Tutu attacks “Stars Earn Stripes”
OK, I tried to watch that NBC show “Stars Earn Stripes” last night. I really tried, but between the voice over of that smoldering turd, Wesley Clark and Nick Lachey telling me that “Nothing prepares you for battle like being in a boy band”, I only lasted about ten seconds into the intro. So if you’re looking for a review of the action last night, you won’t get it here.
I did, however listen to Dean Cain this morning on Fox & Friends who couldn’t stop talking about how much he admires the troops for going through that stuff everyday. Of course, some of us might disagree with him on that. Most of our days are filled with mind-numbing boredom, cleaning weapons, checking fluid levels on our vehicles, tightening bolts, replacing track pads, scrubbing TA-50 and then getting it all inspected.
Anyway, leave it to a Nobel Laureate to call it all a glorification of war;
Besides Tutu, signers of the letter are Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Jose Ramos-Horta, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Betty Williams.
The Nobel laureates also declared their support for a protest against the show outside NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters in Manhattan.
NBC counters that it’s not a glorification of war, but rather a glorification of service. Well, we all know better – it’s glorification of profits for NBC. They wouldn’t have put the show on TV if there wasn’t an audience, and that’s more to the point. I’m sure there were a lot of people who enjoyed the show last night who weren’t me (I have trouble staying interested in any “reality show” anyway, because I already know that I’m surrounded by assholes, I don’t need TV to remind me).
Now I’m sure that morons like Tutu think Stolen Valor was about free speech, but they want to influence what Americans watch on TV with their pointless lamentations about the glorification of war and violence.
Tutu and his band of idiots should go back to their own shithole countries and change things there. I’m sure they have more problems than TV shows which are probably easier to change than anything they think is wrong with the US.
Category: Shitbags
Also….Dean Cain is a Republican and took Brooke Shields’ virginity.
Unfortunatly a lot of civilians think combat is like they see in the movies, non stop action. They don’t realise that for the most part combat is days of boredom with moments of terror spliced in. It doesn’t help that there are horrible movies like “Hurt Locker” and tv shows like “Over There” out there.
I did watch and let me just say Todd Palin is a stud. When the other celeb on his team wound up having to be rescued while drowning he had to carry his team, which consisted of 2 other Special operators. He. Kicked. Their. Butt. going through the obstacles. I agree, I cannot stand the presence of Weasley Clark, and the ex military guys having to make nice with him has to be painful.
It was worth it just to see the muscle bound guy who makes action movies admit that Hollywood ain’t nothing like the real thing. Oh yeah he wound up floundering around in the water too and had to be rescued after helo casting from about 6 feet.
BTW- I made it about 10 minutes, and I took Lachey’s comment to be goofing on himself. It actually made me like him for about 20 seconds.
I said Dolvet would win, after he nearly drowned before the first commercial I shut it off.
A truer statement has never been written,”I have trouble staying interested in any “reality show” anyway, because I already know that I’m surrounded by assholes, I don’t need TV to remind me”
Having spent time as Weasley Clarks driver, I could not bring myself to watch this show. I guess the only positive spin I could put on it was that the celeb’s used their cache to honor our military. If NBC makes a buck on it, I’m okay with that. Who knows, it could bring NBC back to the real world, out of lib land in the small chance they realize our people really do love the military.
Well they did get one thing right, how to screw a veteran….
When you “win” Stars Earn Stripes by actually doing something physical your charity gets 1/5th as much money as the douchebags on Big Brother get for being the one individual able to do nothing the longest and 1/10th the money that the idiots whittling sticks get on Survivor…so maybe there is a little accuracy in the show after all…
They can do what they want. They never served. All they are trying to do it pretend they did something hard in thier lives. If they really want to honor service raise your right hand, put on a uniform, and stand a post. Until then its nothing more than extreme excercise.
