Shut Up And Sing: Just How Stupid Is Jon Voight?

I always smile when Republicans and their blogging tools whimper and pout about liberal celebrities. I do this not because I sympathize with them. I don't. In fact, I'm convinced that celebrities are all virtually retarded. They're a lot like race horses in that they've spent their lives being trained to do one thing exceptionally well. And those skill sets almost never translates well into anything else, especially things like foreign and military policy analysis.

No, I get a giggle out Republicans when they write books like "Shut Up And Sing" because I know as a virtual fucking certainty that they'll be the first to cheer when they find they odd, washed-up media whore that agrees with them. They're hypocrites and should be thrown down a well. Or pushed into the sea. It's Christmas, so I'll let you decide.

From what I've been able to tell, those assholes love Jon Voight best of all, despite his not having done anything interesting since Coming Home in 1978. I guess that's fair, someone should love him since his daughter, the achingly sexy Angelina Jolie, doesn't.

I'll give Voight credit for one thing: Most celebrities are at least self-aware enough to only spout off on easy political issues, such as the impoliteness of racism, or the all-around inconvenience of HIV. Old Jon is attacking strategic arms limitation. Don't get me wrong, he does it exceptionally poorly, but I'll give him credit for at least trying. And, joy of joys, he did it on Hannity this week. Because Sean refuses to appear on any show with anyone more ignorant than himself, Mark Steyn filled in.

To begin, let's look at the two sides of the START debate. On one side, you have every living former Republican secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Condolezza Rice ands 73% of the American people. On other, there's a motley collection of Tea Party fuckheads and Midnight Cowboy's Joe Buck. What position Ratso Rizzo would have taken remains a tragic mystery.

Let's go to the video, shall we?



For those of you who want to sing along at home, the lyrics are here. And you're going to want to, because the weapons-grade stupidity here is almost mesmerizing.

In my lifetime, Mark, and I'm a little order than you, I have seen America go through five wars. And if America weren't the strongest nation in the world, we could have seen ourselves being taken over by evil regimes many times.

Really? Can you name just one, please? The Nazis couldn't take Britain when they were practically unopposed and was basically across a creek from them. You think they were going to cross the Atlantic? How about the North Koreans? Saddam Hussein? The unbelievably silly New Jewel Movement that ran Grenada for about 15 minutes? Voight starts off with an intellectually and historically indefensible premise and only gets dumber from there.

And now I hear Obama trying to convince the American people that if we give up our nuclear weapons, this will set a fine example and all other countries will follow suit. What a dangerous and naive notion that is. If President Reagan wasn't such a powerful force of strength, we never would have seen Premier Gorbachev take down the Berlin Wall.

Ahhh, the greatest of Republican myths: That Reagan won the Cold War all by himself. I love that one the best because anyone who knows their history knows that Reagan was merely following the policies of Harry Truman, the only difference being that he threw a truly awesome amount of money that America didn't have at them.

Mr. Voight is also too dishonest or too ignorant to note that President Reagan also signed and ratified the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. There are pictures of him doing it and everything, should the more paranoid among you not feel inclined to take my word for it. And, just because I'm such a fan of complete records and all, the INF Treaty was signed 23 months before Voight's beloved Berlin Wall came down.

STEYN: Right.

VOIGHT: And are we so foolish to think -- are we all so foolish to think that President Ahmadinejad is going to start building a bomb as he is killing his own people for simply wanting their freedom.

STEYN: Well, that's the point, isn't it? I mean, we are not talking about the bipolar cold war world of Reagan and Gorbachev. We are talking about a world now where every nickel and dime psycho state like North Korea can go nuclear. North Korea, I think has a lower G.D.P. per capita than Zimbabwe. It's down there at subbasement level 5. But it's a nuclear power. Iran wants to share its nuclear technology with Sudan. Iran reached a missile deal with Venezuela. Why is -- why does Obama want to mortgage America's ability to react to those threats to some bilateral deal with Russia? It doesn't make any sense, does it?

