| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
|---|
I'm an American tired of American lies Woody Harrelson Thursday October 17, 2002 The Guardian The man who drives me to and from work is named Woody too. A relief to me, as it minimises the chance of my forgetting his name. I call him Woodman and he calls me Wood. He has become my best friend here, even though he's upset that I have quit drinking beer. He's smart, funny, and there's nothing he hasn't seen in 33 years behind the wheel of his black cab. He drove me for a while before I felt confident he liked me; he doesn't like people easily, especially if they have a rap for busting up black cabs. Woodman and I agree about a lot of things, but one thing we can never agree about is Iraq. He thinks the only language Saddam understands is brute force. I don't believe we should be bombing cities in our quest for one man. We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid. Let's stop now. Thankfully, most of the Brits I talk to about the war are closer to me than to Woodman. Only your prime minister doesn't seem to have noticed. I have been here three months doing a play in the West End. I am having the time of my life. I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre. The play is great and the audiences have been a dream. Probably I should just relax, be happy and talk about the weather, but this war is under my skin - it affects my sleep. I remember playing basketball with an Iraqi in the late 80s while Iran and Iraq were at war. I didn't know at the time that the US and Britain were supplying weapons to both sides. I asked why they were always at war with each other and he said something that stayed with me: "If it were up to the people, there would be peace. It's the governments that create war." And now my government is creating its second war in less than a year. No; war requires two combatants, so I should say "its second bombing campaign". I went to the White House when Harvey Weinstein was showing Clinton the movie Welcome to Sarejevo, which I was in. I got a few moments alone with Clinton. Saddam throwing out the weapons inspectors was all over the news and I asked what he was going to do. His answer was very revealing. He said: "Everybody is telling me to bomb him. All the military are saying, 'You gotta bomb him.' But if even one innocent person died, I couldn't bear it." And I looked in his eyes and I believed him. Little did I know he was blocking humanitarian aid at the time, allowing the deaths of thousands of innocent people. I am a father, and no amount of propaganda can convince me that half a million dead children is acceptable "collateral damage". The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn "agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war. A decade later, Shrub follows the same line: "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people." I'm sure half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their heads over that. I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies. The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold. As the natives were showering him with gifts and kindness, he wrote in his diary, "They do not bear arms ... They have no iron ... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Columbus is the perfect symbol of US foreign policy to this day. This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them "hawks", but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist. To the men in Washington, the world is just a giant Monopoly board. Oddly enough, Americans generally know how the government works. The politicians do everything they can for the people - the people who put them in power. The giant industries that are polluting our planet as well as violating human rights worldwide are the ones nearest and dearest to the hearts of American politicians. But in wartime people lose their senses. There are flags and yellow ribbons and posters and every media outlet is beating the war drum and even sensible people can hear nothing else. In the US, God forbid you should suggest the war is unjust or that dropping cluster bombs from 30,000ft on a city is a cowardly act. When TV satirist Bill Maher made some dissenting remarks about the bombing of Afghanistan, Disney pulled the plug on him. In a country that lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job. I read in a paper here about a woman who held out the part of her taxes that would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that idea, though in the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider money as a form of energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US government's energy focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over the past 30 years, this amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine that money going to preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable economy (as opposed to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of sucking dry). I give in to Woodman, and we stop for a few beers. He asks me what I'd do in Bush's shoes. Easy: I'd honour Kyoto. Join the world court. I'd stop subsidising earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon. I'd shut down the nuclear power plants. So I already have $200bn saved from corporate welfare. I'd save another $100bn by stopping the war on