And Now : Waterboarding on TV For Charity !

by Fred Miller | April 24, 2009 at 10:50 pm

275 views | 14 Recommendations | 6 comments

By now we all know that the fine lines between TV News, Reality shows and Viral videos are getting blurred faster than we can follow. Nothing new, really; Hard Copy is an early example of a Tabloid show 'gone good' by cutting out the Scandals and Rumors they used to challenge 'A Current Affair' with. For every 'Outrageous Video' show on a lesser network there is now a thinly-disguised CNN-fueled 'Not Just The News'. Infomercial loops like 'Girls Gone Wild' proved that commercials can fill an hour and generate higher viewership based mainly on curiosity. Even TMZ readily jumps from exchanging jabs with Octomom to complimenting Texas Preacher Joel Osteen's wife, Victoria. The Slumdog Millionaire Dad's encounter with British Papparzzi turned out to be a whopper of a story for the News of the World publication, despite the backlash from the stars of the movie and Indians in general.

So now, line up MSNBC along with News Corp, Channel 4 and the like because this time they seem to be headed all the way in that direction. A proposed stunt masked as Current News reporting uses the latest buzzwords of 'Waterboarding' and 'Torture' to double tag-team Keith Olbermann with Fox News'
Sean Hannity against the sensibilities of viewers like us. Reality TV now takes on the News, but who will win remains to be seen......

Jason Linkins of The Huffington Post reported on April 22 that actor Charles Grodin offered up his usual dose of guest sarcasm, this time aimed at Fox News host Sean Hannity, during which the two reached this somewhat 'golden moment' in Television :

GRODIN: You're for torture.
HANNITY: I am for enhanced interrogation.

GRODIN: You don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?

HANNITY: No, but Ollie North has.

GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded? We can waterboard you?

HANNITY: Sure.

GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?

HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.

Sensing an opportunity to buzz up the current unsealing of CIA documents regarding the use of Torture in American prisons, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann announced on Thursday that he is willing to pay $1,000 to charity for every second that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity undergoes waterboarding torture. Confident in his standing (somewhere) that he is above the lowest of the low, Olbermann presented his 'outrage' at the proposed Hannity stunt for Charity, while simultaneously ensuring his network would also benefit from the massive airplay Fox News could receive.

"What a breakthrough it would be if, by having reality literally forced upon him, a buffoon like Hannity were to realize the deadly seriousness of this," Olbermann said. "The searing truth: that the moment of torture automatically makes the presumed bad guy recipient the victim, and makes the torturer into the evildoer."

From there, Olbermann laid out his offer: "For every second you last, a thousand dollars -- live or on tape, provided other networks' cameras are there. A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth -- waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."

If there's a way to put reigning media darling Susan Boyle on the cover of Popular Mechanics, I think they'll do it !

To see how twisted the whole thing is getting, check out the LEGO recreations of Waterboarding and other torture-related incidents in American prisons, as seen on Legofesto's Flickr Photostream. He's been keeping track long before Obama became a contender for the White House.

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Amy Judd

at 07:32 on April 25th, 2009

This is kind of crazy...

I remember reading a Vanity Fair article last year when a reporter underwent waterboarding so that he could effectively write about it; it was a good article though.

Fred Miller

at 07:50 on April 25th, 2009

Thank you Amy, for commenting and the Recommend. The buzz has been created, and Huff Post has pushed it far. Even if it never happens, it was a good ride for the FOX/MSNBC Tag Team.

Roy C

at 08:01 on April 25th, 2009

At the risk of being extremely boring by repetition, part of the training to be someone who applied water-boarding was to have it applied to yourself by another trainee.

What is happening here is that these challenges are destroying our conception of water-boarding as a form of torture. Water-boarding has begun to look more and more as something that the term "enhanced interrogation technique" describes, not torture.

No one normal volunteers for torture. Obama and the left have begun to lose this fight and begun to lose the fight for the so-called moral high ground on this issue.

As soon as the first screw-up occurs when a demorlaized CIA fails to do its job and our next homeland attack occurs, Obama could well face impeachment, as Bush would have for not taking care of the border, had some terrorist entered the country by way of Mexico.

Fred Miller

at 08:22 on April 25th, 2009

Good words, Roy and worth repeating even if I may have read them a day ago elsewhere. It's a can of worms that's slowly opening and May 28th should be another can opening when the pictures tell their own story. Audie England will be reliving her nightmare tour.

jazzyzazzy

at 15:53 on April 25th, 2009

Yes Fred a can of worms is about to be open at last.

Karen Hatter

at 06:19 on April 28th, 2009

Well, Fred, a former SERE instructor, SERE being the program that trains on a voluntary basis survival techniques crafted from techniques previously used to torture U.S. military service men, has volunteered to waterboard Sean Hannity.

Instructors in the SERE program advised the CIA not to attempt to reverse engineer their methods for use and have expressed their displeasure with the way their techniques were used.

The former SERE instructor stated that the waterboard method used for training in their program, unlike the reality of those participating as volunteers, with specific knowledge of what is being doen to them, their experience could not be compared to prisoners who are unwilling particpants, with no clue when or if the torture will end.

This technique, as it's been revealed in some of the torture memos, had the potential for causing a collapsed larynx. That sounds less than a harmless, benign action.

The torture memos reveal the painstaking attempts for the Bush administration to deny the techniques were torture, with changes continually being made to accommodate the shifting surface of their rationale.