Andy Rooney had a Memorial Day piece up that was worth watching:
He made multiple great points, first of which is that many people don’t think of Memorial Day as anything other than a day off, and that honoring the memory of our fallen should include some memory of who they were as people. Hence the anecdote about Richie M. and his different colored socks and the fact that he thinks about his lost buddies every single day, not just on Memorial Day.
His second point was just as potent- if you really want to remember and cherish the memories of those who gave their lives, or, as Andy notes, had their lives taken from them, the way to best serve their memories is to work to make sure no more young Americans have to give their lives in combat. Idealistic and unlikely, but still a noble goal.
How do the wingnuts react to this? By freaking out:
Useful Idiot Andy Rooney Shames America on Memorial Day (Video)
Andy Rooney couldn’t help himself. The bitter liberal could think of nothing better for his Memorial Day segment than to shame America for participating in war…
Angry old liberals like Rooney will never see the greatness of America, the values we stand for, the people we’ve liberated and the lives we’ve saved.
It’s just a shame this bitter man had to use the Memorial Day holiday to spread his sick propaganda.
These guys have seriously lost the plot and still think it is 2003. And considering that Andy Rooney was one of the first American journalists on the ground as we liberated the concentration camps in WWII, I think Andy Rooney knows a think or two about the people we’ve liberated and the lives we’ve saved:
That is from Andy Rooney’s best-selling book, My War
Bulworth
In Wingnut land the only real purpose of a valiant country is to wage permanent war. Well, that is if people other than themselves actually enlist in the military, leave their families behind, and put their lives at risk to travel to the foreign lands to wage the permanent war.
Little Dreamer
It will always be 2003 for those idiots. They want war, they want to have an outlet for their hate. They want everyone on earth to think the U.S. is some sort of Landlord over all nations who must solve all problems, institute our ways on all, and get all the glory for doing so. They never even stop to consider that perhaps our ways are not the best to follow.
rachel
Remind me; what war did Gateway Pundit serve in?
cleek
WingnutPundit might have a point here:
It’s just a shame this bitter man had to use the Memorial Day holiday to spread his sick propaganda.
El Cid
Conservatives think that if you’re only in the military if you’re a conservative and have thus made the supreme sacrifice for God and Country, and the liberals who serve in the military aren’t really there and are probably traitors anyway who faked their medals and deserve to be publicly mocked by wearing purple heart bandaids.
Krista
Makes sense to me. And my question to the wingnuts: how does it honour the veterans and the fallen to completely negate their sacrifice by entering blithely into war?
The War Amps of Canada have a campaign titled “Never Again”, for that very purpose:
But I suppose that some veteran who got his leg shot off in WWII is a lesser authority than some wingnut blogger, right?
JK
Donation Page for Disabled American Veterans
https://secure3.convio.net/dav/site/Donation2?idb=603213009&df_id=1300&1300.donation=form1
Zifnab
Didn’t the wingnuts scream all over the place about how Buchenwald wasn’t really a concentration camp, it was a work camp? Cause I remember something about Obama’s grand uncle or something involved in the liberation of a Nazi camp and the wingnuts all assembling to call him a liar. :-p
Michael
Rooney also accompanied the Eighth Air Force on the first bombing runs over Germany.
Anyway, I’ve never wandered over to Gateway Pundit before. After reading it, I think it could be fun to make it my next chew toy.
Michael
Because, creating new fallen veterans and mammoth profits for defense industry CEOs honors their previous sacrifice.
Nothing says “I love America” more than a defense industry CEO flying his mistress to a romantic getaway on Mustique in his brand new G4 (with a solid gold toilet)….
PeakVT
first of which is that many people don’t think of Memorial Day as anything other than a day off
You mean another day off to shop. What could possibly honor Vets more than a 40% off sale? /snark
Seriously, though, I’m for requiring overtime pay for *everybody* who works on national holidays – because most retail workers *don’t* get a day off on holidays.