I also hate the idea of glorifing service because that leads to putting soldiers on the same level as the Peace Corps or Civil Service. The day a Peace Corps member sacrifces thier life for the lives of their team then maybe, until that day military service will always be about sacrifice, which is more then service. Soldiers sacrifice every day. It is 24/7. It is not service it is a way of life, no matter how long your service or where and what you did there was a lasting impression.
Sorry if I am meh about the whole thing.
Someone should remind the good Bishop and his co-signatories of two things. First: one can appreciate (or practice) a skill or ability while at the same time hoping will never be needed. And second: history proves Plato to have been correct.
I have NEVER heard anyone who worked with Wesley Clark say anything positive about him. Everyone I’ve talked to from his former aides on down describes him as a first class douche. So, no. Not going to watch that douchestorm.
Oh, and Dean Cain is SOOO hot! Jes’ sayin’
I saw a number of people from all sides complain that this show does an injustice by making people think war is like a game. Now, maybe I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I watched this last night and wasn’t ever confused in that way. Bright red targets don’t fire back. There’s no enemy. Nobody is getting hurt.
On the other hand, I think it does some good for people who don’t immediately reject the show as glorifying war and, instead, get to see who some of these soldiers are. Too many people imagine SEALs (for example) as cruel, expressionless masters of killing the nation’s enemies, instead of as real people – people with a sense of humor, a friendly personality, and basically in all other ways someone you’d enjoy having a beer with. If the show earns a little money for charities and gets people to see some of our most capable soldiers as people, that sounds like a fair trade for some lame entertainment that likely won’t last more than one season.
Plato has always had some quotes and essays that I admire…
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
He was a wise man who invented beer. (Might be one of my favorite quotes from the ancients)
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. (This quote reminds me of this website, the tragedy of grown men whose lies being exposed by the light of truth shown by this website causes them great angst…it makes me happy to know these types of men fear this light and thus this wesbsite…)
I make no claim to a great classical education, but knowing that the words of those who passed a couple of thousand years ago can still ring true today indicates that we have not changed or advanced as a species all that much. We just have better tools now than previously, our faults, our sins, our greatness, our desires all remain the same as those ancient Greeks….
Only watched to see if they were going to do a number on Todd.
He led from the front.
Including, checking on the team member who feel out.
The Palin clan are real people.
Clark is a tool.
One other thing. The irony meter got pegged out when the first guy to get eliminated was playing for that Hollywood faux charity called Got Your Six.
I’m with Jonn! I lasted about 1 min, 35 secs then threw up and switched back to the MLB channel. During the time I served, no one ever shot at me so I never had to shoot back BUT there was a possibility it could happen. THEY don’t have to worry about that. Any wonder why no one takes people from “holy-wierd” seriously?!?
Thanks Desmond, now I feel like I ought to watch the stupid show to spite you. Also, hope Todd wins just to piss the left off. He should be well positioned based on hobbies and jobs that involve treacherous water and weapons.
I understand that Dean Cain actually uttered the words, “I know there’s a chance I could die”.
NBC was quick to point out (most likely for their insurance carrier) that realistically there was zero chance of death to the “celebrities” and the only likelihood of any sustainable injury would similar to participation in a weekend softball or flag football league…
Softball, Flag Football? Yes that sounds exactly like the military.
Thanks to all who reminded me why I didn’t and won’t watch that show.
There was a show a few years back, just after I got out of BCT, called Combat Missions. Members of various units got together in two teams and accomplished mission-related goals in a variety of settings. SWAT, SEALs, former Delta, vets, etc. They used the NextGen MILEs system and it was fairly accurate to normal situations, including the OpFor.
What they showed last night is trying to hype on the whole “gameshow of death” genre that movies like Running Man and Hunger Games are popularizing. Yeah, it gives the pampered Hollywooders a taste of what some of these guys go through, but only a taste… I don’t think any of them could even handle a mouthful of real world combat.
So let me get this straight – you hate the show, hate the people involved inthe show, but then you go on to hate the people who hate the show. I think you just get an adrenaline rush out of hating.
@20: I think that it just gives you an erection whenever you accuse people of hate.
