Jon Stewart admits error, praises Charlton Heston

[jazzhound]

The other night Jon Stewart was in classic form in a takedown of Faux News --- perhaps you caught the segment titled "Extremist Makeover -- Homeland Edition". The segment took at interesting turn at roughly the seven minute mark when he drew a parallel between the dishonorable objections to the Muslim community center and those directed at the NRA following Columbine. He admitted that it was wrong to claim that sensitivity for the victims of Columbine should warrant the change of venue for a scheduled NRA convention, while featuring clips of Heston speaking in defense of the NRA:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19/jon-stewart-mosque_n_688546.html

[Skittles]

1. oh, the irony

no doubt that conservative piece of shit Heston would be SCREAMING about the mosque

[jazzhound]

2. With your cheap speculation do you announce

your bigotry.

[Skittles]

3. LOLOL

:rofl:

[jazzhound]

4. Well there's an intelligent response.

Laugh all you want. Irony indeed! You are precisely the breed of hypocritical "progressive" that Stewart loves going after!

[Skittles]

5. Heston was an intolerant piece of shit

except when yapping about guns

*DONE*

[jazzhound]

6. *DONE* because you can't defend your hypocrisy!!

Jon Stewart is a big enough man to admit he erred, but you ASSUME that Charlton Heston -- were he to be alive-- WOULDN'T be a big enough man to maintain philosophical consistency.

Your bias is exposed -- and you apparently lack the wisdom to recognize it.

[jazzhound]

15. Clarification of above post

The hypocrisy I'm referring to involves the (presumed) adherence to the "innocent until proven guilty" principle while judging Heston guilty without a trial.

Sometimes I catch myself expecting others to read my mind.

Post #1 and all that follow from same member serve IMO to underline what has been pointed out numerous times on this forum -- which is that when it comes to the gun rights/gun "control" debate, progressives lose their minds and revert to behaviors that they despise in their ideological opponents.

[SteveM]

17. Classic troll punk-out, his; billions served.

[virginia mountainman]

13. No your not "DONE" ......

Stand here and eat your false words.....

Heston campaigned for Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Reportedly, when an Oklahoma movie theater premiering his movie El Cid was segregated, he joined a picket line outside in 1961.Heston makes no reference to this in his autobiography, but describes traveling to Oklahoma City to picket segregated restaurants, much to the chagrin of Allied Artists, the producers of El Cid.

During the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom held in Washington, D.C. in 1963, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. In later speeches, Heston said he helped the civil rights cause "long before Hollywood found it fashionable."

He opposed the Vietnam War and in 1969 was approached by the Democratic Party to run for the U.S. Senate. He agonized over the decision and ultimately determined he could never give up acting

[proteus_lives]

14. He was especially intolerant when he was standing with MLK.

:eyes:

[SteveM]

16. Listen up, ignorant one...

During the 50s/60s when other "Hollywood-types" were watching from the sidelines, Heston was on the front lines, marching with civil rights leaders in the streets. His defense of civil rights INCLUDED the Second Amendment, and he has a better track record for defending ALL civil rights than you can conjure in another half-a-dozen lifetimes.

Please, leave the troll bathroom wall finger-painting to other forums. As the serious poker player and all the women say: "You got nothing to show."

[beevul]

20. Bwahahahahahahahahaha.

There IS definitely some intolerance about, I'll say that much...


That there is the 1963 civil rights march, FYI.



Hope your hungry.

[jazzhound]

21. Looks like poor Skittles got hit by a very large truck.

I'm passing around a Get Well Soon card, and I damn well expect you all to sign it!!! :)

[Euromutt]

7. You're talking about the same Charlton Heston who marched with MLK in 1963

Who campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in '56 and JFK in '60; who picketed a movie theater in Oklahoma that was segregating showings of El Cid in '61, as well as picketing segregated restaurants.

Whatever the man's position on gun rights or "political correctness", I think he might have been a damn sight more supportive of minority rights than you give him credit for.

[hlthe2b]

10. You are right, of course... the question for me...

is whether he retained those progressive views, regardless of his dedication (or obsession) to gun rights later in life. Clearly, he was a civil rights progressive early on. Yet, Reagan was one who also espoused liberal Democratic principals early on in his life before take a hard rightward turn and attacking those same progressive values.

With respect to Heston, I really don't know the answer to that... But, I don't look upon him in any way as I would today's horrendously divisive self-serving and overtly racist RETHUGS. I do think he retained integrity, though I vehemently disagreed with him with respect to the extreme bounds of his gun advocacy.