John Harrold
I worked through Memorial Day, such is the life of a post doc. But I generally work through most holidays (no wife or kids). Sometimes people asked me why I didn’t take the day off — I could have if I really wanted to. My general response with regard to Memorial Day is as follows:
Soldiers who died or were maimed at war didn’t do so because they wanted me to sit on my ass one day a year drinking beer and watching a little more TV.
I agree with Andy. Most holidays start out with good intentions, but they all generally boil down to taking a day off. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they should just call them “Sit on your ass day” or “Hang out with the family day” or “Sleep a little more day”, or just “day off day”.
The Grand Panjandrum
Rooney’s piece was spot on, and I agree that his last point was a noble goal no matter how unlikely it may be. Yesterday, David Kurtz put this piece up on the front page of TPM. It is an appropriate dovetail with the Rooney commentary. His closing thoughts were powerful:
jcricket
Like my dad & my grandfather. You know, the kinds of liberal, lifelong Democrats that volunteered as medics for Vietnam and WWII (my grandfather for the latter). Obviously they only did it because they knew they could later write a book slamming the troops. Oh wait, they didn’t write a book.
The last reliable statistic I’ve seen is that the military “rank and file” vote 70% Republican, 30% Democrat. I suspect if Republicans keep treating the troops as basically “useful props” or (excuse the pun) ammunition in their war on liberalism, we’ll see those numbers reverse.
Republicans seem to lose every “group” (blacks, Jews, latinos, gays, women, the military) because of that whole “you’re either 100% with us or you’re an apostate” kind of thing. Anyone outside of whatever tiny lump of compressed coal makes up the Republican rump is only useful if they keep quiet and go along with the current idiocy of the party, no questions asked. It’s like that Emo Phillips joke about baptists
c u n d gulag
I bet none of Andy’s critics spent a day in the military. Unless you count playing with your G.I. Joes until you were 16 as military service…
InflatableCommenter
Well, I saw Rooney’s piece yesterday. I had these thoughts:
First of all, I was surprised at what a good looking sonofagun he was when he went off the WWII as a kid. I hadn’t seen pictures of him from that period before.
Second, I remembered the considerable controversies he has faced in his role at CBS over the years, and how he has handled them:
After making some unfortuanate remarks about gays in 1990, and getting sent home for several months, and then reinstated, he said:
I consider that an example of public humility that we could all learn from in our lives.
Last but not least, I thought his remarks about war were well stated and quite profound, and I daresay that there aren’t many people better qualified to speak on that subject than Rooney.
So, why are we jumping up this morning to see what the foolish and idiotic barking hyenas had to say about it?
Beats me.
cmohr
I see the 101st fighting keyboard division has sprung into vigilant action to defend the right of brave men to honor their country and its ideals by going off to war and getting shot or blown up and maimed or dead. Thank goodness for the proactively alert fighting keyboard division, with invaluable air support from the “screaming eagle” 82nd pundit division, for helping keep this country on-mission to continuously fight the war on evil, which is never-ending and will inevitably draw us into a fresh war every few years.
That’s why our 101st fighting keyboard division and 82nd pundit divisions are (like members of the Manhattan project in WW2) too valuable to put at risk in combat themselves. That’s why Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are serving the country and armed services best right where they are – supporting the troops with their encouragement, support and photo-ops against the scandalous likes of Andy Rooney. We might never have had the more critical service in higher office of Dick Cheney and George W Bush had they been required to be exposed to getting their head and ass shot off in actual war, and as a result, this country would have never had the chance to so nobly project its principles in Iraq (or have provided so many of our soldiers the chance to so nobly sacrifice their lives in that war) had that quisling Al Gore been president instead.
Indylib
I’ve seen Rooney talk about his WWII experiences on CSPAN Book TV several times. The man is a talented storyteller. He relates his own experiences with humor, insight and humility.
