Calling Jack Bauer

Aired on June 18, 2007 From the US immigration debate to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, we are getting too many of the most critical issues presented through the black and white TV morality of good guy enforcers vs. bad guys bandits. This basic, if satisfying narrative is dangerously unequal to the complexity of the world we live in. Here is the latest gob-smacking example. At a legal conference in Ottawa last week, US Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia launched an impassioned defence of a FICTIONAL character - Jack Bauer, of the TV show 24, who is played, of course, by Canadian Kiefer Sutherland. Here's a quote:"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so." Ok, this has gone far enough. Kiefer Sutherland, I'm asking for your help. This isn't the first time your fictional character has been used to justify torture in the real world...it's time to act. Here's my pitch. In 1970, Canada was in the grips of its own terrorism panic - the October crisis. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau called tanks into the streets with the War Measures Act. Your grandfather, Tommy Douglas, and my grandfather, David Lewis, took a principled - and unpopular - stand against that assault on civil liberties. History proved them right. Kiefer, I'm not asking you give up your hit show, or go into politics. All I'm asking you to do is to go on television and remind Justice Scalia, and all his powerful friends that 24 is not the real world. It's JUST A TV SHOW. Kiefer, it's time to go public. On second thought, you may have to do it in character...they clearly only listen to Jack Bauer.