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G.I. Joe No Longer the Real American Hero?
Advocate123 writes "Clearly, Hollywood has forgotten the, 'Real American Hero.' G.I. Joe originally symbolized the American WWII soldier and a great generation. Now Hollywood celebrities are going to turn him into a international multicultural coed task force with no government affiliations. Isn't anything sacred to these people?"
U.S. branded GI Joe's may not sell as well outside the US as a multinational task force would.
Legends are "re-imaged" (and usually ruined).
History is "re-imaged" (and usually ruined).
Classic movies are "re-..."... (Notice a trend?)
Apparently the author of that incredibly lame blog article missed the 1980s, when GI Joe cartoons were full of multicultural characters and fought abstract non-national enemies like COBRA.
I think my hosts file might have been tampered with... I typed in slashdot, but somehow I ended up at free republic. This looks kind of like slashdot though. Hmm...
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Crudely Drawn Games
I mean, really, Slashdot. I understand the need to compete with Digg, and the whole firehose thing, but, really, shit like this is ridiculous and it only works to drive people like me away.
It is comforting to know that if I ever receive a debilitating head injury, lose most of my faculties and embrace the victim complex wing of the libertarians I will still be slashdot-worthy.
Oh no! Maybe I'm out to get the libertarians! Quick! Pen a screed!
Headline from TFA: from the first paragraph: From the second paragraph: From the final paragraph: Seems to be a bit biased to be "news". Also, someone needs to introduce the guy who wrote this to Godwin's Law
G.I Joe is a doll
> Isn't anything sacred to these [Hollywood] people?"
Umm...in a word, no. Is this something you just noticed?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Maybe, perhaps, some of us would rather live in a less self-centered world than our ancestors?
Maybe there are a few other souls out there that don't think the American military is the right answer to all of the world's problems? That perhaps cooperation with our fellow beings on this small little planet, not unilateralism, would be a good idea?
Then again, I thought we were only one of several allied nations who won World War II, and don't believe that France should forever worship us for liberating them from Germany. I might just be crazy.
I for one welcome the mass exodus of our cursing, pointless, threatening, whining-for-attention, anonymous coward overlords!!!
Google for "Project Bojinka." The intelligence community had known about a plan to fly passenger planes into buildings since the early 90s.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Really,
Wanna try to picket a UK naval base and not let the whole fleet group out to go and kick some Iraqis for a week? Want to stand in the way of a frigate coming out of harbour?
Wanna run the gauntlet of Japanese whaling boats and stand between them and a whale? Each harpoon has at least one pound of TNT in it by the way. Granted, it is not a cannon shell, but it can do some hefty damage...
Wanna stand in the way of French towboats towing an asbestous ladden ship to India for disassembly? We all very well know how much they value protestors life...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
What is it exactly that makes the WWII generation better than every other generation that has ever existed? Is it that they spent themselves into an enormous debt habit? Is it that they gave themselves Social Security so they'd always be taken care of? Is it that they fought in a popular war?
What makes them better than today's generation? Today's generation is the one PAYING their self-given Social Security. What about the interment camps? What about the massive racism? Sure, racism still exists today, but we scorn it as a society wherever it creeps up. Were they a better generation than the current generation and the one before us, because they died fighting the Japanese and Germans while the generation after them merely fought a bunch of Vietnamese in an unpopular war and the current generation is fighting an extremely unpopular war? Is my death any less valiant and my sacrifice any less, because those in power send me to fight for different things in a different place than they sent YOU?! In fact, isn't it exactly THAT generation that sent the Vietnam generation to Vietnam and the current generation to... everywhere?
Just because Tom Brokaw tells them that they're the saving grace of an entire nation doesn't mean they are.
As for GI Joe... Who fucking cares?! It's a god damned half hour long advertisement that used to run on Saturdays. Who the hell is dumb enough to sit and actively watch a commercial for a toy? (And yes, the toy company that puts out GI Joe used to slot GI JOE as an advertisement; not a "show").
The WWII generation is the "greatest generation" the way that Guliani is "America's Greatest Mayor". Not so much because of doing anything great, but just happening to be alive during a period that certain events happened in the world.
