Art Imitates Stupid

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

02 June 13

ack a decade or so, the pop-culture reference du jour was 24, an exercise in torture porn that was so compelling that Antonin Scalia, that scamp, saw fit to cite it at an international law convention, and so popular among the vicariously sadistic that its producers were once invited to talk to people who did actual interrogations, most of whom looked at the TV people the way you would look at a bus if you saw it was being driven by a fruit bat, and the producer blew them off anyway to take a call from Roger Ailes.

(Once again, let us pause and thank our personal deities for Jane Mayer.)

Now, though, apparently, Jack Bauer's Id has been replaced by the several personalities of Claire Danes on Showtime's manifestly superior Homeland, to the point where, as Tiger Beat On The Potomac tells us, we are about to be introduced to a new character.

Deadline reports that Tracy Letts is set to become a series regular during the third season, set to debut Sept. 29. He'll portray Sen. Andrew Lockhart, "the powerful, authoritative and commanding committee chairman asking tough questions as the government's investigation begins in the wake of the (spoiler alert) horrific terror attack that decimated the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and prompted a global manhunt for the world's most wanted terrorist - Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis)."...As Think Progress's Alyssa Rosenberg points out, Letts looks to "be joining Homeland to do in fiction what Rep. Darrell Issa would love to do in real life. ... Will Lockhart find conspiracies everywhere, and an administration determined to cover them up, essentially affirming the position Issa's taken in the real world? Or will something more subtle and interesting happen?"

First of all, no fiction writer could invent a character like Darrell Issa, not the least of which reasons is the fact that Edgar Allan Poe has been dead since 1849. (Issa got his start inventing talking car-alarms, but Stephen King already mined all the malevolence out of that one in Christine.) Personally, I think Homeland's gonna be working pure half-measures until the senator takes a watermelon out into his backyard and shoots it with a gun. Damn, I miss Dan Burton. That man had style.