Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog
Saturday 19 January 2013

On Wednesday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed actor Jessica Chastain, star of the film Zero Dark Thirty. There was a moment, at the end of the interview, in which she absolutely horrified me—and, it seems, him (at around 20:30):

Chastain: The cover of ... was about the CIA agent going to prison for talking to a journalist about waterboarding.
Stewart: You can waterboard, but the first rule of waterboard club—
Chastain: Don't talk about it.
Stewart: You should see it, in theaters now, Zero Dark Thirty.

She seems to believe, as far as I can tell, that torture is a fine way to run a government. Watch her, and watch him, during this exchange. She shows no hint of irony, or even awareness of the point of Stewart's joke.

Earlier in the same show, Stewart had this to say about the NRA's propaganda that "armed Jews could have stopped Hitler:"

I wish armed Jews in the ghetto could stop Hitler. My feeling was, France couldn't. And I'm pretty sure they had guns. Russia had kind of a lot of guns, and they couldn't stop Hitler, until you factored in the wind chill. It's an awful lot to put on an oppressed minority when it took the free world five to six years of all-out total war to stop that motherfucker. So let's stop arguing these "what-ifs."

I think he's had enough of the crazies lately.

Saturday 19 January 2013 10:39:33 CST (UTC-06:00)  | Comments [1] | US#
Sunday 20 January 2013 07:26:51 CST (UTC-06:00)
I emigrated in 1998. In the time since I left, particularly since 2001, the militarization of America has been frightening to watch. The attitudes on torture, drone warfare, internment and gun ownership reflects this.

On some of these I've been disappointed by Obama, but I view him as a product of the culture. Railing against him for these views seems pointless since he merely reflects the views of a disturbing number of Americans.

I wish I knew the answer, but it seems to me that America is traveling down a very dangerous road. The acceptance of torture and internment and the views that non-US citizens have less rights, less worth than American citizens... that's a road that has a destination and it's not a good one.
Comments are closed.
Search
On this page....
Countdowns
The Daily Parker +2746d 14h 33m
Parker's 7th birthday 24d 22h 40m
To West Coast 37d 12h 30m
My next birthday 105d 15h 08m
Categories
Aviation (241) Baseball (92) Biking (26) Chicago (673) Cubs (148) Duke (129) Geography (256) Jokes (98) Kitchen Sink (486) London (2) Parker (164) Daily (203) Photography (123) Politics (294) US (892) World (179) Raleigh (18) Religion (53) San Francisco (67) Software (165) Blogs (48) Business (159) Cloud (52) Cool links (107) Security (75) Travel (67) Weather (573) Astronomy (66) Windows Azure (25) Work (14)
Links
Archive
<May 2013>
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
2829301234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930311
2345678
Full archive
Blogroll
About
David Braverman and Parker
David Braverman is a software developer in Chicago, and the creator of Weather Now. Parker is the most adorable dog on the planet, 80% of the time.
Legal
All content Copyright ©2013 David Braverman.
Creative Commons License
The Daily Parker by David Braverman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, excluding photographs, which may not be republished unless otherwise noted.
Admin Login
Sign In