Hey!! Ken is an all-american pussy. You made him, he is your responsibility.
At least the greenpeace solidier wouldn't rape a fourteen year old girl and then kill and burn her entire family to cover it up and invent a story that they were under attack when it all happened.
You realize GI Joe wasn't about a cartoon, and existed before yours (and my) generation cared about GI Joe? I don't think that their generation was better, per say, but being in an extraordinary situation, lead to extraordinary people standing out. What their generation did should not be taken lightly, however. The "wars" we do now, honestly, pale compare to the wars of WW1 and WW2.
"Without my rifle, I am nothing." GI Joe stopped being a hero the day he surrendered his rifle to airport security.
I don't know... maybe a sense of morality, compassion for other human beings, a desire for learning? Those are pretty important values to me. But more importantly, the freedom to choose my own values and believes are among my most cherished "things". So I guess if plastic dolls is your thing, go for it.
Just don't expect the rest of the grown adults to care about it.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Perhaps those later wars would be more popular - in US and abroad - if people remembered that prior to WWII americans didn't want any part of world politics or being a global policeman. It's too bad that Japanese attacked Perl Harbor and Hitler had stupidity to declare unnecessary for him war on US. After the war it became apparent that Stalin's regime was as bad as Hitler's. Thus the cold war to deny any turf to the Soviet block.
Now we are attacked again - this time by muslims rather than soviets (let's separate communism as an economic decision possibly made democratically from totalitarian government and military aggression). Perhaps american support of Israel was foolhardy, but becoming neutral in respect to Israel vs Palestine will not stop all terrorists attacks now. And Muslims clearly believe in imposing their Sharia law on the rest of the world by force. Well, not everyone who calls himself a muslim, but the more "devote" one is, the more he is likely to advocate violence. To preserve ourselves, we have to fight another cold war aimed to sabotage existing muslim governments and prevent emergence of new ones.
Obviously Bush is an idiot. Saddam Hussein was preventing Iraq from being a Muslim state. Now it's an insanity to support a government based on Islamic laws. But all the same, the new cold war needs to be fought. The last one involved many unethical actions such as atomic bomb tests that harmed many civilians. At the same time, it protected freedom of many countries, including ones that hate US now, to determine their own future. It's naive to expect that the new war will be bloodless.
For decades Hollywood has been changing European history or having the US taking claim for discoveries, victories and so on (capturing the Enigma machine, changing a brave member of crew on the Titanic in to a villain, etc). Where was the outcry. Now this is happening and you're all up in arms...
Tough. It's just the movies. Stop crying in your weak chemical beer and live with it.
So what about the fundamentalists Christians who want to impose their religion on the rest of the world?
You can't criticize Muslim extremism without realizing that it's just their build of a tool we also employ, and have so employed for many centuries. Only in the past we had no competition that mattered (to those doing the conversions by force anyhow).
They're using bombs and stuff (we've done that), killing themselves to kill others (ok, we haven't usually done that one), but that's because they believe that this is a proper way to die, and their god approves. Odd then that the Koran makes no such claim.
So if I believe that having a small, limited government is good (as the founding fathers did) and that capitalism (not unrestrained, but not heavily restricted either; just minimal intervention) is a good thing, just because you believe in Socialism or some other such system means that this article (having little to do with either of these beliefs) should not be accepted?
Wow.
yeah, really easy to do all of those things because you know those you do them against won't take any action to harm you.
how about you go head to head against the Chinese government or maybe the Russians. oh and do it in an out of the way place without a lot of cameras pointed at you.
get back to me and let me know how it goes.
I won't hold my breath waiting on your reply. wouldn't be healthy
Turing Word: forfeit
In a sentence: Go up against the wrong government hippie and your life is forfeit.
It's source is a Fox News piece. You remember them, they're the ones who claimed beloved children's television host "Mr Rogers destroyed an entire generation of children's lives."
Once I got to "Hollywood limousine liberals" in the article, my eyes started to glaze over. The blogger is like The Rude Pundit, only not being as sarcastic.
