5 Similarities Between Steven Colbert and 24's Jack Bauer

Steven Colbert of The Colbert Report and 24's Jack Bauer are very much alike. They have different jobs, sure, but both go to work everyday intent on defending this great nation. Steven Colbert and Jack Bauer, both true fictional American heroes, may in fact have been separated at birth. Consider the following similarities between Steven Colbert and 24's Jack Bauer.

1. They're both ultra-patriots. Jack Bauer has gone to the mat for America more times than we can count. He's lost loved ones for the country, taken harsh physical punishment, travelled the world and had to fake his own death. But he keeps on ticking. Or at least the clock on the show title cards keeps ticking. Jack Bauer is All-American. Steven Colbert is All-American, too. He left a cushy job on The Daily Show, risking his livlihood to give his fellow Americans the truthiness they need and deserve. He also helps us know our congressional districts and has an ice cream flavor named after him and America - which shows the two, at least in ice cream form, are intertwined.

2. They both can get high-powered people on the phone. Can you picture Jack Bauer on 24 without his cellphone? And he doesn't just talk to Bill Buchanan and Chole; saving the world would be impossible without being able to get the President (whichever Palmer is in charge at the moment...) on the horn to ask for special and speedy action. Colbert, for his part, can contact instructional league hockey coaches, and he called Candice Bergen just the other day, which gives him just one degree of separation from William Shatner.

3. They both have connections to torture. 24 is legend for the torture sometimes utilized by Jack Bauer to get answers when he needs them- and he needs them now! Truth syrum, shooting a person's loved one, beatings, finger cuttings: Bauer does what needs to be done. On the Colbert side, anyone who has seen his segments on his "son" bald eagle knows that sometimes his show can, in and of itself, be a form of torture.

4. They both give the Threatdown. Colbert has a segment of his show called "The Threatdown" where he lists all of the things we Americans should be afraid of - and thank God he does, because, threats to our national life change everyday. Except bears. They are a constant threat. On 24, Jack Bauer has at least one segment involving a detailed run down of the threat currently facing the country on that day. "If we don't do X by this time, then Y is going to happen, which will lead to Z, which will result in global thermo nuclear war." Now that's a threatdown.

5. They both work best on their own. Sure, Bauer has a ton of people backing him up, and sometimes he finds people in the field to help him. Often, though, those people end up dead. He's a solo act, when it comes right down to it- the one man who can TCB and save the world when we're up against nukes, posionous gas, biological weapons, assassins, guns, rogue agents, and again, nukes. As for Colbert, can there be any question he's even more ultra-American now as the host of a show than he ever was when he was a correspondent for The Daily Show? Of course there's no doubt. Colbert puts the Colbert in Colbert Report. And we can't imagine how America would survive without him.

Jack Bauer and Steven Colbert: America salutes you.