I hate watching television with my wife, especially when one of my favorite programs is on. Every now and then, she gets it in her head that being the source of argumentative chatter is good for our relationship. When one of my shows offends her finely tuned sense of reality, I'll hear about it.

Earlier this week, the espionage drama "24" really put a bee in her bonnet. After wandering into the living room, attracted by the sound of people shouting, threats and automatic gunshots in the recap from the previous week's episode, my wife settled into a permanently critical lotus position on the sofa. "Oh, come on," she said, apropos of nothing. "You're being manipulated. This show doesn't reflect your politics."

Well, no it doesn't, but if reflecting my politics were the sole criterion for settling down in front of my big screen at the end of a long day, what could I possibly watch in good conscience? But her point seemed to be that I was cheering for characters who, if anything, embodied George Bush's approach to terrorism in post-9/11 America. It was simply another opportunity to call me a hypocrite before the first commercial break.

Three episodes earlier, Kiefer Sutherland's character, Jack Bauer, the leader of a counter-terrorism unit, broke the fingers of an American citizen one-by-one in an attempt to ferret out information about a terror cell leader who stole a portion of the code that controls America's nuclear arsenal. She heard me cheering on that particular bit of barbarity despite having written many columns decrying the tortures at Abu Ghraib.

The following episode featured a confrontation between a socially inept CTU computer analyst and a terrorist thug ordered to kill an informer under her protection. As Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) made clear when she was tapped for the assignment, she "didn't do field work."

By the end of the hour, Chloe stood ramrod straight cradling an automatic rifle, having fired several rounds into the terrorist's car and stopping him dead. Liberals all over America stood up and cheered along with our trigger-happy neighbors, creating a moment of pure synergy for the NRA.

"Now, that's what I'm talking about," I shouted. That episode also featured the return of President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), called out of retirement to advise the dithering, newly sworn in President Logan on how to fight terrorism on American soil.

As President Palmer made clear in subsequent episodes, he'll do anything to stop the terrorists, including authorize a black bag operation to snatch a terror suspect from the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles. President Palmer wasn't going to be known as the black Jimmy Carter anymore.

So, was I wrong to cheer when Jack Bauer led a raiding party on Chinese diplomatic soil? Kidnapping a Chinese national with information about a missing nuclear weapon timed to go off within hours seemed to be the lesser of two evils.

When I tried to put things into perspective for her during the commercials, she sighed her annoyance with me and the show. "Everything these people do is illegal," she said. "It's a bunch of nonsense."

I defended the show as well-written adrenaline-driven escapism and asked if it was logical for her to make any comments with three episodes left in the season when she's only seen part of one show.

When Jack's soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Audrey confronts him about all the terrible things he's done to stop the terrorists, including sticking a gun into the face of the doctor operating on her husband, I laughed.

When President Logan confronted President Palmer about approving an operation that could lead America into war with "a billion people," my wife shouted that the indecisive Logan was right. At that moment, we entered the realm of irreconcilable differences.

In a week when former Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge complained of arm twisting by forces outside his office to raise the color coded terror alerts when it wasn't necessary, it's clear that the crew currently running the government couldn't make toast on "24."

After the embarrassing spectacle in which a single Cessna plane managed to send the government into convulsions of fear and panic, it would be a relief to have a Jack Bauer or a David Palmer in the loop. They don't overreact, though admittedly, Bauer did torture his girlfriend's estranged husband before he found out the dude was just eccentric.

I tried to explain to my wife that torture on television isn't immoral as long as viewers are capable of being outraged by the real thing. She found my reasoning morally incoherent.

But isn't it obvious that Lynndie England is no Chloe O'Brian and Charles Graner is no Jack Bauer? The Bonnie and Clyde of Abu Ghraib engaged in torture for purely sadistic reasons because it corresponded with the winks and nods of their superiors. They weren't "saving America."

But if we begin turning a blind eye to the machinations of the Bush administration, we'll all have to stop watching "24" to recover our moral compass.