Would Somebody Please Stand in Front of John Stossel and Holler “Damfool!” For Me?
So, John Stossel, whose flighty superiority grinds on me like a rusty chainsaw, has announced that we don’t need any social programs because “no one died of starvation during the depression.”
And John knows that to be true because … he wasn’t there, he didn’t starve, and Herbert Hoover’s chuckle was great entertainment.
No, seriously, I’m busy today so find this damfool and holler at him.
We didn’t keep birth and death statistics back then because children died in the dust bowl without a damn birth certificate. Does he think the depression was the Golden Age of America?
Thank you for your helpful suggestion that we have bread lines again, John.
I think John Stossel should watch Ken Burns’ PBS series about the Great Depression and the years of the Dustbowl … people — young and old — died from dust clogging their lungs!!
1What ignorance! I suspect John may be one of those a-holes that deny that the Holocaust ever happened, as well!
Sorry boss, but it is impossible to get energized enough by Stossel’s drivel to respond. He impresses me as an intellectual-Limbaugh wannabe, lacking Rush’s charm and personality.
2Faux Nooz. What do you expect, honesty? Truth? Roger Ailes farts and they all apologize for the smell. Don’t watch too much of any of those ‘Fair and Balanced’ shows or you’ll lose all touch with reality.
3The better analogy would be that they all comment on the wonderful aroma.
4Um, Stossel never claimed to be smart, just opportunistic and loud mouthed. My folks went through the Great Depression and came out with PTSD. What they saw and experienced themselves scared them poopless. It influenced the rest of their entire lives. Yes, plenty of people died during the Great Depression. My mother remembers seeing people jump out of the windows of skyscrapers downtown. Illnesses that depend on malnutrition in order to be horribly lethal abounded. And folks stopped getting their kids inoculated against kid diseases cuz they couldn’t afford it and kiddy deaths from kid diseases rose. Just some of the stuff that happened. Man, this guy is dumber than a box of blond hammers!
5@Maggie – ‘box of blond hammers’ a great line I am going to remember for future use.
6Here’s his pathetic apology:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2013/05/30/correction
7He also hates the Federal Flood Insurance program even though he used it THREE times himself to rebuild his own beachfront home.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/01/1121831/stossel-flood-insurance-hypocrisy/
He claims no one died during the depression?
What an ignorant putz.
8@Maggie and VeeGee: as a natural blond all my life (well, now I’m mostly a natural gray) I take exception to the “blond hammers” comment. It is funny, I agree, but it gives me a sad.
9I guess I should have dyed my hair a nice brunette color, but since I made it through 3 college degrees and 30 years of teaching in higher education, do I get a pass on the “dumb”?
(This is sort of a snark!)
However – Stossell is a … can’t say it or Momma will be upset.
Here’s a video of Stossel getting his “clocked cleaned” by a pro-wrestler! Well worth watching!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0q44ALM7jo
10Has the idiot ever read John Steinbeck?
He could start with “Grapes of Wrath” maybe??
11We need to print up a t-shirt for Stossel:
12My Grandparents Went Through the Depression, And All I Got Was This Brand New, Combed Ring-Spun 100% Egyptian Cotton T-Shirt
Maggie is right–my Dear One was born in 1925 so he remembered the Great Depression very well. His Dad had to move the family often in order to keep a job–when one company went under my father-in-law would manage to find another place to work. Everywhere the family lived, there were break-ins any time they were home.
And what was stolen? Food.
When my Dear One was 18 he was drafted into the Army for WW II. He told me the very high percentage of young American men who were physically unfit for duty due to poor nutrition and lack of health care. On the other hand, young German men (who grew up with the Bismark social programs of Germany–health care, etc.–had a very low health-related rejection rate.
13Meant to say “break-ins any time they WEREN’T home.
14Somewhere in the hereafter Groucho Marx, Ernie Kovacs, and Nikola Tesla are mourning the fact that this man has disgraced mustaches.
