Around 39 minutes into his interview with Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart has begun to utterly annoy me.
Another edit:
This diary is a perfect case of premature publication. I was previewing it and accidentally hit publish. After barely even getting my shoddy attempt at a quick transcript of an exchange. So I had to rush to even come remotely close to making a point once I saw someone had already commented!
Talk about a headache :(
So, basically, I was wanting to do a diary about the entire interview but after carelessly posting this before it was even remotely finished, I didn't even finish watching the interview!
Also- I hope I never volunteer to live blog haha
Oh, torture. Amazing how Jon Stewart couldn't even bear to acknowledge that because torture is so utterly disgusting, illegal, and immoral that the torture of fellow human beings requires outrage. Especially when the same technique, waterboarding, was a crime that we hung our enemies for. And besides, waterboarding makes it sound like it happened once. 183 times for KSM in one month? And where are those pictures/videos from Abu Ghraib that President Obama will not release. I doubt those contain anything worth being outraged over.
Secondly, his constant interruption of Rachel began to irk me and degrade my perception of him. He couldn't let her finish a point without deflecting or making up a scenario. Such as the wonderful gem that people who criticize the use of torture are doing so in the following way:
Jon: ...But If the place that you start from is he is an evil man who did that to lie to us so that he could take gratuitous pleasure in his own masculinity, like or whatever it is that does....
Rachel: but nobody is saying that, I'm not saying that
Jon: But that's an example of again pushing it to far. But thats what people do, they take things and they go into the next realm
Right Jon. Right. Most people aren't starting with torture is illegal, immoral, and creates more terrorists than it stops. No, they are characterizing GWB as an evil man, or whatever. Oh, and I guess your right, we should all just be passive about the whole war criminal thing. Because FDR put the Japanese into internment camps.
If he wants to dive into the rationale behind everything and deflect assignment of blame because of moral relativism, maybe he should consider the difference between our struggle against the Axis powers and the "GWOT." Nothing justifies putting American citizens into internment camps, but he is comparing apples to oranges. Compare our interment camps with the Soviets, Japanese, and Nazis. What was the greater crime? I'll go with the Holocaust, the execution of card carrying Communists/gays/Roma (and everyone else), the rape of Nanking, Korean Comfort women, the Gulags and Soviet POW camps.
Torture needs to be compared with torture. And by God, if we prosecuted Imperial Japanese soldiers and officers for waterboarding, we damn well better prosecute Americans for waterboaring. And it starts with those who authorized it.
/end rant.