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| "Hey Tucker, you wanna get a couple beers and make up jokes about the Gulag?" |
From the October 12th, 2007 episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher:
Bill Maher: The people who are really getting tough in foreign policy are part of the House Foreign Relations Committee...they voted yesterday to once again commemorate the mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War Two. Mild Applause. This is exactly why the voters gave control to the Democrats: to send a stirring message to Adolph Hitler.
Huge laughter from audience.
Tucker Carlson: Unbelievable. To sell out to the Jewish lobby. Now, the Holocaust happened...
Joy Behar: Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: ...and it was a terrible thing, and I'm sure in a perfect world we would...take time out to condemn this, but we are doing this at the price of offending some of our key allies, such as various Arab states, factions within the current German leadership and other friends in the War on Terror.
Joy Behar: And wait until the Duke of Windsor hears about it from his mansion in Bermuda.
More laughter from audience.
Tucker Carlson: What do we get out of it...what interest of ours is served by making some of our allies mad?
Paul Krugman: (Shrugs good naturedly.)
Bill Maher: Because there are a lot of Jews in, apparently California, and they're a lobby. It's the ultimate in special interest lobbying.
Joy Behar: The Jews deserve attention, but timing is everything; wait a little while.
Tucker Carlson: I like the Jews.
Bill Maher: We all like the Jews.
Tucker Carlson: This is all pointless...
Bill Maher: WE ALL LIKE THE JEWS!
Loud laughter and applause from the audience.
Doesn't this just turn your stomach?
The only problem is, I lied. The above conversation never happened.
Sort of.
Actually this exact conversation really did happen. With one small difference: they were talking about Armenians not Jews. I transcribed the entire conversation virtually word-for-word, but replaced every occurrence of "Armenians" with "Jews". I also changed a few other things to make the references match--like inserting "Adolph Hitler" in place of "The Ottoman Empire". See end of post for the actual transcript.
Please, do not misunderstand. I am not minimizing the Holocaust. If anything, I think the murder of six million Jews should be remembered a hundred times more in our current culture. Even now, seventy years later, when most of the survivors (and perpetrators) are dead. And in a number of ways (though not all), the Holocaust was singular and unique.
But the Armenian Genocide, which while killing fewer people--"only" 1 to 2 million--was one of the great horrors of the twentieth century, and, according to one report, was an inspiration for Hitler's own effort.
It isn't funny.
It shouldn't be a political football.
And politics--"timing is everything"--shouldn't carry one atom of consideration when weighed against the truth.
On this blog we've praised Maher many times. He often has spoken the politically-incorrect truth about all sorts of things when others have been silent.
But not then.
He (and his guests) for once should have just kept their mouths shut.
***
Here is what was actually said:
Bill Maher: The people who are really getting tough in foreign policy are part of the House Foreign Relations Committee...they voted yesterday to condemn, as an act of genocide, the killings of Armenians, in Turkey, in 1915. Mild Applause. This is exactly why the voters gave control to the Democrats: to send a stirring message to the Ottoman Empire.
Huge laughter from audience.
Tucker Carlson: Unbelievable. To sell out to the Armenian lobby. Now, there was a genocide in Armenia...
Joy Behar: Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: ...and it was a terrible thing, and I'm sure in a perfect world we would...take time out to condemn this, but we are doing this at the price of offending one of our key allies in the region, Turkey...
Joy Behar: And wait until the Weimar Republic hears about it.
More laughter from audience.
Tucker Carlson: What do we get out of it...what interest of ours is served by making Turkey mad?
Paul Krugman: (Shrugs good naturedly.)
Bill Maher: Because there are a lot of Armenians in, apparently California, and they're a lobby. It's the ultimate in special interest lobbying.
Joy Behar: The Armenians deserve attention, but timing is everything; wait a little while.
Tucker Carlson: I like the Armenians.
Bill Maher: We all like the Armenians.
Tucker Carlson: This is all pointless...
Bill Maher: WE ALL LIKE THE ARMENIANS!
Loud laughter and applause from the audience.
One also must remember that it was HALF of all Armenians murdered, hence the Genocide part.
ReplyDeleteI'm really troubled by Tucker Carlson's glib quips. I thought better of him (Mahar and the rest acted exactly as one would suspect). I thought he was way more educated than this crap. I first heard of the Armenian genocide (though not the politics surrounding it) in 1982 from an elderly co-worker at my university. I was utterly floored. If "numbers" is the only thing we look at when evaluating the sheer awfulness of murder, then 1.5 million men women and children certainly should make our hair stand on end. "They drove them out into the high desert," my co-worker told me, "And left them without water or food. They died there." And she began to cry. My friend was old enough at the time to have family who died. The callous ignorance! I thought I was an 19 year old history hotshot. I was thoroughly ashamed.
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