This November, we are privileged once again to exercise our God-given rights as Americans to engage in a time-honored tradition that affects nearly everyone. This year marks a nearly eight-year run that will once again begin anew in January.
The result will be a battle between good and evil; on one side is a hero whose hubris is only matched by his tortured past, and on the other is one who some might call a terrorist. I’m talking of course about the return of 24 to television (what did you think I was talking about?).
For those of you who don’t know (shame on you), 24 revolves around counter-terrorism agent and overall demi-god Jack Bauer and his countering of…well, terrorists. Jack has single-handedly saved the world several times over, and yet despite his best efforts, the world always falls into peril the next season.
You see, Jack is perhaps the live-action equivalent of Mario. Like Mario, Jack’s female acquaintances have a knack for managing to get kidnapped mere moments after they were rescued from a previous and unrelated kidnapping—I think the total rescue count is up to 764 between four total people. Just as Mario will for Princess Toadstool, Jack will end up saving the women of his life by stomping on the head of the nefarious al-Bowseri until he falls into an open vat of lava.
Also like Mario, death for Jack is merely a minor inconvenience; he will somehow manage to come back to life to complete his mission. Lastly, when Jack picks a flower, he too can shoot globules of molten fire from his hands. But I digress.
What makes 24 so special is not the abundance of plot twists, semi-automatic rifles or sinister acts of terrorism, but rather the deep characters, especially that of President David Palmer. David Palmer is the president we wish we’d had for the past eight years. The best way to describe him, I suppose, is to think of all the bad qualities of our current president and then write out the complete opposite of those.
It is with that in mind that I will be voting for him this November. Unfortunately, he is merely a fictional character (damn you, confines of reality!), so I will be voting for the actor who portrays him: Dennis Haysbert. For those who don’t know who he is or what he looks like, let me just say that it is his strong (yet sensitive) hands that keep Allstate customers safe.
Behind every great president is also a great running mate, which is why I have done some vetting of my own. For me, nothing would be better than to see a Haysbert/Black Hole ticket. Together, they would be an unstoppable force, combining Dennis Haysbert’s ridiculously powerful voice with a black hole’s ridiculously powerful gravitational field.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that they’d be the ultimate good cop/bad cop team, although it would be more like good cop/black hole instead. What’s more is that unlike a certain current vice presidential nominee, a black hole is actually supposed to be a vacuous void of nothingness—an unrelenting destructive force without logic or reason.
Unfortunately, no black hole actually exists here on earth…yet (get well soon, Large Hadron Collider!), so the next logical choice for vice president is obviously going to be Christian Bale.
Why Christian Bale, you ask? Simple really: he might actually be Batman. Bale would undoubtedly strengthen the ticket because if you do not support him, you will probably have a Batarang chucked directly at your face.
Now, some might argue that a ticket comprised of two Hollywood actors is not in the best interests of America, but since when has actual experience been a qualifying factor? Hell, Ronald Reagan did it.
I say we have more actors involved in politics because at the very least they can convincingly act like nothing is wrong when really the world is crumbling around us. And isn’t that peace of mind a little hard to come by?
So remember, this November you have a choice to make: are you going to watch 24 live, or are you going to TiVo it?