To the merits of the discussion: Hollywood does not like to get too mired in political controversies. Show me a pro-Palestine movie from Hollywood. They may be socially liberal, but know that certain things won't make them money and will only bring trouble. Still, they support the troops, and get outraged when someone tries to blame the troops. Maybe the fact that the troops have changed in demographics, becoming more black and hispanic and female, means that the G.I. Joe is no longer that representative?
If you are going to base your argument on made up parameters, then what's to stop the other side from doing the same?....Where does it stop? (I know, in this case it stops at your opinion).
/.!)
Here, let me spell it out for you:
The basic formula (long ago established) is:
1. Rape
2. Pillage (modern def.:loot,physical destruction/vandalize, derisive graffiti,lewd gestures, etc.)
3. Burn
4. ????
5. Profit (hey!, this is
So, to correct your post:
'At least the greenpeace protesters would have pimped the fourteen year old girl(and her mom- I've seen those web sites!), pissed in their well, spray-painted gang signs on their front door, and then kill and burn her entire family, and invent a story that they were under attack when it all happened...self-made film at 11!'
I had a run in with you people once. I was a Vet Tech at a major Mid-West Veterinary college.
The tree-huggers (yes, Greenpeace and PETA- a joint effort) decided that we would NOT perform euthanasia on the research sheep!!!!!
(sports medicine research-basically the doctor surgically 'hole-punched'[yes, an actual office type hole punch I had sterilized!] the Achilles' Heel(hock)on the sheep, and tried different healing protocols to determine the best treatment method for torn tendons/ligaments.
Before you and your ilk made their unwelcome presence, we used to use the (appropriate!) research animals as the centerpiece of a big cook-out/party, or, if more PRACTICAL, we would 'donate' the critter to a seemingly worthy person(donate-meaning a 'warranty' on the critter-free health care). Thanks to you, now all that can be done is to rely on euthanasia.
Back to the story....PETA and Greenpeace marching in the doors as I am clocking in at 0800...
Dr. H:
What are we going to do? I have to euthanise the research sheep today or get crosswise with the terms!
Me: How quick can you get the 'blue juice'? (VERY concentrated barbituate used to put critters 'to sleep')
Dr. H.: They're coming in the front door!
Me: How quick can you get me the blue juice?
Dr. H. I have it in my pocket, why?
Me: GIVE! *fills 6 syringes- 6 sheep(Yeah I know..say this 6 times fast...), enters pen holding sheep- grabs sheep #1...injects in jugular....rinse and repeat 5 more times- in 55 seconds*
Dr. H. *meets delegation of tree-huggers, and falls back to my position in defense*
FW's (short for Fsck Wads, ie:tree huggers and their ilk): We will not allow the murder of these research animals...they are only poor sheep!
Dr. H.: Hhmm, errhh, it seems my assistant has already sent these poor sheep to heaven while we were heading this way.
Me:*coming out of pen, stuffing syringes in pockets, give a two thumbs up to Dr. H., and attempt to go on my way*
FW's: Hey! Wait a minute! Those sheep are already dead! We just got here!
Me: Yes, they were scheduled to be euthanised at 0805 today.
FW's: Yes, but it's only 8:06!!??!
Me: Yes, 6 sheep means: "Gone In 60 Seconds" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187078/)
All joking aside, it was very easy to catch, expose jugular vein, and inject blue juice into all 6 sheep in less than a minute. (10 ft.x 10 ft. pen, and the sheep still a bit groggy from the last surgery to evaluate the treatment protocols)....And yes, I am a wolf!
Remember kiddies: if it bleeds, you can kill it! (props to the movie 'Predator' for this gem)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
What a fucking idiotic fruitcake. The G.I. Joe toyline was only U.S. military-specific for an extremely brief time in the 1960's.
e am ).
