Jeffrey Goldberg posts an email from the Jane Mayer:
I thought the season opener of 24 was pretty strong, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. According to this report, the show lost a fifth, rather than a third, of its audience from last season, but there were other factors at play — the ratings were “better than you might think” according to E! Online. As far as the “zeitgeist,” I wonder what Mayer makes of the incredible box office success of The Dark Night, the right-wing fantasy that became the second highest-grossing movie of all time and had the Batman dropping guys off buildings to make them talk. How about a Stephen Walt-like thought experiment. Imagine that Jane Mayer was brought on to help write 24. Imagine that this new season of featured an “honest debate” about torture where Bauer’s critics were, as Mayer would have them, the heroes. These heroes don’t risk their lives, but their careers, and they do it not to keep America safe, but to stand up and say ‘we’re better than this.’ What do you suppose the ratings for that show would be?