Here’s a song I listened to several times yesterday that sends the same message.
The Moar You Know
I don’t like Andy Rooney. Never have.
But I respect him with no hesitation for what he did in WWII. He went through some of the most dangerous bombing runs the USAAF ever faced. He watched crew mates die stuck in ball turrets. He exposed himself to more risk and did more for his country than 99% of this people living in this nation ever will.
And so, on behalf of a guy I don’t like very much, a guy who makes me leap for the channel changing button or the TV power switch every time he appears on the air, I would like to respectfully tell this “Gateway Pundit” person to go fuck himself with a tetanus-riddled rusty chainsaw.
Andy Rooney is a man. “Gateway Pundit” is a coward not worthy of the term “human being”, hiding behind a keyboard and a monitor.
pseudonymous in nc
We joke about the Rooney segment being basically “I’m old!” every week, but there are times when that’s not a bad thing.
There’s something to be said for the Canadian and European practice of commemorating the dead of war in November, when the skies are grey and there’s usually drizzle in the air. Not so many distractions. (The American holiday goes back further, of course.)
ThresherK
Can’t let this go unmentioned: After the Iraqi army went over the border into Kuwait, starting the First Gulf War, Andy Rooney was about the only person on TV I remember that had the balls to show that now-famous photo of Rumstud shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Rooney mentioned Rummy and “his good friend, Saddam Hussein”, full of snark.
(And, yes, it’s the same photo that got on “Arrested Development”.)
It was his way of reminding us that we can’t just give our enemy’s enemy a pile of weaponry and walk away thinking, hi-de-ho, that problem’s solved.
Amazingly prescient for an “old coot”. Either that or some truths never expire.
Tsulagi
@rachel:
Just a guess, but I’m thinking in the still raging OTF campaign. Operation Teabagging Freedom. Finally a priority for the Cheneys among them they can wrap their mouth around.
Ash Can
I’ve never been able to understand how or why the right-wing so eagerly embraces the idea of war, and I hope I never can.
Somehow, I’m reminded of the early 80s, when the made-for-TV movie “The Day After” aired and caused something of a stir (this was back in the days of the Cold War, remember). I lived in DC at the time, and the WaPo ran an article the following day describing the reactions and opinions of various right-wing and left-wing groups that had gathered to watch the show together. One group of right-wing, hooray-for-the-bomb viewers were the Young Americans for Freedom (think College Republicans). The article described their reaction as they watched the scene of the bomb going off and vaporizing people around Kansas City. The scene was creepy, to be sure, but thoroughly sanitized, as anyone who had both read John Hersey’s Hiroshima and watched the (necessarily) much tamer “Day After” would know. However, the YAFers seemed genuinely squicked by the scene. This amazed me, since I was still young and callow enough to think that anyone who was this kind of nuke fan would naturally have researched the subject enough to know that the scene, which did little more than to show people going “poof,” was the sugar-coated product of studio execs looking to get the point of the scene across without running afoul of broadcast regulations or offending all those sensitive viewers out there. It made me realize that these bloody stupid YAFers were actually pig-ignorant of this subject that they professed to embrace, and when they proceeded to blame the show itself for blowing the human-suffering element out of proportion, it hammered home the point to me that they were intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt on top of it.
Clark
It grows more difficult each day to discuss movement conservatives without using terms like moron, nitwit, psychopath, cretin, etc.
grendelkhan
The comments, I think, are yet riper.
I am reminded of how anyone not warmongering is the Antichrist, in the cosmology of LaHaye and Jenkins.
The rest of it–the bits about how war shows how wonderful America is, for example–are profoundly disgusting, but not in any particularly interesting way.
ricky
Thanks for the link. I did not know people capable of writing in complete sentences could do so with zero comprehension.
