Contessa's Hour: or, Love Among the Savages

Email Print posted by joel 05/12/2008 12:13:33 PM EST

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Well, on Friday Contessa and Cenk offered their kindly and considerate suggestions to a guy whose girlfriend's father hangs out at "GITMO" (you know, the totally extralegal prison camp on U.S-controlled soil).  What's the old man doing there?  Oh, "interviewing detainees."

Seems our love-struck correspondent's having trouble retrieving his tongue from the cat when Papa's around, incessantly blathering 'neocon' politics. 

 

Maybe he needs to consider how it might feel if he did  open his mouth--and found his tongue on Daddy's plate the next morning, keeping company with three scrambled eggs and a couple of slices of toast.

His could-be father-in-law's no addle-pated, well intentioned (but alas, misguided), dimwit Republican yearning for a heart-to-heart dialogue with the younger generation:

            HE'S A PROFESSIONAL TORTURER.

Time to excuse oneself from papa's presence, young man.  Civilized folk don't suffer the company of such persons.  And if you really care for his daughter, tell her you would be delighted to see her again when she has emancipated herself from her beast of a progenitor.  She'll need a magnet to draw her away from her dad's "charm", and you can't do that from within his orbit.

Oh, yes -- um, in addition to being a monster (though, surely, a good family man), Pop's psychotically deranged (For example, Senator Obama is in fact not the Manchurian Candidate*).  So that tongue-on-the-breakfast-pla te image could just come true, me boyo.  The neocon-drip talk-boarding is just a warm-up.

OK now, come clean, Cenk: this was a put-on, right? 

*As a reality-check, let me remind our correspondent that the real Manchurian Candidate's name is Raymond, not Barack.
 

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Contessa's Hour: or, Love Among the Savages | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
My take (none / 0)

You don't know what he does there. So why do you make such libelous over-the-top statements?

by charlesf on 05/12/2008 01:54:11 PM EST

The exact quote (none / 0)

from the guy who wrote in is:

        "My girlfriends [sic] father is a neocon. He works at GITMO doing spy-stuff and interviewing detainees. He fought in Nam as a young man. I fear that this might be what leads him to his neocon positions. I really want to respect and love him as I plan to marry his daughter. He believes that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate of some sort. He might merely believe that Obama is unpatriotic because he does not wear the lapel pin for the cameras. My girlfriend really loves and practically worships her father, but she is more of a bleeding heart like me. She is not interested in politics, so it is no big deal to her. Its [sic] a big deal to me. I can keep my mouth shut and not argue with him for decades without much trouble. But can I have more than that? Can I respect him and therefore speak with him about politics without losing my patience, or his affection? Can I keep some affection for him if these topics are broached? BTW, he talks politics all the time. And I say nothing." (emphasis mine)

I don't know if I would have gone quite as far as Joel did, in terms of advising the guy to leave his girlfriend, but I did think that the lack of response to the whole GITMO, interviewing detainees aspect was kind of weird.

Cenk and Contessa responded to the fact that the girlfriend's dad was a Vietnam vet, and that this is where his neocon positions come from, as the questioner suggested. But really, if the man is working at GITMO, he is probably subject to a lot of propaganda, and possibly groupthink. Breaking through would be difficult, to say the least.

The most concerning part to me is that the girlfriend "practically worships" her father, and "is not interested in politics." She is, however, a "bleeding heart." 

It seems to me that she is in denial. She doesn't want to think about what her father is involved in. She's overcompensating by "worshipping" her father, and avoiding the subject by not thinking about politics.

I think the guy should have some discussions with his girlfriend about the seriousness of it all, and try to help her come to grips with the situation. I don't think her father is ever going to be convinced of anything. 


 

by ariane on 05/12/2008 03:15:32 PM EST

[ Parent ]
The "Real" Manchurian Candidate (none / 0)
Was a white all-american guy who was taken prisoner in a small southeastern Asian nation and tortured by communists for years then returned to the US and got involved with politics in America.
Thank God we don't have anyone like that running.

I'm not saying anything.
I'm just just saying.

by ProfRich on 05/12/2008 02:43:49 PM EST

Contessa's Hour: or, Love Among the Savages | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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