Wednesday, July 17, 2019

An Apollo 11 controversy

A DC news radio station retracted a story about Apollo 11, not because it was false but because it seems to have contained double plus ungood truths:
Washington radio station WTOP apologized Tuesday after pulling a story that commended Nazi aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

The story removal and apology came after the news outlet described von Braun as a "brilliant German-American rocket scientist."
It's always fun to see the dumbing down of America on full display in the media.  What, these idiots had never heard about World War II or the Cold War?  It seems not.  And so, the groveling apology.

The children who write these news stories think they're ever so clever and smarter than us knuckle dragging Deplorables, even though they don't know half of what we do.  For example, how von Braun was satirized at the time of the Apollo program itself.*



Note to the children writing these stories at WTOP: this song opens with a tune that would be familiar to you if you had studied World War II.  The satire is actually pretty delicious.  Go ask your parents.

* This song was written in 1964 and recorded on video in 1967, years before the moon landing.

5 comments:

  1. Von Braun's biopic in 1960 was entitled I Aim For the Stars, when Mort Sahl quipped that the rest of the title was ...but sometimes, I hit London.

    The all-time Too Spot-On award goes to Patrick McGoohan as a British spy in Ice Station Zebra, explaining to Rock Hudson that the Russians had taken the stolen camera made by America's German scientists, loaded with stolen film made by Britain's German scientists, was put aboard a Soviet rocket made by their German scientists.

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  2. Mack Kantor wrote of V2s during the war. Sad business all the way around. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PknpR20XYhtQhPPqG3x4PNxPvPA8_MxF9u800hOgpYI/edit

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  3. And no-one talks about the medical advances from both German and Japanese 'doctors' doing unspeakable things to people during the war, but we do use the info.

    The war happened. And we got some Nazis. And then, after we used them, gave them a home, allowed them to become naturalized citizens, gave them awards and salaries and pensions, all too often took it all away when they were old and 'not of any use' anymore.

    That is the real shame. We took them in knowing who they were and what they did. And we used them. And then kicked far too many to the curb.

    Sometimes we, as a nation, are a feckless pack of jackals.

    Want to really talk about scandalous behavior? Let's talk about the USA's role during Woody Wilson's administration of sterilizing undesirables. Or France's role during WWII of taking care of their minority problems. At least Nazi Germany did it all in the open and told everyone what they were going to do. We and France both did some really heinous things and then disappeared the results.

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  4. Sigh... Those that don't read history...

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  5. Morality is a prickly thing. Scientists typically aren’t very good at it.Mind you neither is some idiot on a piano mouthing off about an astronaut going to the moon. We try to be good people but geopolitics are what they are and always have been. Personally I think America has far more to be ashamed of today than it ever has in the past.

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