back jack

BACK JACK

If you like to get things done,
Jack’s the guy you ought to back
since he does this with such fun,
always ready to attack
those who want to undermine
these United States, abusing
the Bill of Rights, and tend to whine
in ways that victims find confusing
after 9/11, and
a lot of other quite outrageous
terror acts that demand
decisive acts by the courageous
against those planning major hurt
to us, and take advantage of
our Constitution and subvert
its small print while they loudly scoff
at all our laws, and try to plunge
the world into a darkness like
the darkness of a deep-sea sponge,
and tell their foes to take a hike.
Though Jack makes politicians cringe,
and causes liberals to scream,
while lawyers of the loony fringe
use words about him that blaspheme,
and doesn’t ever seem to nurture
the feminine side that he expels,
and isn’t squeamish about torture
when fighting for us infidels,
I like the things he does, and fear
that if he doesn’t get them done
should men abort his fine career
we’ll have to say goodbye to fun
and make our peace with faith fanatics,
compelled to choose between our way
of life and hiding in our attics
until those cavemen go away.

Inspired by Mary McNamara’s article about the forthcoming season of “24” (“A Hero’s back, just when we need him,” LA Times, January 9, 2009):

Thank heaven for Kiefer Sutherland. What with all the big-changes-afoot brouhaha about the writers-strike-delatd return of “24” ––Did a stinky Season 6 mean the writers had run out of steam? Could a show based on torture survive in a Gitmo-outraged world? Were the creators out of their flipping minds when they claimed that the silent stopped clock made it clear that Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) wasn’t really dead? ––one had to wonder if Jack Bauer’s next assignment would be to save the baby from the upwardly arching bathwater…But Sutherland, bless his soul, plays Jack absolutely and brilliantly straight. All super-spies have broken hearts, which they camouflage with martinis or dames or icy blue eyes, but Jack Bauer wears his right on his sleeve, even as he picks up his pen and heads for the first available eardrum. So when he’s yanked out of his Senate hearing to aid the FBI in the investigation of a major security breach, he gives his little speech about how he can’t help them because he’s been deactivated, but then he gets down to work. Because it’s Tony, man, and what’s he doing playing for the bad guys? FBI agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), as steely as she is lovely. Her boss (Jeffrey Nordling) may be the biggest by-the-book, anti-Bauer speech-giver around, but Walker, well, she’s not so sure. She likes a man who gets things done.

© 2009 Gershon Hepner 1/9/09