Fuck Jack Bauer
From the time Tony Snow posed the question ‘Would you try Jack Bauer?’ to this mornings disturbing article on NPR regarding that fictional lunatic, FUCK JACK BAUER!
‘24’ is not a great show. It was alright the first year. Catchy, fresh idea for a T.V. series, even I watched it once or twice. I didn’t follow it through the entire series though, not even the first year. When the show was put back on air for another season I had to wonder, was the show going to be the same shit? And look at that, I was right. Same fear-mongering, saber-rattling plot line…oh how exciting. Jack Bauer running around like a crazy man, visions of terrorist induced destruction dancing madly before him. And isn’t it odd how the man always avoids due process in the performance of his job? Isn’t it strange that he constantly thwarts authority because ‘he knows the fucking threat to real’? Don’t you find it even a little disturbing to think that a man so driven by fear is too be the savior of this nation? Well, of course all the fans of the show don’t find any of that odd or unsettling. They deem themselves ‘patriots’, and no violation of national law is to great when violated for the sake of one’s country. Right.
Well, people, The Pickled Jester is here to inform you of a few things.
Jack Bauer is a fictional character. He does not exist in the real world. Let us be very clear on that point. No person like Bauer would be allowed to serve the U.S. government; we don’t like loose cannons. Nor would a man like Bauer be allowed to run around doing as he pleases. Not yet anyway, give it a few years and I’m sure this nation will see more than a few assholes like Bauer.
Secondly, and this is an important little bit, people like Bauer are a threat to all societies, but they are a special kind of threat to societies which think of themselves as ‘free’. Men who are so driven by fear, the near insane revulsion and dread of imminent attack, are a danger to all people. This type of person does not stop running on overdrive once the threat (if indeed there ever was one to begin with) is neutralized. They keep going, always looking for a new threat. If no new threat is to be found then this type of person will create a threat where none before existed. For example, a man like Bauer could quite easily come to believe that criticism of the government is a pre-eminent threat to our nation. That is just an example though, the nature of the perceived threat isn’t as important as the fact that men like Bauer, fictional or otherwise, will ALWAYS see a supreme threat to our nation. And they will never stop. Or, since our nation of television inundated peoples might prefer, Bauer is a human terminator; he will not stop until death grounds him.
The true defenders of America are not the stylized action hero’s of television and Hollywood. They are men and women who lead relatively quite lives, devoid of exciting car chases, phoned threats to their own lives or the lives of those close to them. They are people who will never find themselves in a wholly distressing firefight with well armed terrorists. They are people who shall never see the day when they are staring face to face with a bomb waiting to be diffused. In other words, the men and women who truly defend America from all threats, foreign and domestic, are simple people, educated people; lawyers, doctors, activists, politicians (well, some of them anyway), authors, police, etc. They are certainly not Jack fucking Bauer.
Grow up America. Realize, and realize with both great expediency and profound veracity that men like Bauer are nothing less than your common thug, a well paid miscreant and villain. He is the man who would no doubt be denigrated to the level of criminal were he any other than an American civil servant. He is the man who would be hunted and assailed at every turn were he an Arab. He is the man who would appear in any number of criminal courts were he walking in the real, waking world, for crimes to many in number to list here.
Out.