Shocking news! Soldiers' job is to kill people!
My jaw hung open as I read a recent Globe and Mail Article that quoted statements made by General Rick Hillier, Canada's recently appointed Chief of Defence Staff (Top General):
"We are going to Afghanistan to actually take down the folks that are trying to blow up men and women," Gen. Hillier said.
He also gave a blunt assessment of the role of the Canadian Forces, which he said are designed to protect Canadian interests at home and abroad.
"We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people," Gen. Hillier said.
Naturally, condemnation was swift in coming. Maude Barlow, Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians and my own personal favourite idiot, responded:
"I'm feeling it's time for people to be as calm as possible. . . . I would love Canada to play a thoughtful, moderating position in this," she said, denouncing Gen. Hillier's comments as "very aggressive."
Naturally -- because when you are going up against the head-hackers and woman-stoners of the Taliban, a gang of thugs who blew up a couple of Canadian soldiers the last time we sent our troops over, it is important to be "thoughtful and moderate". Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was equally thoughtful when he declared Canada a "legitimate target" in March 2004.
Newfoundland-born Hillier, who earned the crossed-swords on his shoulder straps as an armoured officer in the Eighth Canadian Hussars and Royal Canadian Dragoons, is not one to mince words, characterizing the enemy --and that is what they are, THE ENEMY -- as "detestable murderers and scumbags".
This will shock those who think that Canadian soldiers are trained to hand out lollipops, but when I was on basic infantry training in 1994 --a year that saw Canadian soldiers deployed on several peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere -- they were teaching us that the role of the Infantry is to close with and destroy the enemy. To the best of my knowledge, they are still teaching that very same thing.
The General, described as a soldier's soldier, may have shocked some of the Ottawa establishment with his blunt language, but he he is a man who knows what his job is.
--Stephen Staples, a military analyst at the Ottawa-based, left-leaning Polaris Institute, found Gen. Hillier's comments "rather alarming."
"Are we seeing an Americanization of the Canadian Forces?" Mr. Staples asked.
But other prominent lefties seemed to be cool with it. Jack Layton's reaction:
"Controlled anger, given what's happened, is an appropriate response," NDP Leader Jack Layton said. "We have a very committed, level-headed head of our armed forces, who isn't afraid to express the passion that underlies the mission that front-line personnel are going to be taking on.
"A bit of strong language in the circumstances, I don't find that to be wrong."
Jack Layton said that? What the hell is going on? OK, by this point in the article, I'm grinning. In another G&B article, Hillier is quoted again:
"We're not going to let those radical murderers and killers rob from others and certainly we're not going to let them rob from Canada," he said.
He pointed out that during the Second World War, Canadian soldiers did not shy away from fighting the Nazis.
"Did they say, 'No we might be attacked over here if we actually stand up against those despicable murderers and bastards?' No, they did not," Gen. Hillier said..
One question: Where have they been hiding this guy?
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Eminem bury the hatchet
Eminmem's Ass Like That video has confirmed my suspicion that Marshall Mathers III continues to be a master of image manipulation. About a year ago, he was ridiculed for panicking and shoving a bodyguard in front of him when Triumph ambushed him at the MTV music awards --A video of the incident is available here.
It was later explained that Eminem's momentary discombobulation was supposedly because he was unfamiliar with the puppet-dog's shtick. Fast-forward several months, Eminem has now co-opted (exploited?) the popular character's persona for a hit single and featured the real Triumph in the Crank-Yankers inspired video.
The media-savvy Detroit rapper has walked a fine line over the last half-decade, jousting with the media over accusations of homophobia and mysogyny while juggling three distinct personas on each of his albums: There is Eminem, the main character --a mainstream rapper with real street-cred who relishes his beefs with Benzino of The Source magazine, and Irv Gotti's Murder Inc; there is Marshall Mathers, (Eminem's real name)--the doting father and troubled-man persona who tends towards introspection in some of the artist's more thoughtful songs... and then there is Slim Shady, the juvenile, puerile, vulgar, and borderline-insane dark persona whose every utterance seems calculated to shock. Each of these personalities appears distinct and fully-formed, as far as I can tell, differing in their style of rapping as much as their respective songs differ in their content.
