Actually, if you watch the Simpsons, you see the irony and the criticism, thinly veiled, often not at all veiled, by humor. You could easily use many of the episodes in ethics classes. But there has been a real and generalized dumming down of American public discourse in popular literature and entertainment, particularly as advertisers seek an ever larger common denominator and investors want higher profits. Critical thinking and a basic understanding of civics are skills not broached by most programing, and apparently, lost in schools where the goal is now to teach to standardized tests.

I do think women belong "everywhere" in the military, in hopes that if people decide something is too horrible for women to be doing that maybe they would think it is too horrible for men to be doing also. But that doesn't seem to have happened. I think it was inappropriate to have a woman guarding men prisoners; better to have the genders separate and guarded by their own. Even there the power vs. powerless formula is one that needs careful attention.

The behavior of that one woman in particular, to seemingly get such pleasure out of the misery of others, is horrible. Clearly she sees that group of prisoners as subhuman. Her pleasure is pornographic. It seems worse that it would come from a woman, because we encounter this kind of thing so rarely in women (lack of opportunity, or is it a gendered difference? I won't speculate here, now.) I posted information about Lynndie England on another thread. She has been formally charged with four crimes. I heard it on the news just this evening. She is clearly going to be the poster child bad behavior in the American military and is the prototype of the modern day Ugly American.

SRS