VOIGHT: No. It doesn't. And every American citizen should be up in arms and calling their senators to reject this Obama's START Treaty. It's, you know, without our nuclear might, we would be subject to becoming a weak nation and what would follow would be much more severe than what we are currently going through with 9.6 unemployment, add that to the idea that our allies are very concerned about their safety and they are warning us not to reduce our nuclear power because their very protection is dependent on our strength.

For the record, I should point out that I love nuclear weapons and think pretty much everyone should have them. They have a magnificent record of preventing conventional wars, which we know tends to kill a lot of folks. I oppose reduction treaties and non-proliferation on those very grounds. More importantly, their absence would allow America's allies to defend themselves and let the United States concentrate on having an economy again. Remember, if everyone has nukes, expensive standing armies become redundant and wholly unnecessary.

Having said that, stating a belief that fucking Venezuela and Sudan are undeterrable evidences a rather shallow faith in America itself. Besides, it's an awesomely dishonest argument to begin with. Nobody is suggesting that START is going to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely. The superpowers are still going to have enough to vaporize shitheels like Hugo Chavez several times over, so don't worry your psychopathic little heads about it.

STEYN: Yes. But the president's view on this Jon is that, you know, if America is just a base of itself before the world. If it shows that it doesn't want to be the super power, if it just wants to be -- and if it wants to put its might up for grabs and foreswear its great strength, the rest of the world will love us. He came into office saying that, he seems to still believe that two years later, despite everything.

VOIGHT: Well, our President Kennedy in September of 1961 and by the way, of course he served in the World War II nearly losing his life and he stated that American military might is the only way to keep our freedom. Of course, President Reagan was of the same point of view. And thank God he had the foresight not to sign away our national missile defense when he saw the world full of presidents and future threats from multiple nuclear powers.

Voight's right, Reagan never signed away national missile defense. He just couldn't get it funded, mostly because it violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Besides, the Russians know as well as anyone that SDI can simply be overwhelmed by a large number of missiles, so it stands to reason that you want to minimize the number of missiles the Russians have, which START does.

But if you believe that missile defense is made entirely of wonderful, and none of the testing to this point suggests that it is, why are you so worried about everybody else's missiles?You'll have the world's greatest umbrella, won't you?

VOIGHT: Well, I certainly hope, so. And I think, again, a lot of it has to do with the American people. Get on the phones, folks, and make sure that we encourage our senators to reject this thing. You know, I don't -- we have seen this before. We have seen it coming towards Christmas as well. This idea that we push something through and people are thinking about, you know, presents for their grandchildren and wanting to get out of town, they come in and no one is thorough in their questioning or their reading of the materials. And they push something through. I don't know how many more wrong Obama policies we need to see before we wake up to the possibility that this man is capable of destroying our country.

STEYN: Don't even joke about that. I think there is no end to the number of wrong policies he would like to ram through in a lame duck session. But you are right. I think this is the first time there has ever been a treaty rammed through in a lame duck session which is extraordinary. Why would an international treaty being rammed through during a lame duck session?

VOIGHT: Exactly. And you know, his distorted ambitions of bringing world peace about without American nuclear mite is a very dangerous, dangerous proposition. And we have seen over the past two years that he is not qualified to keep America safe and strong.

One of my greatest entertainments of recent years is the dichotomy of Republican views on Obama. He's ineffective and weak - an assessment I largely agree with - yet capable of single-handedly destroying the United States or turning it into Chad. one of these things, as the saying goes, is not like the other.

I'm always sickened by being forced to defend the current president, but he has the ultimate qualification to "keep America safe and strong": He was fucking well elected, and rather decisively so. In fact, he was elected by a rather higher proportion of the American people than the most recent President Bush was. What, for example, would point to as Sarah Palin's qualifications? To suggest that the American people are idiots is something that I'm fine with, but I don't think Jon Voight is.

Oh, and wasn't the Tea Party supposed to save America, God, Mom and apple pie from Obama by now? I can't possibly be hearing that life is more complicated than John Boehner's campaign rhetoric suggests that it is, can I?

I'm rather fond of the idea that celebrities should shut up and sing. I just wish that everybody else was as consistent as I am about it. Especially about things that they know nothing about.

In closing, wanna see Angelina's ass? It's so perfect that I nearly cry every time I see it.