Me, I’m just some dork with a blog. If I gave all this up and went to work flipping burgers, rather than suffering for it, my income would likely *increase.* But some people make their living by writing or otherwise expressing their opinions. It is in the financial best interests of these people to *think* before they blather, for they might irritate their customers to the point that they lose real money.
Take, for example, Roger Ebert. A few days back, in response to a few American kids at an American high school wearing shirts with American flags, Ebert tweeted thusly:
Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.
This clearly equates the American flag with the Soviet one… and equates the US with the USSR. Well, oddly enough, this seemed to irritate some people, and he’s been getting some flack for it. So how does he respond? By digging that hole deeper:
I invite you to perform four easy thought experiments:
1. You and four friends are in Boston and attend the St. Patrick’s Day parade wearing matching Union Jack t-shirts, which of course you have every right to do.
2. You and your pals are in Chicago on Pulaski Day, and wear a t-shirt with a photograph of Joseph Stalin, which is your right.
3. In San Francisco’s Chinatown for the parade, your crowd wears t-shirts saying “My granddad was at the Rape of Nanking and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
4. In Chicago for the Bud Billiken Parade, you and your crowd, back in shape after three hospitalizations, turn up with matching t-shirts sporting the Confederate flag.
Now, with just a moment’s cogitation, even the leftiest of lefties can see where his analogies fall entirely flat. Here, I shall re-write them to be more relevant to the discussion:
I invite you to perform four easy thought experiments:
1. You and four friends are in Boston and attend the St. Patrick’s Day parade wearing matching US Flag t-shirts, which of course you have every right to do.
2. You and your pals are in Chicago on Pulaski Day, and wear a t-shirt with a photograph of Harry Truman, which is your right.
3. In San Francisco’s Chinatown for the parade, your crowd wears t-shirts saying “My granddad was at the bombing of Pearl Harbor and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
4. In Chicago for the Bud Billiken Parade, you and your crowd turn up with matching t-shirts sporting the US flag.
Spot the differences? The kids who got in trouble weren’t sporting the flags of the “enemy” out in Morgan Hill, CA. Even with respect to Cinco De Mayo, the “enemy” flag would have been that of *France,* not the US. Who would get upset at a display of the US flag on St. Patrick’s Day? Or Chinese New Year? Or Pulaski Day? Or MLK Jr. Day? Nobody, that’s friggen’ who. And that’s the point: not that people who wear US flags on Cinco De Mayo are jackholes, but that those who complain about the US flag on any day ARE jackholes.
So, Chicago Sun-Times… if you’re looking for someone to spout opinions… I work cheap. And I’m substantially less of a moron than Ebert.
7 Responses to “Know when to shut up”
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I think Ebert needs to retire. This may have been “a nation of immigrants,” but it certainly has become a country divided by the heritages (real and imagined) of various ethnic groups. Why do they come here and celebrate what they came to escape? Why celebrate differences?
I have no idea who Pulaski might have been, and Bud Billiken is new one to me. I have lost my curiosity concerning the various folk heroes of the masses yearning to be declared oppressed.
I would say it was the merlot talking, but most drunks aren’t that stupid. Must be that severe case of leftardedness.
Ebert… another useful idiot.
I think they installed Ebert’s voice box in his a** as only s**t comes out of it.
Ah the golden years, between the time ‘lil fat Ebert lost his voice and when they installed the voice box!
So I wonder if James Earl Jones’s voice was an option for the voice box.
I always trusted his take on movies over Siskel’s, but thought they were probably both paid off or threatened by the movie industry to give the reviews that the movie companies wanted of their films.
Anyone who thinks that “Titanic” was a great movie is either compromised or brain damaged.
That goes double for “Hurt Locker” which is a complete suck-job of a movie.
You know guys, instead of using the .50 caliber single-shot sniper rifle to try to kill them, why don’t you use the full-auto .50 caliber M2 on your vehicle to just strafe the little building till it falls apart?
Give me a fucking break.
Also, what exactly is a IED removal unit doing cruising around in the middle of the desert anyway?
They are supposed to be called into action when ground forces spot something suspicious, not running around like the Rat Patrol in the middle of nowhere looking for trouble.
The really annoying thing about “Hurt Locker” is there is a great story there to be told, and you weren’t going to see it here.
Frankly, the first thing I’d do on finding an electrical wire buried under the ground isn’t start pulling on it to see what it was attached to.
You would cut it, and then _carefully_ start unearthing its wires to find out what it was attached to, because the things it was attached to could have sabotage charges mounted under them that would detonate if they were moved.
The scene in the movie where the soldier starts pulling on the wires that are attached to the buried artillery shells is ludicrous; he’d have failed explosive removal training in the Army the first time he tried it, and a mistake that huge would have washed him out around a week into his training, as that would be one of the first lessons he would be taught.
The same goes for the bomb in the car – you don’t even try to defuse it, you simply evacuate the area and then blow it from a distance in the safest way possible, if you even _think_ there is a bomb in the car.
Complete bullshit.