First, to lay the foundation here, you need to go read Paul Krugman (again). I'll wait 'cuz, you know, that's just the kind of guy I am.
So, let's make sure you understand Krugman's revelatory observation. In rationalizing its global, non-selective War on Terror, the Bush administration brazenly and dishonestly lumped the entire Muslim community into one big pot. Al-Qaeda equalled Iraq equalled Saddam Hussein equalled dark-skinned people wearing turbans equalled the bad guys and, fuck 'em, we're taking 'em all out. But, as Krugman points out, that wide-sweeping generalization came back to bite them in the ass.
After having spent years refusing to distinguish between different kinds of Muslims, the Bushies were now adamant that there were, in fact, different kinds, and guilt by association is a bad thing and why are all you big meanies being so unfair? Well, life's tough but that's what you call being hoist by your own petard, no? If you pound home a point long enough, you can't really blame people when they finally buy into it. And what does this have to do with the moronic Len Kutchma over here? I'm glad you asked
Kutchma, like his loathsome little role model Ben Stein, is outraged, yes indeedy, that the Academy Awards didn't turn into a flag-waving lovefest for the U.S. military and why the hell not, he clearly complains. Several reasons leap to mind.
First, despite what's happening in Kutchma's version of reality, the Academy Awards is about movies, so no one there has any legal, moral or ethical obligation to break stride and start pimping for the American military. If they wanted to, they could have, but they clearly chose not to and that was their right so deal with it and get over it.
Second, it's not clear why the Academy, the presenters or the honorees would feel any need to suck up to the right-wing, pro-war neo-cons anyway. From the Right's perspective, Hollywood is nothing but a disgusting cesspool of left-wing, liberal, America-hating, terrorist-loving, troop-despising, immoral, sexually-depraved lowlifes. Having been painted that way for years, it's a little puzzling, then, why those same neo-cons would get their scrotums in a twist when those same Hollywood elites behave exactly the way they've been described all this time. Come now, let's be consistent, shall we? If you're going to denigrate an entire industry, you don't also have the right to be outraged when they do precisely what you've been accusing them of all this time, do you?
Next (and in a delicious twist of irony) we have Dumbfuck ... uh, Kutchma, quoting Stein:
I did not see every second of it, but my wife did, and she joins me in noting that there was not one word of tribute, not one breath, to our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan or to their families or their widows or orphans.
Um, yeah. Those would be the brave fighting men and women who were sent to fight a war based on utter lies, who are having their tours extended under "stop-loss" orders, who are having their benefits eviscerated, who are having their bodies shipped back in the dead of night far away from the inconvenient publicity of the media and whose widows and orphans are being treated with absolute contempt by George W. Who Gives A Shit? who has yet to attend a single one of their funerals. But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good rant, shall we? Fucking Academy members, what a bunch of pricks, right? But that's not the best part. Oh, no, not by a long shot.
Since the beginning, support for the troops has been relentlessly equated with support for the policies of the Bush administration. If you supported Bush, you were for the troops. If you loved the troops, then, by association, you agreed with the administration's imperialistic war policies. If you disagreed with Bush, they you were clearly a soldier-hating terrorist sympathizer.
There was no middle ground allowed. You were simply not permitted to dislike or disagree with Bush yet still be a staunch defender of the U.S. military. It didn't matter, for instance, that Cindy Sheehan wanted nothing more than to get American soldiers out of Iraq before any more of them were killed. Nope. By taking a stand against Bush, she hated America and that was all there was to it.
Now, given this thoroughly phony dichotomy that's been pounded home again and again, is it any wonder that even those who support the troops are going to be reluctant to express that? Because, if that had happened at the Oscars, you know exactly what the headlines would have read the next day. "Oscar presenters publicly back Bush." "Academy bravely defends Republican war effort." Or similarly dishonest rubbish.
It wouldn't have mattered if those people had very clearly stated that they supported the troops while absolutely despising the people who sent them into Iraq to be killed. That distinction would have been totally and utterly ignored, which is why I'm not the least bit surprised about what went down at the Oscars.
Did you seriously expect anything different?
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