Jager
My family goes back to Colonial times. When I graduated from Ranger School, standing at attention in the hot Georgia sun, my mind was filled with thoughts of all the wars the men of our family fought. From the Revolutionary War to Viet Nam…My WW1 Infantryman Grandfather and my WW2 pilot Dad never celebrated war and I don’t either. I like to believe that the lack enthusiasm for war, but the willingness to serve began with my New England forebearers who joined the militias. At a Memorial Day service, I looked at my Grandsons (6 and 9) and thought to myself…let me be the last.
JasonF
Only a wingnut could find something objectionable about the sentiment “Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a world without war?”
HyperIon
Read the comments over there and get REALLY depressed.
GatewayPundit’s minions are a scary lot.
alex milstein
One wonders if Gateway Pundit even understood what Andy Rooney was saying. After all, Rooney speaks in artful terms, not talking points.
A man who served nobly, and risked his life, wishes that society could find an end to war…and GP jumps all over him. Pathetic.
Yesterday I thought about the guys I knew in high school who never came home from Vietnam. Dave Porterfield, from the swimming team. Dick Western, my football teammate. John Batterson, the brother of my high school girlfriend. He died a month after he got there.
They were all in their very early 20s. Now I am 61, mourning for the lives they could have had. I guess that makes me as bad as AndyRooney.
Indylib
@Jager:
Here, Here!
Most of the Navy people I know feel the same way.
Doreen
there is some SERIOUS wingnuttia happening over at the Gateway. I could not even type anything over there … would not penetrate, keeping my powder dry!!!
Mike G
It grows more difficult each day to discuss movement conservatives without using terms like moron, nitwit, psychopath, cretin, etc.
I prefer the term ‘bowel movement conservatives’.
Lavocat
My dad lives Memorial Day every day of his life. He’s the only one who survived the war from his whole platoon. The survivor’s guilt he has sometimes wracks him with profound, inconsolable grief. Why me? Why did I survive?
When he saw “Saving Private Ryan” and heard Tom Hanks’ character speak those words – “earn this!” – he said he finally realized that another person knows how he feels.
My dad. He earns EVERY single day. He’s 81 now and still going strong. As he says, there are no bad days. Good days are the days when you wake up.
He got back from the war, whole in body and forever scarred in spirit. But, as he likes to say: every day since that day has been gravy. It’s all gravy after that, son, it’s ALL gravy.
asiangrrlMN
I, too, am not an Andy Rooney fan, but in this, I completely back him over some jackass who is eager to send other people off to die and to kill other people all in the name of democracy and freedom.
P.S. How is peace and no war a bitter ideology? Shame on you, Gateway Pundit.
Joshua
I am pretty sure Andy Rooney talks about one of his fellow soldiers in every Memorial Day Weekend 60 Minutes, and of course quite often throughout the year. It’s clear this is always on his mind – quite common for real veterans, in my experience.
GatewayPundit should go down to CBS HQ in NYC and get on his knees and lick Andy Rooney’s balls in front of the entire newsroom.
Timmy Mac
Not for nothing, but I would say the comments on this thread are by far more appropriate Memorial Day fare than most of what goes on (not even counting the sales and barbeques). A day to remember those who died in war should be a sad day, yeah? Not yet another chance to “make sure you thank a vet for your freedom!” or whatever.
ironranger
Angry old wingnuts like Gateway, whoever he is, will never see the greatness of america, the values progressives stand for, the people they’ve liberated, the lives they’ve saved.
Wile E. Quixote
I went over to GatewayPundit and tore some people some new assholes, and do you know what, I think that others should too. It’s damned well time that we started taking conservatives out and beating the living shit out of them for writing crap like this. It’s damned well time that we called them on their cowardice. It’s damned well time that we started asking them why it is that there are no prominent conservatives under the age of 70 who have ever served their country. It’s damned well past time that we smacked these fucking bastards down and beat them until they learn that there’s more to being a patriot then wearing a flag pin while you’re sucking a guy’s dick in an bathroom stall and then voting to send someone else off to war.
bayville
Comments over there are priceless. Evidently, posting is restricted to those without self-awareness:
As an example, the first post:
And thank you Mr. Rooney for your service to our country. Support the troops and the Vets. Hang the Stars & Stripes high and don’t forget to shine those yellow ribbons plastered on the SUV.