non-corporate drugs. And I'd cut the defence budget in half so they'd have to get by on a measly $200bn a year. I've already saved half a trillion bucks by saying no to polluters and warmongers. Then I'd give $300bn back to the taxpayers. I'd take the rest and pay the people teaching our children what they deserve. I'd put $100bn into alternative fuels and renewable energy. I'd revive the Chemurgy movement, which made the farmer the root of the economy, and make paper and fuel from wheat straw, rice straw and hemp. Not only would I attend, I'd sponsor the next Earth Summit. And, of course, I'd give myself a fat raise. Woodman drops me at home and I ask if he likes my ideas. He offers a reluctant "yes". As he pulls away he yells out, "But I'd never vote for a man who can't handle a few pints at the end of the day!" · Woody Harrelson appears in On an Average Day at the Comedy Theatre, Panton Street, London SW1 until November 3. Box office: 020-7369 1731. |
|
shazam! |
|
fuckkkkkkk. actors are soooo god damn annoying. |
I beleive it was, but I cannot be authoritative on it, not really sure I want to be anyway. I know he has said the same kind of crap before. When does running away ever help anything? |
|
Are you scjdcarter? |
|
|
|
letmegetback2u |
go, woody, go! |
Especially: "Besides, the lifestyle of these buffoons makes their opinions irrelevant. What matter is the ranting of a spoiled diva who awakens from a drug-induced slumber at 3 in the afternoon, to "breakfast" on hummingbird eggs and Malaysian kelp squeezin's? Then it's off to two hours with a "personal trainer" who ensures that exercise addresses those flaws the surgeon can't. A quick "brunch" with her business agent - you know, the guy who pays all her bills for her - and then it's on to a fitting at X Pensivo's, whose fall footwear line costs more than a working man's house. Back to the mansion to "read some scripts," which basically involves having the maid read them for her. Her dope dealer drops by with the week's Happy Sample, which she'll need later on over at the Baldwins' Mazola party. And the caviar delivery is waiting out by the boathouse. Oh yeah, her press agent called. Sally Jesse has her booked for an interview next Tuesday in New York. The limo will take her to the airport at 4; the jet leaves at 5. The subject of the interview is the Republicans' cavalier attitude toward poverty. " |
"Which is fine if you form your opinion from talk shows and tabloid newspapers, and are willing to trust the opinions of ill-informed blowhards. But if you want the facts, and want to make your judgment based on evidence a bit more solid, visibility isn't enough. It doesn't really matter if some silicone starlet raves on about an issue any more than it matters if a star football player endorses a certain brand of colored water. The product - and the issue - speak for themselves. And frankly, I don't relish the notion of the Screen Actor's Guild vetoing American foreign policy. These folks are experts on one thing: making themselves look like something they're not. Lying is their stock in trade, harmless enough when employed to entertain the masses at their modern-day Punch and Judy shows. But their paltry calling becomes downright dangerous when it creates the illusion of knowledge in heads so hollow they whistle in a strong wind." |
What a dick. The reason *most* actors should keep their mouths shut is because they lack articulation and people generally, regardless of what side of the argument you are on, won't take them seriously. "No one dares question Michael Moore because he's important." No....because what he says is too often right. What Woody said above is not necessarily wrong, its just the source, in my opinion. Woody sounds like a dope in the text above. "The tactic is visibility. If Gus stands on a soapbox and rails against Saddam Hussein, a handful of passers-by might hear a couple of words over the street noise. But if Rosie O'Donnell belches some platitude about giving peace a chance, she is on every talk show from coast to coast, and every magazine in the checkout line" No shit dumbass, its called publicity. They have access to microphones and you cant blame them for taking the opportunity, every cocksucking politican does. Where do you find this crap spunk? |
MORE FROM THE HOLLYWOOD ZOO CREW By: Greg Strange "The warmongers who stole the White House . . . have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist." "The war against terrorism is terrorism. The whole thing is just bullsh*t." "This is a racist and imperialist war." Quiz time. What Einsteinian individual made the anti-American statements listed above? Here are your multiple choices: A.) Alec Baldwin; B.) Barbara Streisand; C.) Martin Sheen; D.) Rob Reiner; E.) Susan Sarandon; F.) none of the above. Correct answer: F. Surprise! None of the usual suspects this time. It was actually someone who makes all the members of this Hollywood zoo crew look like towering geopolitical thinkers, if that's possible. Is your curiosity sufficiently piqued? Okay, it was the cartoonish and wildly emotive actor, Woody Harrelson. You all know Woody. He played the part of a numbskull, appropriately enough, on the television show "Cheers." After that, he moved on to the big time, starring in such celluloid masterpieces as "Natural Born Killers" and "The People Vs. Larry Flynt." These days he's in