Stupid Statements (Part XIII)

Former President Lyndon Johnston made a remarkably stupid statement when he was referring to the war in Viet Nam during his term in office. He said at one point of the war; “We cannot be defeated by force of arms.” Slowly but relentlessly, North Viet Nam’s Viet Cong marched southward until they eventually surrounded Saigon, the capital of South Viet Nam. During the last day of the war, the America officials remaining in the American Embassy climbed into the American helicopters and flew away, leaving all of Viet Nam to the North Vietnamese. As many as 58,000 Americans died in that war, a war in which Johnston maintained that the United States would not be defeated by the North Vietnamese.

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush made a speech on the deck of the aircraft carrier, USS Lincoln about the war in Iraq. In his speech he said in part; “…. major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Not yet, have they prevailed. There have been 4,345 Americans killed and 31,102 wounded in action as of September 20, 2009. Further, there have been 318 deaths of soldiers in the coalition forces also. The battles are still ongoing.

There is an old saying that makes a lot of sense. ‘Look before you leap’. This is what Pat Martin, Winnipeg’s only NDP opposition member of the Canadian Parliament should have done. As we all know, the Winter Olympics is going to be held shortly in western Canada and the Canadian version of the Olympic torch is being carried about in various parts of Canada. Martin was complaining that the torch was only being carried in the ridings in Winnipeg of the Conservative party members of parliament to promote the Conservatives and not in the ridings of the opposition members of parliament. When he wrote the Minister of Sports, he complained in his letter; “I think your deliberate gerrymandering of the torch route to avoid opposition ridings is cheap, petty and offends the Olympic spirit.” In actual fact, arrangements had previously been made by the government that the torch would be carried through his riding also before he wrote his letter. To his credit, he later sent a letter to the Minister in which he apologized.

Sara Palin, the former governor of Alaska and former contender as Vice President of the United States has done it again. In her memoirs that have just been published, the editors of the publishing company removed some of her comments ahead of time as they were either dangerously close to defamation or were outright stupid. One of her really stupid statements was on page 313. She said; “There is a double standard in Washington. If a man is running for office and he has five kids, nobody expects him to name all 72 states.” First of all, I don’t see how having five kids has any relevance to knowing how many states are in the United States but the real stupidity shows its head when she said that the USA has 72 states. Where she got the extra 22 states from is anyone’s guess.

It never fails. It seems that many rich and powerful people simply can’t keep their opinions to themselves when their brains are out of sync. Millionaire U.K financier, Mark Lowe is a case in point. He previously employed a Canadian woman who subsequently filed a complaint against him for harassment. While testifying in front of an employment tribunal in London, England, he admitted that he had sent an email to the complainant which read as follows; “Who is your real friend. Put your dog and your girlfriend in the boot (trunk) of your car for an hour and see who is happy to see you.” He admitted that he called the complainant a “dumb blond” and referred to her as being “decorative”. His response to those allegations was, “It was said entirely as a joke. It was never intended to be an insult.” A short time later, he circulated an email entitled the “Great dumb blond joke.” in which he added, “A woman cannot tell the difference between a packet of cornflakes and a jigsaw puzzle.” His response to that joke was; “I didn’t for a moment suppose that anyone would take exception to a feeble joke of this sort.” I presume that the tribunal will take offence and make him pay dearly for his stupidity.

Politicians never fail to amaze me as to how they stick their feet in their mouths when they speak. A case in point involves Gerald Keddy, a Conservative member of the Canadian House of Commons. He was interviewed in December 2009 by a reporter of the Chronical-Herald in Nova Scotia with respect to whether or not he was hiring immigrants to work on his family’s tree farm. He said; “I haven’t hired migrants to work on my farm but I won’t criticize others for hirng them because Nova Scotians wont do it. Unemployed citizens are no-good bastards who sit on the sidewalk instead of getting work.” To make a bald statement that people who are unemployed are no-good bastards is the height of stupidity. Nova Scotia’s unemployment rate is currently as high as 9.5%. Unless this twerp was prepared to hire all of the unemployed in that province, he should have kept his mouth shut.

Prince Philip reportedly made another of his notorious gaffes by putting his foot in his big mouth. He later claimed that he was merely joking with a British-Indian business leader about his last name. During a reception at Buckingham Palace for 400 influential British Indians, Prince Philip greeted Atul Patel by glancing at his name tag and saying, "There's a lot of your family in (here) tonight." It’s a stupid joke. There are 670,000 British-Indians in the UK whose last names are Patel. Would he have done the same thing if there were 400 influential Caucasian business men there and the man he was addressing had a last name as Smith?

A bunch of nasty people bought homes in a certain district in the Greater Toronto Area for one purpose only. They wanted to rent the rooms to university students. They knew that when they did that, the neighbours with families would suffer from all the noise and rowdiness that comes when young university students conglomerate in a specific area. And suffer they did. Eventually, the court said, renting the rooms in that area was illegal. The students had to go. Then stepped in a real twerp who gave her opinion with respect to that court decision. It was Ontario Human Rights Commission chief Barbara Hall----best known to Canadians for a stupid 2008 manifesto, urging the government to give human-rights mandarins the power to censor media publications they don't like. Well, she put her big foot in her big mouth again. She said; “We feel that students should have access to various parts of the city in which to live and that we all should have that kind of access, and the bottom line is that none of us can choose our neighbours. Sometimes we're lucky and sometimes we're not." How would you feel if the courts didn’t have authority to evict undesirable neighbours especially if your neighbours on both sides of you are drug pushers or the Hells Angels is using the house next to you as its headquarters and you are kept awake all night with motorcycles going up and down your street?

The day after Houston voters chose Annise Parker to become the city's first openly gay mayor, she did as she had throughout a contentious, hard-fought campaign: focused on the brick-and-mortar realities of running the country's fourth largest city. As to be expected, some jerk opened his mouth to say something real stupid. Dave Wilson, an antigay activist sent out flyers which said, “I feel that homosexual behaviour is an affront to the family values of one man and one woman and homosexual behaviour to any society that’s embraced it, has led to the extinction of that society.” Can anyone name one society that became extinct for that reason alone? If he was thinking of Sodom, the typical conservative position is one that holds that the demand of Lot's countrymen was referring to a militant solicitation for homosexual sex, while the opposing non-sexual view sees the destruction of Sodom as being due to inhospitality.