By 1970, when I had my own G.I. Joe, they'd translated him to -- get this -- an international "adventure team" of explorers. Anyone who's ever mentioned "Kung Fu Grip" is talking about this line of G.I. Joe's. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe_Adventure_T
This editorial is almost 40 full years out of date! Excellent case study on the fact-challenged neanderthal-ism of the right wing psychos who've stolen our country. And thanks for the sidebar offer to sign up for super-cunty Anne Coulter's email newsletter, I'll pass, thanks.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Who is ScuttleMonkey? A Slashdot editor who will post a story about "feminazis" from a site featuring a Climate Change denier "cartoon" charging _The Weather Channel_ with some kind of paranoid conspiracy. A weekend Midnight shift Slashdot drudge.
Sure ScuttleMonkey's in love with GI Joe, and the myth of the "Greatest Generation". Why does he think the rest of us share their fetish?
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make install -not war
Having a small government for the sake of a small government is no better than more government for the sake of more government.
A small government with less power/budget should be less effective at taking our rights.
Unfortuantely, those who make the most noise about "smaller government" usually mean taking the regulators and governors off the engine of the state, not shrinking the engine.
Smaller government? Start by reducing the amount we spend on military dominance of the planet for the benefit of American business. We could halve our "defense" spending and still outspend any potential adversary about five to one. That leaves plenty to defend our nation - while being less of a temptation to foreign adventures and wars of choice.
Then let's go about reducing government powers to issue corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyright and patents, and to run a federal reserve system that lets banks suck in wealth and that bails out speculator markets. (Yes, some of these are federal, some are state; as a practical matter, though, it matters little which level of government employs the guy with the gun who backs up government's demands.) Shrink the engine that creates economic injustice, and there's less need for the (relatively small) regulators of social welfare programs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Unfortuantely, those who make the most noise about "smaller government" usually mean taking the regulators and governors off the engine of the state, not shrinking the engine.
Sigh, I really wish this weren't the case. It kind of bugs me that if that weren't bad enough most of the people the propose a smaller government have been voting for a regime that has moved all the regulators over to spy agencies.Personally, I like the idea of a small efficient government. But I know better than to assume that less regulation will bring that, mostly what it brings is higher bills. Texans ought to know that better than anybody as they presently pay some of the highest electricity bills, while the producers have polluted their air to a degree worse than LA in its heyday.
The issue tends to be that a smaller government can't adequately police morality. And that tends to be a deal breaker. You really can't have a government that has the resources to spy in people's bedrooms and still have it be small.
a) Weaken the military.
b) Look like the "unfree", "antidemocratic" culture we were nominally opposing.
Yeah, this theory is in the "not likely at all" category. The "GI Joe, Mk 2" creation was totally non-representative of the US military. The characters had no discipline, no uniforms in the sense of uniformity, no clearly delineated rank, and never planned anything beyond "you guys go this way, and we'll go thataway". No thinking person saw the military when they saw GI Joe the comic/cartoon. They saw the Superfriends, 80's edition.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I find the term euro-pussie amusing, only because it is coming from someone complaining about what they are doing to the image of their doll. Funny stuff really. Don't know why it has to be "euro-pussie" though, but I'll just let that go, I am not European and I am sure they can defend their own honour.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
...provided one forgets about WWI, the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American war, the Monroe Doctrine, et cetera. And the amazingly little-known U.S. and allied invasion of communist Russia, one of my favorite little-known but vitally important historical events. (Kind of relevant to the Cold War, eh? Not so paranoid for the Russians to fear an American attack if we'd already done it once.)
Oh, and just how did we come to have a naval base in Hawaii in the first place? Or our presence in Guam? The Philippines? The Pacific conflict was a straight-up fight between expansionist colonial powers. Yes, the U.S. was somewhat less vicious, though American atrocities were not unknown.
The idea of the U.S. quietly minding it's own business when suddenly attacked by those sneaky Japanese and then reluctantly rising to save the world, is great nationalist mythology. But it's lousy history. Sure, we'd toned down the foreign meddling for a few years - because we ran out of money.
That's odd. I don't think my Muslim veternarian, or his kids who used to take my karate class, want to impose Sharia law on me. Nor did the Muslim karate teacher who visited my dojo and stayed at my house for a few days a few years back. I don't think the woman in the chador who bagged my groceries yesterday (yes, that was odd) bore me any ill will. Nor did the nice folks from South Africa with whom I sat at dinner at an event last summer (we were all at the vegetarian table). But I think they all counted themselves as devout.