To point out the obvious, Joe: one can detest (and point out) hypocrisy or stupidity without necessarily hating the individual acting stupidly or hypocritically.
Careful Hondo…..don’t start making sense or anything…
I think I could love the show, in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way…
Funny, the first instance of the word “hate” being used is in Joe’s comment.
Kinda lets you know what Joe is all about…
@Anonymous: I think the problem is not in making people think war is a game but rather that it oversimplifies what our military, and SOF especially, really does. The average person is going to watch and say “look, even this dumbass celeb can do this stuff, how hard can it be?” And the inclusion of 3 female contestants is guar-an-fricken-teed to cause feminazis to say “SEE…women CAN do this job”.
Note, I do not include you in the above but the sad fact of the matter is that the average American IS this stupid, especially if they need to watch a tv show to tell them that soldiers are human and have senses of humor.
This show is nothing more than a chance for the Hollyweird crowd to stand up and pat themselves on the back for “supporting the troops” while pushing the social agenda a wee bit further up the road.
Oh and Tutu and those anti-all things American activists can kiss my a$$. Tell you what Bishop, come back and talk after you’ve solved the problem of 5 year old boys being kidnapped into being child soldiers in your own third world hellhole.
Joe, go ask mommy for your happy pill then go play with your blocks.
I went back and reread every post in this thread and no one said a word about hating the ‘celebrities’ (how big can they be, if they’ve stooped to this) involved in this show. That is an a$$umption on your part.
I’m with Twist. I think Joe just spooged.
Nicki, LA LA LA I’m not listening, I’m not imagining!?!:)
@30 yeah, that image is a retina burn that will heal very slowly.
I don’t watch TV at all, and I missed this show last night, but I’ll have to find a re-run just to see Dean Cain and Todd Palin. Yum!
Also, Todd Palin is REALLY why all those lefty hags hate Sarah Palin. They are jealous that she has a REAL man!
I made it farther than Jonn. I stopped when the one “star” kept asking the hospital corpsman how many people he has killed…
@33: That and she seems pretty intelligent when you hear her speak in person. She actualy spoke at my Brigade’s deployment ceremony. Granted it probably had something to do with the fact that her son was deploying with us.
That and she doesn’t fit the narrative that rich Republicans only send other peoples kids to war never their own. Her son Track Palin deployed to Iraq in 2008 as an Infantryman.
If the winner got to “win” 6 months in a fob as a PFC, then that would make this worth watching.
Jonn, you made it further than I did. After seeing the first promo for the show I was ambivalent, leaning toward not watching. Then I saw that Clarke was involved and that sealed the deal. This year there are two must not see TV shows: “Stars Earn Stripes” and “Last Resort”.
That show was on last night? Golly, missed something I never meant to watch. “Bomb Patrol Afghanistan” was the real deal, Navy’s EOD Team Platoon 732, clearing the roads in Kandahar Province. This documentary had me hooked all winter, for as long as G4 ran it.
I don’t usually watch ‘reality’ shows because they’re almost always scripted. The ads for this show came off as so ridiculous that I forgot about it and did more important things, like laundry and putting chicken in the freezer.
But “glorifying war”? No. “Victory at Sea”, the Navy’s documentary of war in the Pacific, glorified war and only because some of the images were too graphic for release and were edited out of the film. “Air Power”, which was on CBS in the 1950s with Walter Cronkite, was the Air Force’s version of the same thing. In the 1940s movies like “Twelve O’Clock High”, “They Were Expendable” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” were Hollywood’s efforts to bolster and support the troops.
So I don’t see how on earth a silly game show with a bunch of overpaid actors can possibly qualify as glorifying war. And I’m seriously tired of the whiny snots who don’t want the military around berating these things, but they can’t get enough of the troops when someone threatens them.
I’d love to hear Tutu’s reaction if he should ever have to face the viciousness that went on in Sierra Leone or the Congo.
