Jack Bauer Sucks

Posted at 2:45 PM Jan 19, 2009

By Andy Beckerman



With the immanent ascension of Barack Obama from anointed President-Elect to full-fledged messiah, our country can now certainly begin to take the first, few tentative steps towards not being The World's Asshole. (You know, that guy at the party that drinks too much and keeps playing grabass, but no one can really do anything about it because you know he's strapped?) However, like stale vomit stains on the couch and a mysterious stench coming from god-knows-where, painful remnants of the last eight years still exist in the form of one Jack Bauer, the so-called hero of Fox's zzzzzzzz-inspiring 24.

Ah, Keifer Sutherland. Ladies love him. And ladies love Jack Bauer. His smoldering eyes. His towheaded virility. The fact that he's a fucking torturer whose not only used to justify the worst excesses of George Bush and his administration of morally-bankrupt dicklickers, but is somehow a beloved role-model, is fucking criminally insane.
What plane of reality do I live on where one of the most highly regarded fictional characters is a war criminal? Where's Idi Amin's Uganda's Next Top Murderer show? My Pol Pot And The Kingdom Of Skulls? A season of American Idol in which Ryan Seacrest slowly has his skin removed?

Let's pretend for a moment that we don't live in a supposedly civilized country, and that we're going to torture people anyway. You know, to say, prevent a fictional attack on a fictional bus of people. The facts are this: All empirical studies have shown that torture is one of the worst methods for obtaining reliable information.

Jack Bauer isn't a hero. He's a fucking pussy. What's more heroic: trying to obtain information by say, using one's wits and being humane in order to coax details out of someone, or attaching electrodes to a dude's balls and going nuts? That's what the bad guys do! What is being missed here? Villain!

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