Whitewash those and what's the point?

Yes indeed. It always baffles me: fans falling in love with an ambiguous character because he (and sadly in most cases it's a he, the reaction to ambiguos women being somewhat different, and also there are less of them) is ambiguous, i.e. has some not admirable traits and does do things that are just plain wrong on occasion - and then they whitewash this character into being either always right or if he isn't then wrong just because another character did something to him, with the result that their version of the character is whiter than the whitest knight and has nothing to do with the original anymore.

Media praise of Gene for the wrong reasons: it also reminds me that on lj, most people are liberal, so you don't encounter this attitude too often, but this is not the case among the viewership at large. Makes me wonder about 24 fandom, though, because 24, as opposed to Life on Mars, doesn't have a narrative counterpoint like Sam and presents the story in such a way that Jack Bauer's methods always produce the right results. (Whereas Gene as you say is presented as being wrong as often as he's being shown to be right.) How do they react/view their main character?