear device exploding in major cities. Having concluded we don’t have the stomach to fight them on their turf, they might understandably deduce we are even less willing to fight them on ours.”
Thomas is not the first conservative to use 24 to forecast a nuclear attack on the United States. On the January 16 edition of Fox News’ The Big Story — airing a day after the premiere of 24’s sixth season, in which “terrorists detonate a mini nuclear bomb in downtown Los Angeles” — host John Gibson stated: “Well, certainly may be fiction for now. But 24’s Jack Bauer has it right. People need to wake up to the possibility of nuclear attack.” Gibson later asked: “Is 24’s faux suitcase nuke bomb a real wake-up call for America? Should we take this as an early warning sign that something like this could happen here?”
This has been going on for a while. In September, Laura Ingraham justified torture techniques by pointing to the show. Around the same time, Glenn Beck did the same thing. Two weeks ago, Fox News ran a segment quoting a private investigator using 24 to justify the use of racial profiling when searching for terror suspects: “The fact of the matter is — I mean, you don’t watch 24 on Fox TV? They’re out there. They’re out there. There are cells out there. We have to protect ourselves against it, as Americans.”
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