Donohue rises again
Phil Donohue of talkshow fame, has put the wind up an american Fox tv newsman, Bill O'Reilly here.
It is a really good read for a few reasons. Firstly, because we all knew Donohue was a legend when we were supposed to be studying for exams in the 80s, secondly because he makes such reasoned argument against the "war on terror" in Iraq, and finally because he illustrates how, in many situations, less is more.
I found the site via Russell Brown.
4 comments:
Found out who the celeb basher (alleged) is yet? Old news north of the Bombay Hills but I really don't do the whole gossip thing. I'm a really annoying prick.
Hey, if this don't rock your world I don't know what will. Lego Star Wars. Check it out at www.gpstore.co.nz. My god. Lego AND Star Wars. I'm sure my separated-at-birth twin must've come up with that one. Ah....
I think both Donohue and O'Reilly come away looking clueless. Donohue sounds like a patronising git calling US combat troops "kids" repeatedly. These are grown people he is talking about, not children. They're quite able to make their own decisions, and they all chose to join the military.
Casey Sheehan even chose to re-enlist not long before he was killed. He was 24. If I were a 24 year old professional soldier, I'd be bloody pissed off if some TV chat show host patronised me by calling me a "kid".
I think part of calling them "kids" is that they're people's children. And the other is that many of them are kids. 19-24 is pretty young, and people have a definite sense of immortality at that age. I know I made some very poor decisions at that age, some of them putting my own life at risk. None of them involving war or guns, thank god.
Apart from the "kids" thing, Donahue doesn't make a lot of sense in other areas. "Iraq was not a terrorist state" ignores Ansar al Islam, payments to Palestinian suicide bombers, an attempt to assassinate the first President Bush, and retired terrorists living in Baghdad. "Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in the 80s" as evidence for "Saddam was a bastard, but he was our bastard" is just bizarre... by that measure Arafat is NZ's bastard because Phil Goff held his hand, and it implies that countries should not pursue diplomacy with any less-than-perfect country. Which is unrealistic in the real world. "This war is unconstitutional" gets in to the realm of crack pot conspiracy theory, similar to the income-tax-is-unconstitutional crowd on the far right. Calling O'Reilly "Billy" is patronising. He talks about Halliburton, which is a sure sign of Bush Derangement Syndrome. And he treats Cindy Sheehan as some sort of hero, when even the Democrats are backing away from her because she appears to be an extremist loon and they suffered badly at the last election from association with loons.
I have no idea who O'Reilly is. But Donohue sounds misinformed... and as if he is angling for a part in the next Team America film ("we're guuuuards"). Reading a transcript of the two of them arguing isn't pleasant.
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