Monday, March 20, 2006

Belzer: Soldiers too stupid to know about war

Thank God (Insert Hollywood deity here) that we here in America are fortunate enough to have brilliant minds like Richard Belzer to tell us what our soldiers in the battlezone are too dumb to understand! From Newsbusters:
When Congresswoman Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen contended Friday night, on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, that servicemen she's met in Iraq are “saying 'we're proud of our mission, we know what we're doing over here. We don't want you guys in Washington to lose it over there,'” actor/comedian Richard Belzer condescendingly fired back, claiming that to “ask them” is “bullsh#t” since, apparently unlike him, “they don't read twenty newspapers a day.”
Which is more accurate: what you see with your own eyes, or what the New York Slimes tells you (and we ALL know just how credible the Slimes is these days)? Continuing:
Ros-Lehtinen cited the knowledge of her Marine officer stepson, but Belzer, who plays “Detective John Munch” on NBC's Law & Order: SVU, retorted: “Doesn't mean he's a brilliant scholar about the war because he's there.” A quite agitated Ros-Lehtinen sputtered: "Oh, you are though! You are though? Okay." To which Belzer affirmed: "Well I have more time...” Host Bill Maher interjected that Belzer's point was that a 19-year-old is in the army “because he probably couldn't find other employment." The Republican Congresswoman from Florida countered that her stepson is a college graduate, leading Belzer to snidely denigrate the military: "You think everyone over there is a college graduate? They're 19 and 20-year-old kids who couldn't get a job.”
So much for that "they're idiots" stereotype! Belzer, who is a paranoid asshat conspiracy theorist (as shown in the linked article), has "more time" to read about this stuff because he's not getting shot at! I'm not either, so you'll have to forgive me for listening to the guys/gals who are getting shot at instead of the leftist elites in this country who can barely find Iraq on a map! Continuing:
Ros-Lehtinen mocked him: "Yeah, you know because you've been there." Belzer rudely lashed back: "What, I don't f#cking read!? Don't do that!" He went on to argue: "It's this patronizing thing that people have about if you're against the war everyone's lumped together. You know, the soldiers are not scholars, they're not war experts." That was too much for host Bill Maher: "You're going to lose even me...”
Does anyone else see the irony of that emphasized statement? He patronizes our soldiers' intellects and lumps them all into the "dumb as dirt" column, then he has the unmitigated gall to take exception to his kind being "patronized" and "lumped together"! "Good enough for me, but not for thee", eh, Belzer?

Plus, how loony are you when Bill freakin' Maher distances himself from you? The same guy (Maher) who said that the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards (and got fired from ABC over the statement) thinks that Belzer crossed the line! How batty does that make Belzer look?

Finally, Newsbusters makes the following observation:
During the 2004 campaign, liberals contended that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's experience in Vietnam as a ground soldier made him an expert on the Iraq war, but now, by Belzer's reasoning, soldiers and Marines actually on the ground in Iraq have no credibility.
Only if they vote Democrat, I suppose. I guess like Kerry, the left actually did think that military service equals instant war credibility...before they didn't!