How absolutely serendipitous it is that alleged comedian and actual White House propagandist Jon Stewart’s last broadcast of The Daily Show is today, August 6, the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
You see, Stewart, whose influence is especially nefarious when he is revising and distorting history for his relatively young audience, committed his most outrageous such act when, in a 2009 interview with Cliff May, he agreed that U.S. President Harry S. Truman should be considered a "war criminal" for approving that horrific but necessary bombing mission.
Here, for context, is the relevant eight-minute segment:
Stewart's key statements (bolds are mine):
(at the 5:53 mark)
CLIFF MAY: We did do Hiroshima. Do you think Truman is a war criminal for that?
JON STEWART: Yeah.
CLIFF MAY: You do?
JON STEWART: Yeah.
CLIFF MAY: Okay.
JON STEWART: Here's what I think on the atom bomb. If you dropped an atom bomb 15 miles offshore, and you said "The next one's coming and hitting you," then I would think it's okay. To drop one on a city and kill 100,000 people, yeah, I think that's criminal.
CLIFF MAY: Okay, okay.
(at the 6:30 mark)
... CLIFF MAY: You think Truman was temporarily insane when he dropped the bomb?
JON STEWART: Yeah.
CLIFF MAY: He didn't think that if I send troops into Japan, we are going to lose a million lives, because that's what he thought, American lives, and at least a million Japanese lives, who will fight to the last man —
JON STEWART: I'm saying that war is, by definition, temporary insanity. So the things that happen there have to be looked at within the context of that.
CLIFF MAY: We're in a war! We're in a war!
Of course, May was right when he said that we were in a war then in 2009, and we're in one now, and the White House can't pretend it away without significantly jeopardizing our safety and security — which it has.
While it is true that Stewart apologized on the air the next day, one can't help but believe that it was the outrage he generated and its potential ratings implications which drove the apology far more than any genuine sense of remorse. At the time, Hot Air's Allahpundit described the apology as: "He’s sorry, he’s just not sure why he’s sorry."
Thus, as a parting gift to The Daily Show host and those who have been negatively influenced by his nonsense, especially in this instance, it is most appropriate to present Bill Whittle's comprehensive and unforgettable rebuttal of Stewart's attack on Truman, which is seen below.
This also goes out to all of the other intensely naive and self-righteous poseurs who condemn the U.S. action. Two recent ones include a UMass professor who believes we owe the world an apology and a former Associated Press reporter who now describes himself as a "revisionist historian" (HT to Dan Gainor). The latter tweeted on Tuesday that "Terrorism against civilians in #Hiroshima hardly merits space in media unlike #Auschwitz anniversaries and memorials." (Bet his AP reporting was really objective. [/sarcasm])
Without further ado, here goes (also posted at PJTV):
Good riddance, Jon Stewart.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