London emoting on stage for live audiences and loving every minute of it. Woody loves the city of London and its people, its parks, the theatre. And apparently he has no hard feelings about having been arrested there back in June after going berserk in the back of a taxi. Cabbie Les Dartnell had just picked Woody up when, moments later, "I turned round and he was kicking the inside of my taxi. He had suddenly gone completely bonkers." After escaping from the confines of the cab, he eventually led fourteen police officers, five police cars and two vans on a merry chase around jolly ol' London town until he was caught, restrained and hauled off to the hoosegow. What made him do it? Nobody knows. We can only surmise that it had something to do with a very immediate urge to in some way physically express his very volatile and artistically temperamental feelings. But all is forgiven in London and Woody has been inspired to branch out into yet another creative endeavor, that of writing anti-American screeds for eager British scandal sheets. And thus, his journalistic magnum opus, "I'm An American Tired of American Lies." Apparently, if you are a British tabloid, your definition of hitting the mother lode is finding a whack-job American celebrity itching to write an article trashing his own country. When you find that, all standards of journalistic excellence, or even mediocrity, are tossed out the proverbial window. Just get the piece of dreck into print and onto the Internet, pronto! All the quotes from above, except one, are taken from Woody's article, a snarling little nastygram to America, and believe me, those are only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to see the invidious thing in its entirety, go to this article by the Guardian. If you don't think you can stomach it, here's a quickie synopsis: America is the root of all evil in the world. That's pretty much all you need to know. He does, however, lay out his personal plan for achieving planetwide utopia in our time, so the article isn't a complete downer. If the Woodman is running things he cuts the military budget in half, he gets rid of all nuclear power plants, he punishes the planet-raping corporations, he saves the rainforests, he discovers energy sources that make oil obsolete, he legalizes controlled substances (dope, in other words) and he charms evil, aggressive dictators around the globe into becoming model one-world citizens. Nice, huh? Welcome to "Woodyworld." Now, where do you even begin to respond to naivete . . . no, abject stupidity, on such a colossal scale? Well, you don't. Why should you? Woody has basically the same opinion of America as the deranged killers who attacked us on 9/11. Are you going to try to change their minds? Same deal with the Woodhead. So, he's an American tired of American lies. Well, I'm an American tired of dimwitted American celebrities whose only talents are vomiting up their overwrought emotions and babbling their brain-dead opinions for anyone who will provide them with a stage for their self-centered little dramas. But this is America and because we place such a high value on freedom of speech, we all need to be tolerant of dissenting opinions, even when they come from infuriating little snots like Woody Harrelson. Sometimes the cost of freedom is almost unbearable, is it not? "Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact." Please note this line: "But this is America and because we place such a high value on freedom of speech, we all need to be tolerant of dissenting opinions, even when they come from infuriating little snots like Woody Harrelson. Sometimes the cost of freedom is almost unbearable, is it not? " |
The Gaurdian (Which I read a lot) or the EtherZone? I like that one alot as well.... If I might borrow something from J... |
as a whole you get all warm and goose-pimply over Non-American's who love you, and bash to pieces American's who don't love you. |
|
|
|
I'm afraid of the world I'm afraid I can't help it |
|
|
"We are begging you, do not let that happen. We are begging you to help us win this Senate election for Paul Wellstone." Does that sound like a funeral, or an election campaign? It was a THREE HOUR event that was broadcast on all local network affiliates. Yes, it is appropriate to remark on it |
many celebrity and politician funerals are broadcast on tv. so what. fyi i don't read half the shit you post, but i did scan the article enough to get the jist. |
Fuck man. they use ANYTHING to further the cause. If it was a republican that died, and they had the same kind of funeral, you would be singing a different tune. But we have more respect then that. Maybe a stripper should preform at a stripper's funeral? Or a baker make a cake at a baker's funeral? There is a time to campaign. The republicans knew that, they cancelled all their ads. So the dems get up there and bash the republicans on national tv for free at a memorial service. TASTLESS. |
yet you comment on 95% of it, don't you? |
this is such a retarded and insignificant topic. im going to buy new sneakers now. |
|
you have stated you want to be less biased and more focused on objectivity, citing you were switching parties and what not yet you only seem to be getting worse in terms of regurgitating right wing senseless garbage. you read so much of it i dunno how you make heads or tails of any of it. |
