A very moving interview


Actor George Takei was a guest on The Daily Show and Jon Stewart wisely decided not to make it a yuk-fest with Star Trek jokes but instead spent the time allowing Takei to describe the time during World War II when his family were herded into barbed-wire enclosed internment camps for the entire duration of the war purely because of their Japanese ethnicity or, as we say now, racial profiling.

Takei also said something was new to me and that was that liberal icon Earl Warren, who later became Chief Justice of a US Supreme Court that issued landmark decisions on civil rights and other fundamental freedoms, was one of the worst advocates of the policy, whipping up anti-Japanese sentiment to win elections as state attorney general and later as governor.

It is a poignant interview and Stewart is to be commended for picking the topic and then letting Takei speak at length on it.

(This clip aired on July 23, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)

Comments

  1. cafink says

    If you enjoyed this interview, you’ll probably like the episode of Penn Jillette’s podcast on which George Takei was a guest: http://pennsundayschool.com/episodes/#episode_link_113

    It’s more of a relaxed conversation than a formal interview, but he talks in more detail about his time in the internment camp, as well as about his homosexuality and other topics. It’s about 90 minutes altogether.

  2. Holms says

    -Summarily rounded up
    -no charges
    -no trial
    -no due process.

    That sounds bad and war-crimey, therefore I wonder if War Crimes Apologist StevoR will sail in to completely whitewash it.

  3. Silentbob says

    @ 3 Holms

    Nah, they’re not Muslims. If they were Muslims if would be OK.

    Muslims, folks, would slit your appeasing throats with as much bloodthirsty joy as they’d chop my head off. hey dont care for science or athesim or compassionate humanism at all and will kill those who do.

    (source)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *