Thursday, April 16, 2009

Quick Question...

How can you serve in the military for long enough to retire and still, when discussing the military, have no frickin' clue what you're talking about?

"Don't ask, don't tell" is cruel and should be repealed. End of story. I'll let fictional black Joint Chiefs chair Percy Fitzwallace (from The West Wing) make the argument...

"The problem with that is that's what they were saying to me 50 years ago. Blacks shouldn't serve with whites. It would disrupt the unit. You know what? It did disrupt the unit. The unit got over it. The unit changed. I'm an admiral in the U.S. Navy and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff... Beat that with a stick."

1 comment:

Mike said...

I saw that episode again not that long ago. Thanks to Bravo and my work schedule, I've been able to rediscover "West Wing" and realize just what a void it left when it went off the air. (As far as I know, there are no current shows centered on politics that are of nearly the same quality.)

My favorite part is when he says, "It did disrupt the unit. The unit got over it." Well, no shit. No one ever said change was easy who wasn't trying to get elected. Sometimes it seems like government chooses what's easy over what's right, or even courageous. Have we forgotten the words of John F. Kennedy? "We choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard." Say what you will about his presidency, but the man could talk. And he made good points.

My word verification is "dowlo". Couldn't it for once be "dowup"?