Not a moment too soon.
Kissinger
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
by 14 Comments
Not a moment too soon.
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Hot enough down there for ya, Henry?
The man who ended Tom Lehrer’s songwriting career
Was an arsehole in the main but a larger than life statesman whose like we will most likely not see again. Good or bad.
He seemed to be around forever. He already looked old when I was a child and I was quite surprised when I read he was still alive about 25 years ago.
“No, he was fucking her”
Well he certainly fucked Chile, Cambodia and Vietnam and I’m sure a few others.
His famous comment about power being an aphrodisiac was a tacit admission that he wouldn’t be getting laid if he wasn’t who he was. Like Peter Crouch and his “virgin” joke.
It’s a bit like Ben Shapiro’s claim that women don’t have orgasms…. er, do you realise what you’ve just said mate?
Trivial comments, but it’s difficult to process what an absolute horror of a man HK was and how he represents the absolute worst of us. St Peter’s got a job of work reading out that charge sheet.
Tributes coming in from Xi and Putin at least.
Was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize whilst bombing the life out of Cambodia. The country has yet to recover – very much doubt they will be lighting candles in his honour.
Hence as @jaygee mentioned above brought about the end of Tom Lehrer’s songwriting career.
As Lehrer said.
The good thing is Tom Lehrer is still alive
Which is more than can be said for those poor pigeons…
Certainly not a popular man in Latin America, where he was indirectly responsible for unimaginable horrors on an industrial scale, and the bulk of the continent spending decades under the jackboot.
I don’t like to slur the newly deceased, but it’s difficult to feel too sad about this news. He certainly lived an unusually long time for someone with such a lopsided balance sheet.
I’ve always thought his life is an example of the dangers of convincing yourself that ends justify means. He witnessed some of the worst events of the 20th century at close quarters in childhood, and then seemed to convince himself that said events were the result of a collapse in global order which could never again be permitted. In adulthood, he was an undoubtedly brilliant man who devoted his life to maintaining (what he perceived to be) said order, at often enormous cost to humanity.
On the Nobel stuff, I can’t say it’s ever bothered me. The principle behind the prize is that it’s given for specific actions (in Kissinger’s case related to the ceasefire in Vietnam), rather than the life of the individual. Same reason Obama could win it three decades later while merrily drone striking his way across the globe, and that Trump was nominated while – ahem – being Trump. It looks a little absurd (particularly in Kissinger’s case), but I think there’s something to be said for the idea that even the worst of us might contribute to the cause of peace, and have that contribution recognised.
Rolling Stone not in forgiving mood.