@ #27 (Gina)I can certainly see your point, but I guess my view is that most Americans who are unfamiliar with the military ALREADY have a grossly oversimplified view of things, so while this presents a simplistic notion of what our forces do, especially our SOF, it’s still a step in the right direction. Or, to put another way, some knowledge is better than no knowledge. As for the ‘women can do the job’ angle, I have no problems with the idea of women in SOF so long as we don’t lower the standards to get them in, which in practice makes it almost assured there won’t be any. More importantly, people will claim this anyway – with or without the show. At least in the first episode (I somehow made it all the way through), every celebrity competing was overflowing with praise for their military counterparts, and I think that and the very real, relatable humanity of the soldiers provides a net win. My bias in this view is that I’m a somewhat liberal person, but one very well versed in what our SOF guys do, whereas many of my friends are simply liberal and have precious little connection, if any, to the military. I see firsthand the way they look at the Navy bumper-sticker on my car, and while they are proud of the ‘idea’ of our elite troops and things like the bin Laden raid, they view them as mere instruments of a military that isn’t completely trusted. A chance to see real, human faces, ‘real’ emotion (it’s reality TV after all), camraderie and humor coming from these people humanizes them and makes some of the distrust dissipate. Approaching this same show from a community VERY familiar with the military would most certainly evoke a very, very different response. More like a, “You’ve got to be kidding me..” sort of feel, or so I’d wager based on my own background. Anyway, that’s my two cents. I wish people would simply go out and get to know these people of their own accord, but in the absence of… Read more »
I am all for making photogenic actors do coed obstacle courses in MILES gear over bikinis,(eye candy for all), along with a few “leadership” challenges and problem solving while pyrotechnics guys rattle their cages. That would be a show I could watch.
And then let the military peeps take them to a party afterword.
Well let’s see. We have a show that has little or nothing to do with combat voiced over by an ex_officer who couldn’t win a war, protested by reciepients of an award created by, funded by, and named after the inventor of modern explosives. I believe I shall lay down now, the irony is killing me, one of us probably must go!
I have to admit that i watched it, and will continue watching it. But, before belittling me, understand that i am only watching it for the off chance that one of the SOF guys punches a reality star, hopefully nick (tune in next week, cause it’s gonna happen, i can feel it). Oh, and i angrily fast forward through all parts containing wesley clark, if that makes anyone feel better, lol.
Didn’t watch it. Have the celebrities qualified on the buffer yet?
Since when are all these people “celebrities?”
Scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Well since I seem to be outlier here, in that I actually watched I also got to see the part where when it was announced that the Green Beret guy would be paired up with a WWF Diva, whatever that is, his reaction was “Hot damn!”
Look we all know this show is going to simplify what combat arms folks do, but by the same token a lot of civilians are sitting there going imagine doing this day after day. Besides a competition using floor buffers and early morning police calls just didn’t make the cut.
But still, couldn’t they get somebody besides Weasley Clark to host this thing. He really is a turn off.
Stars earn Stripes, the REAL Military test:
Day 1: Mandatory annual classes
Day 2: Mandatory annual classes
Day 3: Mandatory annual classes
Day 4: Mandatory annual classes
Day 5: Mandatory annual classes
Day 6: Yellow Ribbon
Day 7: Yellow Ribbon
Day 8: SRP
Day 9: SRP
Day 10: SRP
Every “celebrity” would drop out by lunch on Day 1. Anyone who was still there after lunch would be due to their falling into a coma.
It takes years of training, discipline and caffeine to sit thru these kinds of things.
I did not watch it, I don’t want to watch, I will not watch it. But I will watch one of those Extreme Makeover shows, you know the one … where they rebuild a Wounded Warrior’s home or something like that. I have a long fuse for good hearts and I have a very short fuse for Hollywood. Plus GEN Clark is a tool.
PS: @ 43 … if one of the SOF guys punches a reality star, I will watch that episode.
# 48 was me!
@ Eric #47, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! LMMFAO! Dude, they wouldn’t last through the first five minutes of one of the BA’s the Reserve puts together, let alone a freaking AT!