15Was trying to do some research on starvation in that time period. Don’t have enough time during my breaks. Did come across this nugget from the History Channel’s “10 Things You May Not Know About the Dust Bowl”
7. The swirling dust proved deadly.
Those who inhaled the airborne prairie dust suffered coughing spasms, shortness of breath, asthma, bronchitis and influenza. Much like miners, Dust Bowl residents exhibited signs of silicosis from breathing in the extremely fine silt particulates, which had high silica content. Dust pneumonia, called the “brown plague,” killed hundreds and was particularly lethal for infants, children and the elderly.
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-dust-bowl
16Came across a bunch of hooey that says the U.S. lost 10% of its population due to Dust Bowl starvation “based on Census Bureau statistics.” Went to the Census Bureau and looked at their statistics. The U.S. RATE of growth dropped seriously during those years, but it still grew.
http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt
During most years pre-birth control the growth rate (other than when the boys came home from war) seems to run 0.9 to 1.3% or so. During the Dust Bowl years the rate of growth was mostly below 0.7%. A higher death rate could account for some of this, but I bet the folks in the affected area were also not breeding.
Whether they died of starvation or died of asphyxiation from breathing dirt, they still died, Mr. Stossel.
17Another sad thing is that I can remember when John Stossel first started out. He and Geraldo Rivera were both serious journalists. They sold out for the money. Sad waste of talent.
18He needs to be on minimum wage without his bank account.
19What happens to these people when they go over to the dark side? (aka Fox) Do they become infected with some brain-eating bacteria which causes them to speak and act like idiots? Take Lou Dobbs and company who railed against women working ’cause it’s biologically unnatural. Honestly, I feel like we’re back in the 50’s again, having to re-fight all those battles once more. Help!
20Stossel made his career by debunking things, but occasionally his debunking needs debunking. After many years with ABC he shifted to FOX. When I see anybody leaving what appears to have been a successful career with CBS, NBC or ABC for a new start at FOX, it has the stink of a sellout. As the message etched over the FOX main entrance proclaims: “ABANDON ALL OBJECTIVITY YE WHO ENTER HERE.”
21Factual reporting never seemed to get in the way of John Stossel’s ego. That’s for sure.
22Gag me with a spoon! John’s apology wasn’t an apology, he merely doubled-down on libertarian arguments. Same thing he has always done – just like he did misrepresenting Prof. James Galbraith’s position on European economic society in ’99.
John’s no journalist – he’s a lazy, but ambitious charlatan – no different than those other two fat-heads (Rush & Glenn) most of us simply ignore. He just wasn’t raised in a trailer park, but rather in an affluent part of Chicago.
23My mother (b.1917) would have been infuriated by John Stossell’s statement. She was the oldest of 8 kids, a teenager, on a farm in the Dust Bowl during the Depression. She was forever altered & shaped by that harrowing experience. Her stories of the grasshoppers coming in a dark cloud & eating everything green within a few hours. She listened to her mother cry at night not knowing how she would feed the kids. Mother went to live & work in town to buy a little food for the rest of the family. They tried to keep the fine dust from entering the house, but the little kids still got dust pneumonia. Obviously, Stossell is clueless!!
24StupidStossel:
“Almost certainly wrong”
Reality Correction:
“DEFINITIVELY and EXTRICABLY wrong”
25I’m not sure what Maggie means here: “And folks stopped getting their kids inoculated against kid diseases cuz they couldn’t afford it.”
That strikes me as a bit of an anachronism. The Salk vaccine was invented in the 50s. The measles vaccine came out in the 60s. The varicella (chickpox) vaccine is a relative late comer. In the 20s, neither rich nor poor had their children innoculated against childhood diseases, because that technology didn’t much exist. There was smallpox vaccination, of course. When you look around at a lot of those those “of a certain age,” they went through measles and chickenpox and the other childhood diseases, because there wasn’t much alternative at the time.
26@shortpeople #15- on Stossel that’s not just a mustache.That’s a genuine 70s pornstache.On Tesla and the others it was a mustache.I guess if you didn’t perish of severe malnutrition you didn’t die of starvation.If serious hunger was a way of life and not a way of death it didn’t exist.
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