So, Hank Williams Jr. compares Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama enjoying a chummy afternoon golf outing to "Hitler and Netanyahu playing golf together..." and the media's all over it, intoning in a shocked murmur, "He compared the President to Hitler!!!!!1!"
Yeah. Except -- I've heard the quote several times now. He doesn't say who's who. Maybe he was comparing the President to Netanyahu, and the Speaker to Hitler; you can't actually tell.
As analogies go, it's pretty lame. Israel's current Prime Minister is the first one they've had to be born in-country and after the foundation of the modern state. He might as well have picked, I don't know, Emperor Nero and the present Pope as incongruous golfing buddies. Clumsy as it was, his attention appears to have been more on the foolishness of trying to paper over unresolvable conflict between two parties.
Amusingly, he's not the only public figure to invoke Nazis in politics -- Benjamin Netanyahu has done so repeatedly when talking about Iran.
C'mon, guys, are we going to have to make Internet trolls write you (at great length) about Godwin's Law?
Gee, it's a good thing no one ever compared Dubya to Hitler, isn't it? ;)
ReplyDeleteI believe that, when discussing Iran, Godwin's Law is inoperative.
ReplyDeleteOr should be.
Iran just wants to be Nazi Germany when it grows up. With nukes.
I would suggest that to indulge too much in that analogy is to gin up to fight the previous war.
ReplyDelete--One trivial example: I very much doubt that Patton's Dictum, "The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet," applies to Iran's mad mullahs, their pet politicians, or a populace that's going along as long as the milk runs on time.
No, Iran is their own kind of crazy, with its own mad skew. Given free rein, they might be worse -- and it would be a damn good idea never to let them have a chance to try.
I can live with that.
ReplyDeleteI dunno about you, but I rely upon Bocephus for insightful political commentary. Between the decades-long substance abuse & the near-fatal head injury, I reckon no one else has the cognitive abilities of a career politician without already being one.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I though Hank, Jr., was dead. I blame the overly commercial (and politically liberal, if you can believe it) country stations in the Seattle area...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Wikipedia says he offered that statement as an explanation of his statement that Boehner playing golf with His Imperial Majesty was "one of the biggest political mistakes ever."
Hank also compared HIMBO and Sheriff Joe to the Three Stooges, wonder why no one takes him to task for that...
WV: swathen. more than one swaths...?
@Nathan
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
I don't think Godwin's law applies when the person speaking is Jewish, and the country he's speaking about makes it a matter of official policy that the Jewish Nation should be 'wiped off the map'.