Thursday, June 09, 2005
A SPLASH OF COLD REALITY:
Doesn't it just give you diabetes, to see how TV sitcoms turn even horrible premises into silly, Pollyanna-ish, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm-style rainbows of positivism? The tragedy of poor aliens trapped on earth, held up for our mocking laughter? The agony of urban housing shortages, relegated to excuses for bedroom-shuffling antics? One of the worst offenders was a program which I mocked myself in Hadji's Heroes. That show probably has fed the liberal outrage over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, by giving people a foolish idea of how amusing and orderly life is in prisoner-of-war camps.
We need to remind them of reality, so that they will stop their yelping, and let us get on with the job. (Which, as I've said before, is not getting information from the captives, but intimidating the enemies still on the outside.) The Rude Pundit has provided a valuable service for sinking liberal expectations by showing what those efficient Teutonic troops would have really acted like when that "don't ask, don't tell" token American tried those televised tricks. Read it all at "If Stalag 13 Had Been Like Bagram".
Doesn't it just give you diabetes, to see how TV sitcoms turn even horrible premises into silly, Pollyanna-ish, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm-style rainbows of positivism? The tragedy of poor aliens trapped on earth, held up for our mocking laughter? The agony of urban housing shortages, relegated to excuses for bedroom-shuffling antics? One of the worst offenders was a program which I mocked myself in Hadji's Heroes. That show probably has fed the liberal outrage over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, by giving people a foolish idea of how amusing and orderly life is in prisoner-of-war camps.
We need to remind them of reality, so that they will stop their yelping, and let us get on with the job. (Which, as I've said before, is not getting information from the captives, but intimidating the enemies still on the outside.) The Rude Pundit has provided a valuable service for sinking liberal expectations by showing what those efficient Teutonic troops would have really acted like when that "don't ask, don't tell" token American tried those televised tricks. Read it all at "If Stalag 13 Had Been Like Bagram".
Every other time Hogan had invoked the Geneva Convention (for instance, "Colonel Klink, I must protest as a violation of the Geneva Convention the private interrogation of my men by a Gestapo officer"), Klink had crumbled like a house of cards. But when he tried this time, he was slammed face down on Klink's desk as the Commandant exhaled a frustrated, "Hooogannnn. I'll show you what we think of the Geneva Convention." And then Hogan heard a thick sheaf of papers being rolled tightly. Well, this is poetic, Hogan thought....