[Euromutt]

12. A fair question

Heston himself said, in so many words, that the nature of the values regarded as "progressive" shifted from the 1960s to the 1980s, and that it wasn't so much that his values had changed, as that the political landscape had moved around him. I think he had a fundamentally egalitarian mindset, in that he thought everyone should have access to the same opportunities. I'm aware he disliked Affirmative Action, for example, and while I personally would disagree with him on that score, I would acknowledge that his position might be more principled ("everybody should have the same opportunities") whereas mine would sacrifice principle for pragmatism ("given the entrenched obstacles for women and ethnic minorities to advance, unless we give them an 'unfair' advantage now, we're not going to see actual equality in my lifetime, let alone yours, Chas"). My point being that I wouldn't automatically dismiss anyone opposed to Affirmative Action as being motivated by racism.

I think Heston, for all his faults, would have defended the right of any religious group to establish a center of worship on any piece of real estate that anyone had seen fit to sell them. In a sense, there's nothing "conservative" about opposition to the Granada Mosque, in that said opposition denies the right of the property owner to do with his property as he sees fit. But then again, agitating for certain freedoms for oneself that one is all too readily willing to deny to another is, in practice, an all too often encountered characteristic of the conservative end of the political spectrum.

[SteveM]

18. Part of the change came from the "cultural excesses" of the 60s...

Members of the "Rat Pack" (Sinatra, Davis, etc.) and others of the old-line liberal establishment complained of the cultural aspects of the 60s, as well as of the "identity politics" of the time (which persist to a lesser extent today), which caused a shift to the Republican Party, at least as far as Nixon and to some extent Reagan.

I'm not sure what you mean by "...the extreme bounds of his gun advocacy." What are these?

[TheWraith]

19. If he did, he'd be a hypocrite and worthy of being denounced.

He had it right the first time. Making other people who share some characteristic with madmen answer for the crimes of those madmen is contrary to the entire idea of justice. I, like Carl Paladino, am a white male from western New York state with an interest in politics. But that doesn't qualify me to be held accountable for his actions and beliefs.

[Euromutt]

8. Like my opinion of Jon Stewart needed improving...

Kudos to him for identifying the parallel, that a bunch of people having one thing in common with the perpetrators of an atrocity is insufficient grounds to smear those people with guilt by association. Certainly, a bunch of people who claim nothing more than to be offended should not be allowed to trump the exercise of constitutional rights.

There is, admittedly, one big difference: the NRA will hold next year's convention elsewhere, but once a piece of ground is consecrated as a mosque, it will--as far as muslims are concerned--remain holy ground in perpetuity.

[hlthe2b]

9. Jon and his staff so exceed the MSM and all the rest of their ilck

in terms of intelligence, thoughtful analysis (albeit in the name of parody and mocking humor).... I'm starting to think we should turn the country over to the best comedians--whose livelihood requires them to think on their feet and to use those sharp analytic intellectual tools. Al Franken, likewise has shown his ability to cut to the chase and to readily expose the idiocy that surrounds him (generally from the "Right") in Congress... Now, I'm starting to wonder if Alan Grayson might not have had some comedic "chops" in his earlier days...:)

[Euromutt]

11. A tempting idea, but...

...the ability to deliver an accurate and stinging critique upon what another is doing wrong does not necessarily translate into an ability to do well oneself in that arena. To draw a crude analogy, being a skilled court jester does not mean has the wherewithal to be an effective king. And I do think Stewart, Colbert, and any number of topical comedians might be better employed in the role historically performed by court jesters. Those guys weren't just pratfalls and pigs' bladders on sticks: they got to mock the members of the court, visiting senior nobility, and--if they were really skilled--the king himself.

I can see the benefits of having a comedian in the Oval Office, but as the president's bullshit detector (including for any bullshit the president produces himself) rather than as the president.

[DissedByBush]

22. The lies were worse about the NRA

The NRA did vastly scale back the planned activities that normally surround the annual convention.

That didn't leave much more than the actual meeting REQUIRED by their charter under state law.

When you have a mandatory meeting that big with millions of members throughout the country to notify and give a chance to reschedule any planned attendance, it's a practical impossibility I wouldn't ask of any organization.

Any attempt to paint them as uncaring or irresponsible for continuing with the meeting is a gross distortion of the truth.