In front of camera, talking out ass

[joeblast]

If you've got 16 minutes, here's a great rebuttal to Jon Stewart's asinine comment about the WWII bombings and calling Truman a war criminal. Its sad how people just absolutely forget reality or how things happen, kinda like what's happened with 9/11.

 

You could see it on Stewart's face...his deciding to himself saying F it, I need to continue my line of reasoning (or lack of reason thereof) at all costs.

 

Is it that hard to admit something factual that produced a positive result, just because that's not how you think the world should work? Those atom bombs saved a whole shitload of lives in WWII, whether you would like to admit that or not.

 

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_/Jon...mic_Bombs/1808/

[Trunk]

Viewing that conversation, it looked like Stewart's idea about a warning bomb was thought up on the spot. Regardless of whether you agree with all of the rebuttal-commentator's points, it's pretty clear that Stewart's idea was not thought through.

 

My pt of view: Go on air unscripted for long enough and eventually you're gonna say something stupid. I think that Stewart is brilliant and funny and he (almost all the time) keeps things civil, friendly, with interviewees - even when he disagrees with them a great deal. And there is usually reasoned debate. That's more than I can say for ... most 'serious' shows. Obviously I'm a J.Stewart (and S.Colbert) fan.

 

But, if you don't like Stewart (or even if you just wanted to correct that pt and give history), it was probably a good opportunity to correct a genuine screw-up. Seemed to me that the commentator had some real vitriol towards Stewart. Oh, well. People differ.

[gendao]

I'm no fan of the Japanese aggression, but I'm not sure anything really justifies the usage of nuclear warfare on civilian (or any) targets due to all the indiscriminate longterm health effects of radioactive fallout.

 

I mean, why didn't they drop them on the Germans, then?

 

I just don't think any side really wants to open Pandora's Box of unconventional warfare...

[joeblast]

heh...I agree that Stewart is often quite funny. and that comment was clearly made up on the spot - but therein lies the problem when you shoot from the hip, firing before you really ever aim, making judgment calls without any semblance of understanding of the subject at hand. my point was that how many people who saw that are going to scratch their heads and say (more or less) yeah...ya know, I agree with that, omg we're barbarians! and extrapolate accordingly? when its done to enough of a scale...well, look at the state of media and journalism today. (I know he's a late night comedy guy, but its easy enough to find examples of supposedly unbiased media presentation otherwise. looking at stewart's body language and presentation, he was NOT in comedy mode right there.)

 

I've got to disagree with your usage of the term vitriol, though.

 

vit⋅ri⋅ol   /ˈvɪtriəl/ [vi-tree-uhl] 3. something highly caustic or severe in effect, as criticism.

 

The other definitions were stuff like...to treat with sulfuric acid. Ever handled that stuff before?

 

Personally, I can think of a thousand more caustic ways of chastising Stewart for such an uninformed-to-the-point-of-disgusting insult to history...more along the lines of Sulfuric Acid. Honestly, it probably saved my grandfather from having to go over to japan after having gone through hell battling halfway across Europe, just like it did with Whittle's dad. Stewart should stick to his job, which is comedy...when you start seeing his core beliefs shine through...well, I'd bet money he'd wind up off the air if that were the main chunk of his program.

 

Vitriol I would define as...well, have you seen Hannity's America? Or any of Keith Olbermann's rants? I think the way Whittle presents things is calm, straightforward, to the point - he may have harbored vitriolic sentiments, but you wouldnt know it without inference. No overt sarcasm, rhetoric was mild.

 

Go unscripted for long enough and even your writers cant save you Just like moving in with someone, its only so long before true colors begin shining though.

 

 

 

 

Vortex...you didnt watch the vid, did you. We didn't need to use them on the Germans, therefore we didn't.

[gendao]

Vortex...you didnt watch the vid, did you. We didn't need to use them on the Germans, therefore we didn't.

I watched the first half, but it all seemed irrelevant to the basic question of whether ANY nuclear warfare is justified or not?

 

Anyhow, now you know why Obama relies on a teleprompter like a crutch.

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Funny how reality is becoming more like scripted TV, and TV is becoming more "reality."

[joeblast]

I watched the first half, but it all seemed irrelevant to the basic question of whether ANY nuclear warfare is justified or not?

