Torture

Last week, David Rivkin and somebody else had an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. In it, they called for a public discussion of torture.

Immediately, I thought why a public discussion, why not a game show? There was already Fear Factor, which pretty much forced contestants to engage in fairly horrific acts. Why not just take it a step further. Every week, the viewing public could watch contestants undergo a series of grueling physical trials and just as in American idol, the viewing public could vote on which act they considered to be torture.

Of course, you couldn't just torture anyone. The contestants would all have to be foreigners. I would suggest mostly Mexicans. Swarthy men, mostly. I would really refrain from female contestants, although I think Ann Coulter would make a great host.

Perhaps every so often, the show could open itself up to suggestions from the audience as to what types of creative methods might be used in future programs. Perhaps if someone's particular method of torture is chosen, they could win a fabulous prize like a year's worth of Bubba's Shrimp or a week's stay at the Trump Plaza in New York City.

You're probably thinking that, right, how can you suggest that someone go and make money on someone's suffering? How easily we forget Abu Ghraib, where the private security firm CACI was involved in the goings on. Or Boeing, whose airplanes were used in rendition flights. Torture has a fine track record of boosting the bottom line of quite a few companies.

By advertising on such a program, a company could wax patriotic. There would be no question about "If a guy new that a million people would be blown up, would you torture him to get the information?" Why yes, yes we would, and while we were doing so, we'd be driving our Jeep Cherokees and gulping heaps of Cialis while downing the contents with Mountain Dew. And the methods used would be the very same one's we invented for T.V.

Who knows? If the show is successful, there could be spin offs. Torturing Democrats, for example. Torturing local unions. Torturing welfare queens. The sky, as they say, is the limit.