Posted on 08/06/2008 10:08:17 PM PDT by Kaslin
Listening to National Public Radio on the way home from work, I found the interview -- at least at first -- fun enough.
NPR's Terry Gross interviewed comedian/actor Will Ferrell, actor John C. Reilly and writer/director Adam McKay -- to promote a new film.
All yukked about their careers, and then the interviewer asked Adam McKay how he and Ferrell began their collaboration years ago on "Saturday Night Live." "We had several writers writing a lot of the political stuff," said McKay. "But yeah, I had written a couple pretty big ones with Will. We actually wrote a sketch right after (Bush) was elected where Dick Cheney came out and said, 'Now a message from the president of the United States,' and it was Dick Cheney. And he was telling everyone, 'If you make less than $250,000, turn the channel right now because this doesn't apply to you.' And then he would say, 'If you make less than $10 million, turn the channel. What I'm about to say doesn't apply to you,' until finally it was a billion dollars. And he literally said, 'Put all your money in defense stocks. We're going to start a lot of wars. Oh my God, we're going to make a fortune off oil.' We wrote the most absurd things for him. And Will comes in as George Bush and he's found a stray dog in the parking lot and he's asking Cheney if he can keep him. And then he leaves, and Cheney goes on to talk about how we're going to rip this country off."
Then McKay took off his comic-writer hat and turned somber. Speaking seriously, without humor or satire, he said, "And I looked at the sketch about a year ago, and it's all completely accurate. And sadly it had -- "
" -- All came true, yeah," interrupted Ferrell. All came true?
I pulled into a restaurant, where I stayed less than an hour. I got back into my car, the radio still on NPR, but this time a different host, and a very different subject matter. Wounded Iraq war vets told their stories.
Staff Sgt. Jay Wilkerson: "Two IEDs hit my Humvee. The first IED hit the left door of the passenger (compartment) and blew the door off the Humvee, and the scout, who was behind the driver, he was killed. His body went with the door. His legs stayed in the vehicle. His name was Staff Sgt. Robert Hernandez. He was also my best friend. And the second RPG missile came, and it came inside the Humvee and exploded. And that's where the shrapnel went everywhere. And at that time, I was knocked unconscious. I woke up in Walter Reed Hospital.
"My family was coming in to see me. I mean family members like my brother, my mother, my sister, were coming and hugging me and kissing -- and I was like, 'Who are these people kissing me?' I didn't know who they were. And I had to learn how to walk again. I was in a wheelchair. Then I was walking with a cane. And I had to learn how to dress myself, how to eat, how to talk again, because I stutter now. You feel like you're a child in a man's body. I can't hear out of my left ear. I have a constant ringing. And my left eye is hurting because it stays dry. It doesn't -- there's no tears. And my face, the jaw is off-line. I had multiple problems with my fingers -- I can't bend my fingers. I'm constantly having neck problems -- I had a C5 (injury). I can't sleep all night. I can only sleep like three hours a day, and that's a good night for me.
"You know, it was actually easier for me if I would have died in Iraq. My neuropsychologist has told me my left side of my brain has been injured severely. So that is your ability to multi-task, to handle problems. So what I do, I watch game shows or look at crossword puzzles, and even though I'm in school or at the VA learning these processes, I do it on my own, to try to speed up my healing process. I'm trying to enhance my own ability because I'm a father. I have two kids. I have to show them that, hey, even though Daddy's not himself, you still have to work hard to achieve something."
I understand opposing the President on policy grounds. I cannot, however, get my head around people like Ferrell and company, who, in effect, tell wounded soldiers that they suffer not because President Bush thought the mission important for national security, not because the President considered Iraq a "grave and gathering danger."
No, they endure their daily ordeal because Darth Cheney and his minion Bush lied -- sending over 4,000 valiant men and women to their graves, with over 30,000 incurring wounds, in order to make their rich friends richer still.
Mssrs. Ferrell and McKay, meet Staff Sgt. Wilkerson.
How about all the airplanes they found buried under cloth protection and under large sand dunes in the desert???
That’s the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Journalists claim to produce "the first draft of history." And historians seem to agree with that. But then historians turn around and say that you can't write history of anything that happened less than 20 years ago. And the reason for that is obvious - anything more recent than that, and the "first draft" dominates.In reality, as you suggest, journalism is so slanted as to be essentially useless for historical purposes unless you analyze its reports with such a skeptical eye that very little is left after you edit it down to whatever truth it contains. The reason is simple: journalism (and history) purports to discuss the public interest but journalism's actual mission is to interest the public - and that is quite a different thing than the public interest. You can interest the pubic with fiction, and that is essentially what journalism does in many cases. E.g., the "Duke Lacrosse Rape" cause celebre, and the "Killian Memo" hoax.
So you really can't write decent history of anything without putting "objective" journalism on the stand and grilling it as a hostile witness. "Objective journalism" can rightly be spoken of as a single entity because it is a creature of the illegal monopoly (held to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by SCOTUS in 1945) known as the Associated Press. Any newspaper of the pre-1850, pre-AP era was openly partisan and would have laughed to scorn any suggestion its competitors were "objective." Before the AP, newspapers existed but journalism as we know it scarcely existed - most newspapers were weeklies which weren't in the business of rushing to press with novel stories.
BTTT
I tried to view Talladega Nights but I never finished. It was unwatchable.
Please repost the last paragraph from time to time in the more popular threads. It was positively enlightening to read your description. It is full of the unvarnished truth.
Exactly. I was pulled in by my son and wife, too. "Stepbrothers" had the audacity to do a hit on President Bush before the beginning. That was absolutely the worst piece of GARBAGE I have ever seen in my entire life.
Thanks for the ping. Interesting observation. BTTT!
Huh?
The video you linked to was fantastic. Evan Sayet is brilliant. This should be mandatory viewing for any serious conservative. Thanks for link.
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