Some excerpts from Sacha Baron Cohen’s next show are leaking out. watch this bit if you want to see the gun lobby willingly exposing their delusional ideas about putting guns into the hands of kids.
The intensive 3 week Kinder Guardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semi-automatics, and rudimentary knowledge of mortars. In less than a month — less than a month! — a first grader can become a first grenadier.
Ha ha, Joe Walsh, very clever. Of course he has an excuse.
Like accused sexual predator Roy Moore, who threatened to sue Baron Cohen this week, Walsh was invited to receive an award in Washington, D.C., for being a friend to Israel and while he was there sat for an interview in which a documentary crew asked him to endorse various Israeli innovations—including the idea of arming four-year-olds to defend themselves against terrorists.
His excuse is that if Israel thought it was a good idea, then arming pre-school kids must be a good idea. He now says that he was duped, and that he said some really stupid things, but it hasn’t yet sunk in that maybe he should question his own beliefs that make it easy for him to be duped and say stupid things.
and rudimentary knowledge of mortars
Wait, what!? Mortars – artillery in general – are for bombarding enemies that are out of line-of-sight. Are they saying that schoolkids are going to get a fire-mission (presumably relayed through their math teacher?) “Fire for effect, grid coordinates zulu minus 100 west plus 200 north, white phosphorus, danger close!” We have a special forces team over at the 7-11 that needs cover.
I do believe in teaching firearms safety and safe handling at an early age, with reinforcement training at regular intervals. I even believe if a child is interested and behaves in a sufficiently mature manner, in teaching precision marksmanship at a relatively young age – in a closely supervised manner at an approved range.
But, weapons of war, no. That’s not only not right, it’s not even wrong. It’s sheer insanity! That is especially true of mortars, which are destructive weapons and downright dangerous to operate. Mature adult soldiers lose their lives operating mortars, they can lose fingers and hands as well.
No, I take that back. That passed insanity on the left and accelerated hard.
What next? Teaching first graders explosive demolitions? Maybe have a skill qualifier for nuclear weapons for advanced students?
For the record, Israel has MUCH stronger gun laws than in the US.
This is not about questioning Israel or not, since this suggestion did not and never would arrive from there.
Apologies, I’m a bit confused here (I have not watched the clip): (1) Is the “Kinder Guardian” course a stunt by Sacha Baron Cohen which teh NRA facist agreed with, or An actual NRA proposal ?
And in either case, (2) Is it really based on some Israeli nonsense ?
Regardless of the answers, the NRA facist’s approval of the idea is appalling. And that’s putting it so politely it’s similar to saying the NRA is just a fictitious bogeyman to scare origami worms.
(I’m rather distracted at the moment: The French team have just won something, and there is a fecking incredible amount of noise — I can thunk even lessar then evars…)
Kinder Guardians is an invention of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Was that supposed to be “12 to 14” or are they really teaching four year olds to fire mortars?
I’d just like to be clear on the level of insanity, here.
Of course, the press is wagging their finger at it in the name of holy civilty: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/15/17567076/sacha-baron-cohen-review-who-is-america-showtime
Yes, the biggest problem with this show is that Sacha Baron Cohen impersonated people to goad powerful people into endorsing terrible ideas rather than the fact these powerful people were willing to do so.
Apart from the obvious issue that the whole notion is alarmingly stupid – mortars, really? – another concern should be teaching proper terrorist recognition to the kids. Without guidance from their government those kids might start shooting at soldiers or cops, not realising that government actors could not possibly be engaged in terrorism or plain old evil, regardless of appearances. Wouldn’t it be terribly embarrassing if you had to declare your newly-trained child militia a terrorist group?
Also, if we were to take the mortar suggestion seriously and extended it logically, does that mean “specially selected” children might be able to get a learner’s permit for armoured vehicles as they get older?
James O’Keefe has to use hidden cameras and then edit the video to make it even appear his targets are doing something wrong.
Cohen just gives them a script “from Israel” and they’ll read it on camera.
100 to 1 O’Keefe is trying to set up something similar, and will fail in a spectacular fashion.
Walsh said in an interview he was asked to read the text from a teleprompter. He was foolish enough to do so without reading the text first. Of course, he might not have been smart enough to realize he was being scammed even if he did get to read the material ahead of time. According to him, it dawned on him overnight that he had probably been duped.
@ 7 ck, the Irate Lump
Of course, the press is wagging their finger at it in the name of holy civilty
And Baron Cohen is British who are often better at taking the piss than namby pamby civility. [1] He must be revelling in the free publicity. It is amazing how stupid some of these interviewers are. Make a fool of yourself and then go to the media and tell everyone what a fool you were. Oh dear….
1. See large orange balloon with nappy as example.
This is same shtick that got Cohen famous, starting back with fake gangster Ali G. He’s even interviewed Trump https://youtu.be/sP5ElraFHHE