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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
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I for one welcome the mass exodus of our cursing, pointless, threatening, whining-for-attention, anonymous coward overlords!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
You can't take the sky from me...