Last week, Geraldo Rivera gushed over the military’s decision to drop the Mother of All Bombs, saying that one of his “favorite things” is “watching bombs drop on bad guys.” Last night, John Oliver mercilessly mocked Rivera on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight.
As I posted last week, Rivera made a point of letting Fox viewers know that he was a proud member of the Trump MOAB drop both with his “favorite things” comment and with a gushing analogy that likened Trump to a high school bully.
Oliver took comedic note, as Crooks and Liars explains:
Oliver replied to it all by saying, "That’s a coincidence because one of my favorite things in four seasons on this show is getting to look into the camera and say ‘f*ck you Geraldo, I hope your mustache gets caught in a box fan.' That felt amazing. That felt absolutely amazing.”
Rivera did not take the ribbing well. This morning, he tweeted a suggestion that Oliver is soft on ISIS:
To #JohnOliver #moab killed 90+ #ISIS. Remember them? baby killing terrorists, throat cutting savages who rape & burn religious minorities?
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) April 17, 2017
Watch Oliver below, via Crooks and Liars.
Is Fox News putting emphasis on Der Furor’s waffling on his role? Letting America know he’s ceding his role of civilian control of our military as Command-in-Chief to the generals and admirals? Certainly not. It’ll all be waving the flag and holding our military “heroes” up on a pedestal. Daring liberals like John Oliver to criticize any of this so they can paint him as being unpatriotic.
MOAB dropping is the mother of all nothing burgers. It’s an expensive military tool that hasn’t been used in the past not because presidents prior to Hair Hitler were namby pamby. It’s because there’s next no use case for the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast. Too destructive to be practical in an error of precision bombing and too susceptible to getting shot down because it has to be delivered in a cargo plane.
So for 14 years the handful of bombs created have sat in a warehouse collecting dust.
Geraldo gushing and waving the flag over the MOAB drop is predictable. Fox News uses him as a ‘liberal’ voice. But nobody outside of right-wing GOPTV™ thinks this way. Geraldo is a registered Republican.
What do these statements reveal? My take is that there’s got to be a very deep core of nastiness in a person capable of praising the dropping of bombs and schoolyard bullying. The only non WMDs in my book are those used in close combat (fists, sticks, knives, etc. not even stones) where the perp must touch the victim: that alone would probably deter most Christians (capital “C”). The distance offered by military toys like guns, cannons, bombs and drones makes it easier to kill others. Most people who’d happily kill a rabbit at 10 yards with a 22 rifle wouldn’t be able to slit the throat of a live squirming one (unless they were raised on a farm, of course).
“Want a fight? Here’s the ring and the gloves, dear.” has prevented many a rebellious youth from becoming a totally nasty adult. I doubt that Geraldo ever did much in the way of sport. He reflects nothing of the admirable qualities that most youth manage to learn on the playing field (until money comes into the picture, of course).
Didn’t Eisenhower (among many others, but he was a military man as well as the GOP’s last competent POTUS, IMHO) provide ample warnings about the risks of giving the military-industrial complex the lead on all matters military? Far too many of those guys are motivated by the desire for new toys and the prospect of providing them. There used to be a rule barring retired military from holding office until a decent period of time had passed. Sigh.
