I was hoping to get back to writing on this blog, but not much has interested me as of late. It's sort of hard to transition from a travel journal to a repository for my thoughts, but having heard about this story the other day, I could not help but vent a bit.
As a short background, Tucker Carlson made some rather offensive comments on FoxNews in regards to a video (video and story) of some school kids singing a song about President Obama during a Black History Month presentation at their school.
Not to make comments one way or the other...okay, well just a few...it is absurd that conservatives think President Obama has some secret plan to overtake the country in a mass-Socialist coup led by a musically-induced band of child soldiers. It was cocaine and gun powder that fueled Charles Taylor's kid soldiers in Libya, not songs and promises of universal health care.
Getting back to Tucker Carlson. I find it absolutely horrendous that someone who compares the President being honored in schools to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is able to have a paid job giving his opinion, even if it is to the tens of people who actually still watch FoxNews. Comments like this, coming from someone who has only known unbridled freedom his whole life, are ignorant and offensive to the millions of people who were murdered during Pol Pot's rule, and the scores of people who still live with the untold destruction his regime brought to Cambodia and the region. I'm all for having free, open speech and dialogue, but nothing currently done in this country even comes close to mimicking the horrible things Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, or any other murderous dictator ever did. Making comparisons like this might be why people who don't have access to freedom think we are a bunch of arrogant ass holes.
Go live in a communist country and understand what it truly means for the government to run your life and control your thoughts before making ignorant, shameful, baseless claims. Having spent time in a country (Laos) where its citizens don't speak out against their government for fear of punishment, I have a new found appreciation for the vast rights that are observed and respected in the US. But, just because we can say things does not mean we should. For most of us, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin, etc. are just blips on the screen of history. Cambodia, Mr. Carlson, has just finished over 70 days of testimony into the atrocities that happened under the Khmer Rouge. I would like to think that for journalists, this terrible event in history is more than an analogy that conservatives can use to scare the nation into thinking Obama is out to destroy our country.
Maybe you should head over to Cambodia and teach their kids some real American songs that are okay to sing. However, this might hard to fit around their daily begging. Which after all they do to pay for school since tyrants destroyed their country and set it back decades.
Jon Stewart's take on this, at 3:30, might be more humorous.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| America: Target America | ||||
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