{"id":161694,"date":"2015-06-24T23:23:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T23:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-nitwits-are-in-charge\/"},"modified":"2015-06-24T23:23:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T23:23:47","slug":"the-nitwits-are-in-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-nitwits-are-in-charge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nitwits Are in Charge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"212.04175640105\">\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn\u2019t funny enough for him, but there really isn\u2019t anything funny about the U.S. plunging\u00a0into an unnecessary\u00a0nuclear showdown with Russia\u00a0over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what\u2019s\u00a0happening, writes Robert Parry.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-15311\"\/>By Robert Parry<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I wonder if today\u2019s crop of U.S. pundits and pols could ever rise to meet some truly urgent need of the American people, let alone the interests of the world. Everything, it seems, is done with a snigger and an attitude \u2014 even as we stumble into a wholly unnecessary confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia over which batch of thieves and oligarchs gets to run Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an old joke about Washington being Hollywood for ugly people, but Washington also turns out to be Comedy Central for unfunny people. We\u2019re left with a tedious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/24\/opinion\/cold-war-without-the-fun.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;module=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;_r=0\">column<\/a> by The New York Times\u2019 Thomas L. Friedman lamenting that we\u2019re having a new \u201cCold War without the fun \u2014 that is, without James Bond, Smersh, \u2018Get Smart\u2019 Agent 86\u2018s shoe phone, Nikita Khrushchev\u2019s shoe-banging, a race to the moon or a debate between American and Soviet leaders over whose country has the best kitchen appliances.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9916\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"32\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/thomas-friedman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9916\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?55ac53\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/thomas-friedman.jpg\" alt=\"New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.\" width=\"300\" height=\"262\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9916\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/thomas-friedman.jpg\" alt=\"New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.\" width=\"300\" height=\"262\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Yuk, yuk! So, clever! But Friedman, the ever-clueless columnist, misses the fact there was another side to the best humor and satire about the Cold War. Movies, like Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cDr. Strangelove\u201d (1964), pointed to the grim absurdity of mutual assured destruction. Even some of the goofier comedies, like \u201cGet Smart,\u201d parodied the supposed glamour of Cold War spy-craft.<\/p>\n<p>But there was really very little funny about the very real threat of annihilation of all life on the planet, nor about the vast sums of money wasted on building up super-sized nuclear arsenals, nor about the enduring influence that military contractors and their legions of apologists then had \u2014 and still have \u2014 on the federal budget.<\/p>\n<p>In 1953, less than three months after becoming President, Dwight Eisenhower decried the diversion of so much money and talent into the pursuit of\u00a0more and more deadly weapons, saying: \u201cEvery&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/06\/24\/the-nitwits-are-in-charge\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn\u2019t funny enough for him, but there really isn\u2019t anything funny about the U.S. plunging\u00a0into an unnecessary\u00a0nuclear showdown with Russia\u00a0over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what\u2019s\u00a0happening, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Sometimes I wonder if today\u2019s crop of U.S. pundits and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-161694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}