About the picture…
To Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld:
I just figured out the solution for this whole Guantánamo image problem and the recruiting problem all at once. You need some marketing, baby. You need to go at this thing head-on. Make it your shining star.
Webcams. No, Reality TV. No, wait… The Gitmo Network!
Just show everybody real, live, uncensored audio and video of what’s going on there. You’ll pull in the coveted 25-49 age demographic and you can run military recruiting commercials every half-hour! Heck, use the subscription fees to buy some body armor or hire some linguists. Pay-per-view, baby!
After all, we’re not torturing people, right? Sure, feces and urine and people chained to walls and sonic assaults and temperature extremes and sleep deprivation aren’t exactly family TV, but it’s no worse than the weeklong network CSI:Law&Order-fest, basic cable autopsy shows, HBO’s Oz, and a Wes Craven flick. (You’ve got a V-chip in your TV, you can block the kids out.)
You’ll show the liberals how wonderful the food is and humanely the detainees are being treated. Picture it — a cool logo, sound effects, then the tag line blares, “Gitmo TV: 24-hundred hours a day, zero hours of Nazi atrocities!” We’ll run a crawl along the bottom of the screen with news of the camp and fun facts. “GTV: Hamad al-Hussein (no relation) received a letter from family today. They still would like to know why he’s there… Curious note: al-Hussein shares a birthday with George W. Bush, July 6, 1946… Nobody at Gitmo was forced to work in heavy forced labor today…” Those who compared it to “gulags” would have to eat their words.
But you’d also get killer ratings in the red states! Proud patriotic conservative Americans would get to enjoy the fear in the eyes of “one of them guys that cut the head off Nick Berg!” People who lost a loved one in the war could have the satisfaction of seeing one of the enemy shivering in the fetal position next to a pile of his own hair. Put that “GTV” logo on the field of an American flag and you’ll have that sticker on every pickup truck in Hicksville, Pigsknuckle, and Butcher’s Holler.
This is your way out of this mess, Mr. Rumsfeld. Did you see how Trading Spaces, a little niche show about fixing up a room, spawned a whole slew of makeover shows with top ten ratings. Or those “Texas Hold’em Poker” shows. One succeeds and it spawns the imitators, and soon you’re riding a cultural wave.
Well, I know you’re busy, sir, but think about it. If everything is going as well at Guantánamo as you say it is, there’s no reason not to let 24-hour-a-day cameras in, is there? It would prove your statements, disprove your critics, and earn you some extra cash, more respect, and a new crop of fresh young recruits striving to get on the reality show.
…of course I know that’s a picture from Abu Ghraib and not Guantánamo. I’m not sophisticated enough to distinguish between acceptable levels of torture. I think torturing people is a very unChristian thing to do, so as a Positive Christian Atheist, I denounce torture in all forms.
