John Yoo: So Full of Shit His Eyes Are Brown.
“No serious threats”?
What the fuck is John Yoo talking about? or were those ICBM’s the Soviets had aimed at us for pretty much my entire childhood and adolescence just imaginary?
A bunch of bloggers, left and right, are commenting on this hideously historically illiterate editorial John “I Heart Tyranny” Yoo published this Sunday in the New York Times, and I would like to add my 2 cents.
I was born in 1970, and went through all the stuff that kids of that age did: pledges to the flag, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, all that happy crappy. Boy Scout, First Class. I remember seeing “The Day After” and having nightmares for weeks, because i was afraid that the Soviet Union was going to, you know, rain nuclear bombs on us.. “No serious threats”? Then why did everyone run for cover when Reagan made that comment about bombing the Soviet Union, instead of laughing at his dumb joke? if there was no “serious threat” why were we spending time and money funding the Contras and death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua?
Or maybe all those hardcore albums I listened to throughout my teenage years were parody, like Weird Al Yancovic? Please.
If you want an accurate reflection of the serious threat we faced in the 1980s, and the paranois we all lived under, you really don’t have to look much further than the 1980s hardcore scene.
My first band was the Dead Kennedys, the most political band of the time. hauled in court by Reagan Attroney General Ed Meese, the band made a career of the hysteria that surrounded us, putting out albums like In God We Trust Inc (the first one I owned), Plastic Surgery Disasters, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, and Holiday in Cambodia.
Some lyrical selections from “In God We Trust, Inc”, since they’re actually still pretty relevant 20 years on.
We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now
Have another drink, few more pretzels, little more MSG.
Turn on those Dallas Cowboys on your TV.
Lock your doors
Close your mind.
It’s time for the two-minute warning.Welcome to 1984
Are you ready for the third world war?!?
You too will meet the secret police
They’ll draft you and they’ll jail your nieceYou’ll go quitely to boot camp
They’ll shoot you dead
Make you a man
Don’t you worry, it’s for a cause
Feeding global corporations’ clawsMoral Majority
You don’t want abortions, you want battered children
You want to ban the pill as if that solves the problem
Now you wanna force us to pray in school
God must be dead if you’re such a foolYou’re planning for a war with or without Iran
Building a police state with the Ku Klux Klan
Pissed at your neighbour? Don’t bother to nag
Pick up the phone and turn in a fag
And if that’s not enough, check out some lyrics from MDC, including Multi Death Corporation, or Who Are The Terrorists Now?
Pardon me President Reagan, but who are the terrorists now?
MDC called a lot of attention to what we were doing in central America to stop the spread of communism. the Contras, who were raping and killing nuns, were famously compared by Ronald Reagan to our revolutionary Minutemen: he called these assasins “Freedom fighters”.
or the Circle Jerks, Paid Vacation
where’s your uniform? where’s your gun?
better rub up that suntan oil
’cause you’ll be fighting in the desert
it’s not..vietnam
just another oil company scam
salute that flag of uncle sam
get your money out place your bets
it’s afghanistan!!
fix bayonets,check grenades
got enough bullets
got enough rounds to wipe out this place?
Were the infantry & cavalery
parachutes fill the skie,bodies burn and people die
.
So no, John Yoo, there wasn’t ANY serious threat, none whatsoever, you duplicitous, deceitful traitor to American values.
There was a threat all right, and it was exacerbated by the same people who are leading the country down the road to Hell right now. So fuck YOO, John Yoo.
7 Responses to “John Yoo: So Full of Shit His Eyes Are Brown.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
September 18th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Jello Biafra and the Melvins do a great opdated version of that song on “Sieg Howdy”
September 18th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
WOW! DK, MDC, and the Circle Jerks in one post that critiques a nytimes editorial. Man, I almost busted a nut!
Nice work!
September 20th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Oh, man. I had to make a mashup of Woo and Bush’s insane comments with some Wu-Tang Beats.
Listen to the Yoo-Tang Clan.
September 20th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Sorry, bad link.
Here is the correct link. Torture.mp3
September 21st, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Here’s some lyrics to another one from the DKs that, if you update some names (i.e. “Cowboy Ronnie” > “Cowboy Georgie”; “Russians” > “terrorists”) is as frightening as it was when it came out in the early 1980s:
“Bleed For Me”
You’ve been hanging ’round
With an enemy of the state
Come with me to the building
That no-one stops to watch
[Chorus]
C’mon bleed
C’mon bleed
C’mon bleed
Bleed for me
We’ll strap you to a pipe
Electrodes on your balls
C’mon scream
C’mon writhe
Face down in a pool of piss
[Chorus]
In the name of world peace
In the name of world profits
America pumps up our secret police
America wants fuel
To get it, it needs puppets
So what’s ten million dead?
If it’s keeping out the Russians
We’re well trained by the CIA
With Yankee tax money in Ft. Bragg
The Peace Corps builds US labor camps
When they think they’re building schools
Ha Ha
When cowboy Ronnie comes to town
Forks out his tongue at human rights
Sit down, enjoy our ethnic meal
Dine on some charbroiled nuns
Try a medal on
Smile at the mirror as the cameras click
and make big business happy-
Anytime
Anywhere
Maybe you’ll just disappear
[Chorus]
September 21st, 2006 at 4:14 pm
“I Am the Owl” is another good one.
“When Ya Get Drafted”.
“What big business wants big business gets it wants a war…”
May 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
[...] were all about 14 or 15 at the time, and even taking into account the heightened political consciousness of the 1980s hardcore movement, I think this is pretty mature stuff. We were only 14, [...]