So how's about you ease off the prejudice, friend?
You seem to be confused. The Soviets never attacked us, and the Muslims who did were part of a criminal ring, not agents of a state. 9/11 was a crime, not an act of war. Treating it as war was the first mistake.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You can't take the sky from me...
The "hegemony machine" part is the important aspect.
Look, not only do I know that the military does some good work at times, I know that a lot of the kids in the military are well-intentioned and responsible people (I was a service brat, I got a pretty close look at the military psyche in action.) But the same can be said of the military of just about any country, as well. And, conversely, it can also be said of the non-military governmental bodies, and just about anything else.
The truth is that there isn't much that's defensive about the present-day US military - most of the security work is now being done by the "Department of Homeland Security" (just what the hell is "Defense" supposed to be, then? Maybe it should go back to being called the Department of War, like it used to be.) The de-facto purpose of the US military is to project force overseas. That occasionally it performs relief and rescue services doesn't change that.
The only scenario where it could not happen is if Islam curls up and dies before it mobilizes itself massively for war.
Another interpretation could be that Islam as it presently stands (at least 'political Islam' and those who use it) is backwards facing. There's no real way that they can 'wage war' against modern societies in an effective fashion without an infusion of cash and resources from said modern societies. The 'improvised roadside devices' are as technologically advanced as those folks can get, and even those bombs are fabricated from materials that have to be imported in from 'the modern' and/or fabricated from cast-off or surplus munitions which again are from 'the modern.'
The loud and rather destructive impact of modern 'Radical Islam' comes out of the fact that those folks have soaked up a huge amount of oil money. There were angry xenophobic people in that part of the world 100 years ago who would curse at the 'modern' outsiders, but they were mired in the backwardness inherent in their culture.
Cut off their oil money and let their culture settle down. It will happen. The 'energy model' we presently live under has to subside and be replaced. And it will, long before a bunch of angry zealots can rein over the world.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
What happens to our favorite childhood toys is definitely "stuff that matters" to any (male) nerd, but one look at the front page of the site this story comes from immediately begs the question as to why this inflammatory, hate site should be taken seriously by anyone at all and why it's posted on slashdot.
Unless it's satire (that I missed because I left in disgust too soon), the author of this piece is a raving loon and the site seems angled towards the gun-toting, "bunker in the basement" crowd. I mean he (and I feel 100% safe in assuming this is a "he"), manages to refer to Hollywood liberals, Socialists, and "Femi-Nazi's" before he even gets out of the first paragraph. Do you think he might have a bit of a bias there?
I would expect to find a link to such a site as backup to a Digg story, but as entertaining as the raving might be to some, it doesn't belong here. Free speech is a great thing, but allowing crazy people to have their own web-site, and promoting that craziness as "news" and trying to engage the lunatics in a debate on a science related news site are two totally different things. I wouldn't ban it, but the very fact that this kind of tripe can be posted to slashdot and commented on as if it's just another web site is distasteful at best.
Kudos for the (aprox. 20% of) posters that recognise this hate-speech drivel for what it is and a big thumbs down for the other 80% that think this garbage is worthy of engaging in a debate.
These days, it is perfectly acceptable to introduce measures that are antidemocratic or removing the liberties of citizens. One just wonders when that change happened.
It's been happening for quite a while, but if you want to point at one event that really started taking away constitutional rights, I'd say it was probably when people started taking shots at Regan.
It caused Brady to get shot instead, and eventually (after a number of years of lobbying), the Brady Bill was passed. Instead of blaming the person who did the shooting, they started blaming the guns.
