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| Think at your own risk. |
| Sunday, July 03, 2005 |
| Consider the shark jumped |
SayAnything links to proof that it may be time for ABC Radio Networks' commentator Paul Harvey to retire. Harvey's comments on the radio a couple of weeks ago are ... um ... colorful... and its hard to believe they didn't at least get picked up by Olbermann. Here's the money quote, as recounted by Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune (link ot full quote):
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, “We didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.” That was his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. That we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy. And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over. ... "...We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.
"And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."
Wizbang picks up the story as well and points out that not everyone is mad at Harvey, with some suggesting that those who wince at his comments simply don't understand the war on terror (not an original right-wing argument, but there you go.) Left out of the above passage are Harvey's harsh assessments of our having "given a pass" to the Saudis and our post-9/11 restraint ("keeping our best weapons in our silos" and all...) as well as America's preoccupation with maintaining our "image" of being "more moral, more civilized" than our enemies.
Maybe Harvey's harsh outlook on war and sugar candy might be explained by his World War II experience -- he was just returning from two years of covering the U.S. Navy as a radio reporter in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii when the Japanese attacked. He then signed up to become an Army Air corpsman and served until 1944. (Interesting Wiki fact: ("The November 7, 1978, issue of Esquire magazine has an exposé of sorts on Harvey, including how he came to drop his last name of Aurandt: Briefly, he stole an airplane and was discharged from the Army Air Corps on Section 8 [mental illness] charges.") Ah, a second explanation -- mental instability.
What exactly is Harvey saying? That we're not fighting the war on terror hard enough? That despite all the complaints about our detention facilities and Iraqi civilian deaths and spiraling insurgencies that we're punking out ... what ... by not nuking Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East? What is it exactly that Harvey thinks is behaving like sugar candy? Surely not the U.S. military, which is doing the best job you can imagine under the circumstances (light troops, constant redeployment and a fraction of the salary of the provate contractors...). So maybe the Bush administration? Not being nasty enough with the Patriot Act for you?
I guess what Harvey is really getting at is that those who complain about U.S. tactics, whether at Gitmo or in Iraq, are soft-bellied sissies. Maybe, like Karl Rove, he only means Moveon.org... Either way, comments like Harvey's are about as helpful to the American image-(re)building part of the war on terror as those Abu Ghraib photos. Just for a moment, imagine the transcript of that little radio ditty being read by an Al-Jazeera reporter... better yet, imagine how the Freeper world would have reacted if the same comments about America's "save past" of infecting Indians with smallpox blankets and using nukes and "greasing the skids" with slaves had been made by Katrina Van den Heuvel...
P.S.: This might have been a good quote to add to Michelle Malkin's "said what?" thread, if she did that sort of thing when a winger's involved... |
posted by JReid @ 10:22 PM   |
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