Sometimes I watch 24 because I’m too lazy to look at the clock and 24 always flashes the time as part of its attempt to build suspense.  So I find the show very convenient.

I had heard that the latest storyline outraged certain Muslim-American groups, and having seen a few episodes, I’m not surprised.  The plot concerns an upper middle-class Muslim-American family that has apparently been a sleeper terrorist cell for something like 16 years (if the age of their conflicted teenage son is any indication). They receive the signal to begin implementing their evil plan.  Their son’s pretty, white girlfriend finds out too much, and the mother ends up inviting her over, giving her a cool drink, and poisoning her.

But they don’t stop there. After poisoning the girl, the mother shoots her with a pistol and sticks the gun in her son’s hand. This way, the father will think the son was the one who killed her, and therefore be proud of him.

Let me tell you, this is not how normal families operate.  I mean, sure, my parents often poisoned my girlfriends. But they wouldn’t shoot them on top of it.  That?s just extreme.

One of my earliest memories is my father sitting down with me and saying, “Son, we do reserve the right to kill your girlfriends if they interfere with our plans.  But we’ll either poison them or shoot them.  Out of respect for you, we won’t do both.” And I think that’s pretty standard.

My issue is that, in my view, terrorists are not upper middle-class Americans.  They’re young, poor, and illiterate. That’s how they get recruited into terrorist cells in the first place--because they have no hope or vision of doing anything else with their lives.  Depicting an affluent Muslim-American family as terrorists is ludicrous.

The portrayal is particularly annoying when you consider the lack of other Muslim-Americans on television.  The only other one I can think of is the guy on Lost, and that character used to torture prisoners as part of the Iraqi national guard.  Wow, thanks for that balanced portrayal, Hollywood. I bet you’d find more diversity at a testimonial dinner for Trent Lott.

You might say, “Don’t give me that crap about terrorists being poor.  Bin Laden has millions of dollars.” There may be rich men behind the scenes, but do you think they’re on the front lines? When 9/11 happened, Bin Laden was relaxing on a cot in Tora Bora and telling his favorite masseuse: “A little lower--now to the left--a little lower--now to the left. By Allah! I think you’ve got it.”

When the feds catch some American-based terrorist, it’s always some lone, pathetic, misfit trying to create a dirty bomb.  You know he doesn’t have any friends or deep emotional connections.  He makes the Unabomber look like a socialite.

(And weren’t you surprised when you found out that a “dirty bomb” is actually a conventional explosive packed with radioactive materials?  I had thought the guy was handing out copies of Showgirls.)

24 is full of crap. When people get a taste of the good life, the whole murder and mayhem thing pretty much goes out the window. Let me tell you what would actually happen if someone tried to activate a middle-class Muslim-American family terrorist cell: “Oh, look honey, we finally got the signal. I guess we’d better start killing our son’s girlfriends and sending coded messages and preparing to martyr ourselves and whatnot.  Yeah, that’ll be--that’ll be great. I’m really looking forward to that.  Yeah.  Huh--listen, do we have anything good recorded on TIVO?”