*scratches head* imho, a contextually ignorant comment. we had no idea of what the effects of radiation were, much less more than an inkling of its existence at the time. all we knew that it made an exponentially larger explosion than any of the bombs we had, and it was much more of a threat to the enemy and a savior of lives rather than continuing to do things conventionally, carpet bombing cities and preparing for an invasion. did you miss the part about Hirohito saying that they'd honestly expend 20 million japanese in defense of the homeland?

 

Anyhow, now you know why Obama relies on a teleprompter like a crutch.

more like Captain Pike's wheelchair on star trek...

[gendao]

*scratches head* imho, a contextually ignorant comment. we had no idea of what the effects of radiation were, much less more than an inkling of its existence at the time.

That's actually not true.

Acute effects of radiation were first observed in the use of X-rays when the Serbo-Croatian-American electric engineer Nikola Tesla intentionally subjected his fingers to X-rays in 1896.

 

The genetic effects of radiation, including the effects on cancer risk, were recognized much later. In 1927 Hermann Joseph Muller published research showing genetic effects

 

Marie Curie spoke out against this sort of treatment, warning that the effects of radiation on the human body were not well understood. Curie later died of aplastic anemia due to radiation poisoning. Eben Byers, a famous American socialite, died in 1932 after consuming large quantities of radium over several years; his death drew public attention to dangers of radiation. By the 1930s, after a number of cases of bone necrosis and death in enthusiasts, radium-containing medical products had nearly vanished from the market.

Radiation poisoning wasn't fully understood yet in the mid-40s when the bombs were dropped...but there were certainly already more than "inklings" that they could pose serious health risks. Ergo, radium was already pulled from the shelves in the 30s.

[joeblast]

~inkling tomatoe, tomahto, close enough to support the context.

 

Point was, you cant look back to that and say it was never justified. Any nuclear war these days of course wouldn't be justified because the dangers are well known and conventional weapons can get the job done more than sufficiently. In that case, conventional warfare had the potential to lead to another few if not tens of millions deaths on top of all the deaths that had already taken place up to that point, depending on how such fiction would play out. Back then, the world was a different place - you cant just arbitrarily apply a 2009 measuring stick to it and compare apples to apples. Its doing a disservice to history - when its extrapolated to the extent it is as was done in Stewart's comments, its about to the point of being revisionist with history and that is just an unacceptable thing, especially when those comments are spoken seriously and aired to millions of people.

[Alchemybot]

Not to be rude, but last time I checked, John Stewart is a comedian, his show is on Comedy Central and is basicly a farce on reality and the news.... so..... why would your really fault him on mistakes and opinions, the show isn't intended to be 'real' news.

[joeblast]

Ah, sweet moral relativism...

[Owledge]

...I think that Stewart is brilliant and funny and he (almost all the time) keeps things civil, friendly, with interviewees - even when he disagrees with them a great deal. And there is usually reasoned debate....

I slightly disagree. I vaguely remember several occasions where Jon stubbornly practiced his ignorance or propaganda indoctrination and kept his intellectual horizon narrow when his guest expressed controversial topics. I noticed that he stays civilized when his guest has some authority that he then bows to.

Many people do this, by the way. A good example is the Spiegel 'interview' I posted in another thread, where the totally disrespectful interviewer seemed to have forgotten that Ahmadinejad is a PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY!

 

Jon is a good guy, but still quite uninformed. ... What do you expect? His show gets the material from the mainstream media. On the other hand ... the many books that he hopefully reads should give him a better understanding. Maybe he reads very few of them.

Damn, he made a special glorifying guest feature with Alan Greenspan! I wish he knew what an evil criminal asshole he was shaking hands with.

 

The war criminal comment about Truman seems to come out of 'generic morality', so maybe you have to see a general critique of using nuclear bombs in it. When you consider how much the whole war is based on crime, then you could call Truman a war criminal, for what is the deciding factor: intent or results? If Hiroshima+Nagasaki hadn't worked, would he definitely be a war criminal then? I mean ... there were two bombs. How many had he been willing to use?

What about Churchill? War criminal? He killed thousands of civilians to get the USA involved in WW 1. Maybe with the intent to reduce human deaths due to supreme US power.

 

Very problematic concept.

Edited May 3, 2009 by Hardyg

[joeblast]

Sometimes its a pain to find 16 minutes The manhattan project consumed 1/6th of the entire country's electrical output, and it produced 4 bombs. First one was the desert test, next two were dropped on Japan, and there was a fourth that was never used. I didnt notice any references to how long it would have taken to produce more at the time.