On Sat, 23 May 2009, SA wrote:
> Assuming the radio host went into this stunt with the motives he claims
> (and wasn't, say, trying to find some dramatic, show-biz way of changing
> his position on torture), to me it shows a typically American style of
> brutalism. Do you think French right-wingers in the 50's, when they
> denounced leftists for criticizing torture in Algeria, tried to make the
> argument that it didn't really hurt?
Actually they rather famously did. One of the standard methods of torture during the Algerian war was attach wires to a gegene (the army signals magneto) and apply electrodes to the penis. It left no traces and was quick and easy to do. The victim's feelings were vividly described by Henri Alleg in The Question in 1958 and it became a huge scandal. Colonel Massu (one of the models for Colonel Mathieu in The Battle of Algiers) had himself and several of his men connected and said it was no big thing. People argued that he did it for a short time and knowing it could be turned off made made all the difference. But at the time it was a big propaganda coup of precisely the sort that I think this idiot was hoping to pull off.
FWIW, 40 years later, in one of his last (of several) memoirs, in the 1990s, I hear Massu recanted and admitted his "proof" was fraudulent. I hear he regrets, repents and recants a lot of things in that memoir, which I've not read but only read about.
Michael