James Delingpole James Delingpole

Go West | 13 September 2018

For too long the leftie-dominated entertainment industry has been ignoring the truth about our world

issue 15 September 2018

This week’s guilty pleasure is Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime). It’s trash, of course, but very well done, high-octane, watchable trash. And if you want to feel better about your lowbrow tastes, make sure you read the finger-wagging critique by one Sonia Saraiya in Vanity Fair first.

Jack Ryan feels like a machine designed to turn us all into the sort of viewers who disappear smiling down jingoistic Fox News rabbit holes,’ she says, enticingly. And: ‘Both its protagonist and its plot are based on the foundational, unquestioned notion that American-military might — the best-funded killing infrastructure in human history — is helping to save the world.’ And: ‘Its other primary story objective is proving that Jack Ryan deserves his white male entitlement…’

Not so much a guilty pleasure after that little lecture, then; more a bounden and sacred duty.

Anyway, in fairness the series does attempt the occasional nod towards contemporary liberal sensibilities.

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