It's been sort of downhill from there.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Furthermore, there is a very real reason to shuffle powers around. It's called Federalism. Basically, the Federal government today runs roughshod over the Constitution primarily because the idea of Federalism and enumerated powers has been abandoned. Like many of the Framers originally feared, the Bill of Rights has become the basis for an exclusionary policy (that which is not explicitly permitted is explicitly forbidden). The imperial ambitions of people like Alexander Hamilton have won out. And one of the end results of a powerful Federal government is exactly the adventurism and foreign interventionism which a lot of big government proponents decry. Piracy still accounts for hundreds of incidents each year, with $13 to $16 billion in annual losses. Which isn't all that much considering that the world economy is some $40 trillion per year, and a significant fraction of that is transported via waterways. Piracy is gone in most areas, a nuisance in others, but it used to be a real scourge all over the world.
My point is that the very existence of "big business" is only made possible by government action I disagree. Big business was alive and well during the Gilded Age, when the US Federal government was tiny compared to today. As a percentage of national GDP, people like Rockefeller dwarfed today's billionaires. Shrinking the parts that provide some oversight of "big business" is foolhardy - like lightening your car by installing light-duty brakes instead of replacing the engine with a smaller one. I'm not really advocating the shrinking of regulatory agencies (although I think in some respects, the EPA is a rogue agency but that's a topic for another day). My main concern is non-discretionary entitlement spending, which we have (as a nation) overpromised and have no way to pay for in 20 years. If the government had stayed within it's enumerated powers or even managed to maintain fiscal discipline, we wouldn't be in the pickle we are today. And don't blame Bush for all of this. He at least tried to initiate Social Security reform, which was promptly shot down by Democrats and the AARP (taxing tomorrow's generation for today's seniors). But, Bush and the Republican Congress certainly haven't helped. Which is why a lot of people stayed home during the 2006 elections.
And I'm not advocating abandoning the social safety net either, I just think it should be shuffled lower, down to the individual states, with Federal oversight with respect to benefits. That way, money in New York stays in New York, and we don't have a welfare system where well over half of the money spent goes to paying the bureaucratic staff rather than actually giving benefits to people mired in poverty.
True, and perhaps with a smaller military, Saddam Hussein would've kept his tanks rolling into Saudi Arabia in 1991 because there would've been no one in a position to oppose him. And lets be clear...Iraq was "stable" because of tyranny and brutal oppression, ethnic and religious. The US "broke" Iraq, but it's not like we invaded Canada. Iraq was already a teapot about to boil over.
First off it could very easily have been an international coalition that stopped Saddam in 1991 and you can bet that if he had dared to enter Saudi Arabia it definitively would have been.
Second, as of right now most of the Iraqi people are far worse off than they were under Saddam (who I will agree was a horrible dictator) and given the effectiveness of their current government it looks like this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
As for the teapot bit, I have never heard of any evidence that there was any kind of boiling over eminent for the country. In fact that's half the reason we invaded Iraq, because our sanctions had failed to unseat Saddam. Of course it's possible I'm missing something so feel free to correct me on that last part.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
The 'mormon bible' that I own is the King James version - the one that most of the Christian world accepts as canon
Not that you accept that as canon either - not that I think you should - to each his own
You find what you are looking for in anything you read or watch - if you're looking for violence you will find it.
I think what you've discovered is that people are violent and they will use whatever means they can to justify it.
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
The 1st Gulf War was not a US waged war. It was called for by the UN and supported by the US, UK and most UN member countries.
The 2nd Gulf War was/is a US waged war with the support of whatever countries it could bully into supporting it.
Either way, the grandparent is wrong about the military being to blame for the current mess. The US military is under the direct control of the civilian government and follows their orders. If you're going to blame someone, do not blame the gun, blame the person who pulled the trigger.
On a different note: sometimes tyrannical despotism works better than an elected democratic government would. In order for a government to function it requires control over the people it governs, this can either be obtained via force (military, police, militia) or via trust. 1st world governments use trust and supplement it with a strictly limited amount of force to keep the unruly elements at bay. In Iraq's case, there are too many unruly elements to be kept back by a limited force and so it's a case of 'He who has more guns: wins'. Unfortunately, the Iraq government does not have more guns and thus cannot effectively govern it's people. Historically despots are far more likely to be able to obtain more guns in such situations, hence installing a despot might have been a better choice, than installing a democratic government.