A glance at some of the lyrics on "Ass like that" would seem to set it clearly in the Slim Shady catalogue. But for this song, Eminem has adopted yet another alter-ego: His former tormentor, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
I think the reason this song works so well is that Triumph (Robert Smigel's alter-ego) and Slim Shady are cut from the same cloth: They are characters whose outlandish and offensive statements are somehow mitigated by the fact that they are cartoons -- a rubber cigar-chewing puppet and a grotesque parody of a mentally-deranged sociopathic gangster-wannabe: both are so completely absurd and over-the-top that no one can take them seriously.
Throughout the song, Eminem does a pretty-passable imitation of Triumph's distinctive accent and uses many of the acerbic canine's trademark phrases like "I KEED! I KEED!" --one catchphrase that could easily apply to Slim.
In one verse of the song, he raps:
If I offend I'm sorry, please, please forgive
For I am Triumph, the puppet dog, I am a mere puppet
I can get away with anything I sing, you will love it
and in another verse:
I am Triumph, Britney Spears has shoulders like a man
And I can say that and you'll laugh cuz that is a puppet on my hand
Eminem reveals a deep understanding and complicity with the puppet. He knows how to dissociate himself from all the controversy he has churned up, claiming that people who get offended don't "get" the joke: Slim Shady, like Triumph is definitely NOT to be taken seriously. When it comes to Triumph, Eminem gets the joke, because it is the same joke he has been playing on everyone for years.
Eminmem's Ass Like That video has confirmed my suspicion that Marshall Mathers III continues to be a master of image manipulation. About a year ago, he was ridiculed for panicking and shoving a bodyguard in front of him when Triumph ambushed him at the MTV music awards --A video of the incident is available here.
It was later explained that Eminem's momentary discombobulation was supposedly because he was unfamiliar with the puppet-dog's shtick. Fast-forward several months, Eminem has now co-opted (exploited?) the popular character's persona for a hit single and featured the real Triumph in the Crank-Yankers inspired video.
The media-savvy Detroit rapper has walked a fine line over the last half-decade, jousting with the media over accusations of homophobia and mysogyny while juggling three distinct personas on each of his albums: There is Eminem, the main character --a mainstream rapper with real street-cred who relishes his beefs with Benzino of The Source magazine, and Irv Gotti's Murder Inc; there is Marshall Mathers, (Eminem's real name)--the doting father and troubled-man persona who tends towards introspection in some of the artist's more thoughtful songs... and then there is Slim Shady, the juvenile, puerile, vulgar, and borderline-insane dark persona whose every utterance seems calculated to shock. Each of these personalities appears distinct and fully-formed, as far as I can tell, differing in their style of rapping as much as their respective songs differ in their content.
A glance at some of the lyrics on "Ass like that" would seem to set it clearly in the Slim Shady catalogue. But for this song, Eminem has adopted yet another alter-ego: His former tormentor, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
I think the reason this song works so well is that Triumph (Robert Smigel's alter-ego) and Slim Shady are cut from the same cloth: They are characters whose outlandish and offensive statements are somehow mitigated by the fact that they are cartoons -- a rubber cigar-chewing puppet and a grotesque parody of a mentally-deranged sociopathic gangster-wannabe: both are so completely absurd and over-the-top that no one can take them seriously.
Throughout the song, Eminem does a pretty-passable imitation of Triumph's distinctive accent and uses many of the acerbic canine's trademark phrases like "I KEED! I KEED!" --one catchphrase that could easily apply to Slim.
In one verse of the song, he raps:
If I offend I'm sorry, please, please forgive
For I am Triumph, the puppet dog, I am a mere puppet
I can get away with anything I sing, you will love it
and in another verse:
I am Triumph, Britney Spears has shoulders like a man
And I can say that and you'll laugh cuz that is a puppet on my hand
Eminem reveals a deep understanding and complicity with the puppet. He knows how to dissociate himself from all the controversy he has churned up, claiming that people who get offended don't "get" the joke: Slim Shady, like Triumph is definitely NOT to be taken seriously. When it comes to Triumph, Eminem gets the joke, because it is the same joke he has been playing on everyone for years.
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