Jager
I’d like for a few of these conservative nitwits to have a conversation like I had one night at a Ft Bragg NCO club with a grizzled old Sgt First Class. He was a Korean War vet and a Viet Nam vet and was bidding his time until his retirement as one of the permanent party of the 82nd. As we drank pitchers of beer and talked about the friends he had lost and all, as he said, of the “kids” he had sent off to combat in two wars from the training regiments he had been assigned to over his career. This old combat veteran, this highly decorated hero said many of the same things Andy Rooney expressed on Sunday…he asked me if I was going to re-up… I said “No”, he said “good, go home and make something of yourself, raise a family an hope to God that this bullshit ends soon and never happens again, you’ve done your part!” When we hugged, shook hands as the club closed, he looked me in the eye, winked and said..”I’m gonna miss turning a bunch of civilian shitheels into soldiers but I’m not going to miss jumping out of those god-damed airplanes!” I think of old SFC from time to time
and I’ve been know to hoist a glass to his spirit on occasion!
Frank
Not the first time John has pointed out Gateway Pundit’s stunning lack of concentration:
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=9875
His posts and the subsequent high-fives in the comments are truly something to behold.
RememberNovember
Douchebag Pundit is still a douchebag. If it wasn’t for people like Andy, they wouldn’t have tin flags to pin to their lapels so they could call themselves”patriots”. Fargin hypocrites. Pull their ISP’s.
Thlayli
@Timmy Mac:
We actually have a separate day set aside for that latter part.
mclaren
Between all the calls to “honor the fallen” and all the laudations of the “noble dead,” we tend to forget what war actually is.
Only 19 military men in American history have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, was one of them.
What did Major General Smedley Butler have to say about war?
“War is just a racket.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
“I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
“There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909—1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
“During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
[Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933]
Cue the screams of “traitor!” and “commie!” and “scumbag!” for one of America’s highest-decorated military men in…3…2…1…
Remember: medals and military service must only be honored when they belong someone who’s safely dead. If the recipient of the medals and military honors survived the war to speak out against it, he’s a slimeball who must be smeared into oblivion.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
We fight them here so the men and women of our military can die over there.
/wingnut
Breecat
No-one hates war like those who have been to war.
notAwingnut
@Wile E. Quixote:
Totally agree and have thought this since the election. It’s time to start calling out these dumbass, repugnant, so-called, Conservatives for the total and complete idiots that they are. If these conservative folks are so all ‘rugged American Ayn-bullshit-Rand’ian individualists’, then why are they so quick to label themselves ‘ditto’ heads?. Why don’t they just join the American Nazi party and get it over with? At least then they could speak HONESTLY about their views.
Many thanks to all the Veterans – each and EVERY day – for your service to our country. You are not now and never will be forgotten.
End War NOW !
Blogreeder
John, I think you got this part of Andy’s message wrong. I don’t think he meant only Americans. I’m pretty sure his point was that it would be great to have No wars anywhere. Unlikely, I agree. Everyone would have to stop and we can’t even get street gangs to stop.
Blogreeder
LOL. You’re so full of yourself. Nobody cares about your opinions. Especially at GatewayPundit.
Your a idiot.
Tim o'Bedlam
Blogreeder, with his pathetic rebuttal of “your an idiot”, has just distilled the essence of conservative stupidity in 3 words. Congratulations.
blogreeder
Aha Tim O.; I see your reading comprehension is on the par with most liberals. I wrote “Your a idiot”. 66% percent isn’t bad, is it? What rebuttal would you have me write against a threat of violence? Not that I frequent GatewayPundit anyway. I’m more of an instapundit reader.