We Are All Jack Bauer

Well, I guess I would be Jane Bauer. :)

I just came across this article on NRO. It is a great read, especially if you are fan of the great show 24.

Written by Timothy P. Carney, the article is titled .

Don't we all watch 24 and then wish that our Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA guys could be just like Jack Bauer and get the job done?

Here are some excerpts from the article:

At a Heritage Foundation event on Friday, some of the cast and producers of 24 followed Chertoff onto the stage for a panel also featuring two think-tank experts on homeland security. The panelists handled—sometimes awkwardly—questions about defending the U.S. against terrorism, both in real life and in Hollywood.

Make-believe antiterrorism and real antiterrorism have some things in common and many things different, but they matter to one another in this respect: What Americans watch on TV about counterterrorism operations, whether fact or fiction, affects what they expect in real life. Further, what we expect of their homeland defenses affects politicians, which in turn influence the agencies. This is where 24 matters to our real war on terror, it seems: Jack Bauer sets our expectations, which can make things tough for our leaders.
[. . .]
Heritage’s homeland-security expert James Jay Carafano was expounding along those lines on Friday: “If you’re waiting on someone in Washington to do something before we can start saving lives,” he said, “then we’re all gonna die.”

On deeper examination, however, this overdependence-on-Washington criticism does not apply to 24, because 24 is a true American drama and Jack Bauer is an American hero. When I was in Germany a few years ago, a Cabinet official said that Europe was once half-full of free-thinkers and independent spirits, but then they all got up and moved to America. The American hero is the cowboy: He is Maverick, he is Han Solo, he is Batman (though, when Batman is in trouble, he turns on the Jack Bauer signal), he is the rag-tag minuteman fighting the well-trained Lobsterbacks.

So Jack Bauer is not Big Brother, and he is not the establishment. Jack Bauer was expelled from CTU and he disobeys orders. He does what needs to be done and he does it in his own way. (Jack Bauer once played Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun, and won.) He is the fitting heir to Rambo and Maverick.

And like Rambo and Maverick, Bauer’s inhuman excellence (Jack Bauer, for example, could strangle you with a cordless phone) still doesn’t keep us from identifying with him. “Jack Bauer is an everyman,” Writer and Executive Producer Howard Gordon said on Friday, “he is the guy who stands for that American, can-do thing.”

How very true. The article also mentions the heroes of Flight 93 on 9/11. They were just regular men, who did what needed to be done. That's all Jack Bauer does too.

Our duty is to be Jack (or Jane) Bauers. We must do what we can for our country and our fellow man.

So, be Jack (or Jane) Bauer.

More of my Jack Bauer-24 posts here.

Rush Limbaugh moderated the event on Friday, which featured officials from DHS and people from 24. He has photos up on his website here. 24 stars Carlos Bernard (aka Tony Almeida), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe O'Brian), and Gregory Itzin (President Charles Logan) were all in attendance and sat on the panel. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was in the audience.


You will find video of the panel here, from the Heritage Foundation, which hosted.

The Washington Post has an article on the panel. Apparently everyone went to lunch at the White House afterwards. :)

More from NewsMax.

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