“I know noz-ZINK!” That was the catchphrase of John Banner’s character, the Nazi prison guard Sergeant Schultz, in the immortal TV comedy Hogan’s Heroes, a mind-boggling — and extremely popular — breakthrough series. It showed how humor can be pried from even the (fictional) setting of a World War II POW camp.
What is not so funny is that America has become a society of Sgt. Schultzes, refusing to acknowledge the lies, atrocities, unnecessary loss of life, and the distortion of the justice system and the Constitution that have been foisted upon us by the draft-dodging drugstore cowboy, Dubya Bush.
All this has happened as the American public has tacitly said, “We know noz-ZINK!” We have become the new version of the “Good Germans,” who declared no knowledge of their country’s war crimes — an idea recently floated by New York Times columnist Frank Rich.
Our claims of ignorance are as bullshit as Sgt. Schultz’s regular protestations to his credulous Kommandant Klink.
YOU KNOW that Dubya, “Big Time” Cheney, Rummy, Queen Lotsateetha, and the neo-con chicken hawks lied to us to justify the Iraq invasion. YOU KNOW how we have tortured people and expedited their torture in countries that don’t pretend to have the supposed conscience of America.
YOU KNOW we have pried illegally into the lives of innocent Americans, while twisting the Constitution into knots to justify it. YOU KNOW Congress and the mass media are complicit for not having the guts to offer better information about all this, not to mention the drumbeat of war with Iran. You have likely been just like Sergeant Schultz, and gone back to work every day, talking about what Britney and the Red Sox did last night, pretending the kid from the next town over didn’t get killed or have one of his limbs blown off for a lie.
The true lovers of this country realize that the Founding Fathers were men of open minds and free thought, and that they demanded the protection of these values. They had the guts, intelligence, and pioneering spirit to try new ideas and to fight for just causes that would help their fellow citizens.
Now, we have the radical, religious reactionaries — our very own Taliban — who thrive on restricting freedom of speech, who trample on human rights, and who attack any concepts that they do not understand and thus fear. They are stupid and basically traitorous, cowards with a sadistic streak. The inhabitants of Bushworld, meanwhile, have given free rein to our silent Sergeant Schultz society.
Gute nacht, Amerika.
Sheldon’s the man
With no disrespect for former Senator Linc Chafee, a man of principle and conscience, anyone who still wrings their hands over the victory of Sheldon White¬house can stop it right now. Sheldon’s performance was spot-on in pinning Bush AG nominee Michael Mukasey on the subject of torture and “water boarding.”
If you missed it, Sherbet asked Mukasey if water boarding is “constitutional.” Mukasey tried to weasel out by feigning ignorance and hollowly echoing the empty Bushie line — “If it’s torture, then it’s not constitutional.”
Sheldon then succinctly defined water boarding and again asked Mukasey if he thought this constitutes torture. The nominee responded with the same official line, revealing himself as a stooge and perhaps even a prevaricator.
This isn’t the first time that Whitehouse has shown his stuff, particularly in Senate Judiciary proceedings. He also blasted the dismal Alberto “Not so Speedy” Gonzalez out of the water.
Vo Dilun, you made the right choice, and we have two stars representing us in the US Senate.
