February 20, 2007

George Bush and Jack Bauer

The current issue of the New Yorker magazine has an interesting article about Joel Surnow, the man behind the TV show “24” and how his personal politics are closely aligned with those of the Bush administration in ways that may manifest themselves on the show.

With that in mind, I found a similarity between George W. Bush and Jack Bauer that isn’t mentioned in the article. I put together a little video to demonstrate:



Posted by David at 9:54 AM | Permalink
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Comments

Crisis-of-the-moment, hysterical fear oriented show that portrays gun-wielding loners as heroes and also advocates torture supports Bush Administration? You are going to have a lot of trouble proving *that* connection.

Posted by: Anonymous | February 20, 2007 11:52 AM

Brilliant my friend. You had me all ready for a comprehensive proof of the Bush Administration / 24 conspiracy. Strangely, I wasn’t let down at all.

Posted by: Graham Powrie | February 20, 2007 12:03 PM

I guaran-damn-tee you that this is either a choice that Keifer made or one that the show’s director made, rather than coincidence. Real men, deciders, men of action, say nukuler.

Posted by: Steve Lawson | February 20, 2007 12:06 PM

Yeah, good ole Jack Baush. From the linguistic side, though, nukyuler has become so common that it’s actually an accepted pronunciation in a lot of dictionaries. I believe its entry can be seen right before the entry on the “liberry”.

Posted by: Steve Young | February 20, 2007 2:51 PM

That is what makes my graduate media studies so interesting. Nice video.

Posted by: H.A. Page | February 20, 2007 3:07 PM

That’s an excellent article, thanks for linking it!

Posted by: Johnny Walker | February 20, 2007 5:20 PM

I thought for a second that the point of the video was that the guy’s enemy was using WMDs acquired from the speaker’s father, but in retrospect that’s absurd (Iraq didn’t have any WMDs). This makes sense, though.

Posted by: Jake | February 20, 2007 5:59 PM

Smooth. I had to watch it twice so I knew what to listen for. They say we think in the language we use and our president can’t even speak cohesively. Sigh.

Posted by: Shawn | February 20, 2007 6:22 PM

Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist who occasionally appears on NPR’s Fresh Air, had an interesting commentary on this a few years ago:
http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/nucular.html

He also used this as the title for his book which collected these essays together:
http://www.amazon.com/Going-Nucular-Language-Politics-Controversial/dp/1586482343

I was a little disappointed that this particular one didn’t shed more light on the “nucular” debate, but he’s always interesting and entertaining.

Posted by: Steve C. | February 21, 2007 8:00 AM

Happy First Birthday Ironic Sans.

My new favourite site.

Posted by: Clayton | February 21, 2007 5:14 PM

Jack Bauer, I’m certain, can count to 24. G.W.B. I’m not so sure about.

Posted by: Thomas | February 22, 2007 1:42 AM

Jimmy Carter used to have a very creative pronunciation as well.

Posted by: yellojkt | February 22, 2007 7:00 AM

Yeah, and the wierd thing about Carter is that he was actually a nuclear engineer when he was in the Navy. Steve Lawson is right — if you’re a real man of action, you say “nucular”.

Posted by: Christopher Fahey | February 25, 2007 1:50 PM

I noticed that while watching “24,” too, assumed it was intentional and got a nice little kick out of it. Neat work with the video.

Posted by: MarkDM | February 28, 2007 1:05 AM

Stranger to the dictionary? Either pronunciation is a acceptable. It’s been that way practically since the emergence of the word.

Not to recognize that there is an alternate and correct pronunciation shows just as much ignorance.

Posted by: zack | March 4, 2007 9:40 AM

Got all 50 with 22 seconds to spare. The last two took me about 4 minutes to remember: Virginia and Maryland. Go figure, since I live in NC

Posted by: fred lewis | March 4, 2007 4:08 PM

No surprise then that George Bush (or lookalike) can be seen playing tennis in the background of an episode of day 6 (as Bauer/Logan go to visit Logan’s ex-wife)

Posted by: Samuel Pope | March 17, 2007 8:50 PM

The NUCULER phenomenon has been causing me great distress since the third season. I thought that was abolished from civilization ages ago.
It’s the only disdain I have for Jack Bauer.

He probably says pronunciate and irregardless too.

Posted by: Shar1R | March 21, 2007 9:00 AM

Just as I often point out to my children, most people are stupid. No surprise then that the way stupid people pronounce words has become ‘acceptable’.

Posted by: Tom | March 27, 2007 12:35 AM

The real difference is that I would sleep with Jack Bauer

Posted by: Anonymous | May 15, 2007 6:07 PM