sassy/Cynical? YES. Cowardly? NO.
You're right, you are being cynical.
Like I said, and you're probably right. Trouble is, I've just seen the man make too damn many thumb-in-the-eye remarks to cut him that much slack. You remember his "retarded people are like my dogs" remark? I have a nephew who's autistic, and although I know my sister doesn't watch the show, I could well imagine how that would have struck her. Do you really believe someone as basically intelligent as I'm sure we both think Maher is could make a crack like that without a very good idea of the hurt it would cause, but said it anyway? He tries to dismiss what he does on the main PI page by calling himself a "scamp" and a "scalawag" and a "devil's advocate" -- and I believe he says that soon after he asserts he never says anything on the show he doesn't really believe, but I haven't gone by the page since I decided to stop saving transcripts. There's another term that I think is more appropriate, at least at times, and it's one that was also applied to Newt Gingrich: bomb thrower. This time, he just stood too damn close to the bomb. Besides, you DO remember that Maher himself says we should BE MORE CYNICAL!
Poor choice of words, but not contemptible.
I'll compromise -- it was a contemptibly poor choice of words, okay?;=)
In a way, he was very right in his statement. I don't know of too many people who would die for a cause like those men did.
My problem was not with what he said about the terrorists -- as a matter of fact, I happen to agree. I've said in another venue that the familiar to understand the mindset of the enemy will doom us too ultimate failure. It doesn't even matter if we think they're 'brave' -- although I'd agree that they were, and getting irate about acknowledging that your most-arch enemy has what in other contexts would be considered virtues really costs us nothing. Hell, I'd even be willing to say that bin-Laden is "devout" -- morally adrift from true Islam as jellyfish, but nonetheless in his own mind, devout. What matters is that they think they're brave, even though they believe they are promised paradise thereafter.
I abhor what they did, but face it - do you believe in anything so strongly as to give your life for?
I might be the wrong person of whom to ask that question, know what I mean?
My problem is that he called using cruise missiles cowardly, which it was not. "We" (US, IOW) didn't pay billions to have the things invented, engineered, built, tested, and put into service to have them sit in their launch tubes while we sent citizen soldiers into a country with terrain that makes a washboard look like a pooltable. It was smart to use them, it just wasn't smart to use them badly. As I've said on other boards, the mistake was that we didn't keep up the attacks at random, at night, so he could have no rest and we would have a chance of nailing him.
His words have been taken out of context.
Perhaps by some, but not by me. I was watching that show. I KNOW he wasn't attacking the low-echelon military. He was attacking the military planners for sending in missiles rather than sending in human beings who would OBVIOUSLY have had even LESS chance of nailing bin Laden than the missiles, since their attack would have been based on the same information.
I want to go on record as saying I ALSO think he's an asshole for saying Vietnam was a "necessary" war, that it was "necessary" to prove to the Soviet Union and China that we'd stand our ground. He was in his late teens or early 20s when Vietnam ended, and that was old enough to be aware of what was going on. We've all learned in the subsequent years that even at the highest level it was known that the war could not be won (at least, not as it was being fought) and all it did was delay the fall of Vietnam by another 10 or 15 years and squander 50000 precious lives. WINNING in Vietnam may have been 'necessary', but we didn't. Vietnam, if anything, was the sine qua non of "political correctness" because the government allowed its fighting forces to be hamstrung by considerations of international politics. Once that had been done, the only truly honorable thing to do was get them out ASAP.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
