The Attraction of 24

I've had occassion for a few years now to consider just why it is that I find 24 so damn entertaining. The answer is simple an complex at the same time. Jack Bauer is the modern-day equivalent of John Wayne.

Sit back down. Stop shouting at your monitor. I can't really hear you anyway. I can certainly understand that this remark might upset you. I didn't come to this conclusion quickly or easily. We don't really have any unsullied heroes left in our society. Doctors have had their share of proffessional blackeyes. Cops have been maligned. Astronauts were just taken down a peg this week. Used car salesmen, lawyers, and politicians have been on 'the list' for decades. "Priest" calles to mind images of leacherous old men buggering children. Accountants took their hit with Enron. I really don't know what the Duke would think of life today, but I can't shake the feeling that he would look upon Jack's activities over the years with grim approval. I don't think he would feel the same about certain elements in our society that seem to bend over backwards in an attempt to hold the viper to our collective bosom.

The Duke would approach a matter honestly, understanding the need to speak plainly and directly. No dancing, no euphemisms. If it wasn't right, if it was a threat, he'd say so, and deal with it appropriately, and would brook no nonsense about it having to be done. He stood up for this country and faced the threats to it. This is the same thing Jack does.

What has changed?
This is an interesting thing to ponder. The answer is equally simple and complex. The simple: 'They' have changed. Unlike in the Duke's day, our enemies have no stomach to meet us in a stand-up fight. They are stateless and don't wear uniforms. They prefer it that way. And dependng on their motivations, they may be lurking in the most unexpected places. The Complex: We have changed. Jack's world is our own in miniature. No domestic happlily ever afters. Office politics taken to absurd extremes. Representatives of subgroups more preoccupied with how somehing affects them than how something affects us all. Unreasoning hatred turned in our direction simply because we exist. Those charged with maintaining the well-being of us all shirking responsibility because someone might hold them accountable for making a decision. And standing tall between these threats and us is Jack.

Jack is the guy who will make the decision. Jack is the guy who will take out the bad guy when it needs to be done. Jack will use the bad guy to get good results. When things go south, and something must be done, all the eyes in the room turn to Jack. And Jack acts accordingly. He does this knowing that he won't be popular, that he will make people angry, that he may put his own health and well-being on the line. And if he profiles, if he 'violates civil rights', if he says what many of us think, but dare not say in a society that has abandoned reason, logic and resonsibility for hypersensitivity, diversity, and deferrence, often to the point of reckless endangerment to ourselves, then I can support it. Maybe Jack does things that the Duke never did, but the Duke's brother was never a power-mad nutbar playing a sitting President, assasinating a prior President, and pinning it on the Duke, then leaving him in the hands of a foreign power with an axe to grind. When the dust settles, Jack does what is right to save this County, with little or no thanks, and he doesn't shirk responsibility for his actions. Just like the Duke. And that's why we love him.