Larison sighs:
For quite a while I have raised objections to trying to read specific political messages into film and TV, and more generally I have always been skeptical of the sub-set of conservative arguments dedicated to appropriating elements of pop culture. On the whole, I think the exercise is mostly futile, and to the extent that these assessments of pop culture products are at alll accurate they tend to dissuade conservatives from their own non-kitschy cultural production….it causes conservatives to start to define what makes a film or television show “conservative” largely by how much it is loathed or criticized by their opponents, such that 24 receives embarrassing praise when it depicts a near-omnicompetent security state that breaks the law at will so long as the targets of its violence and lawlessness are terrorists.
The Dish 