Is Joel Stein trying to be funny?

I'd like to think so... I'd like to hope so given his bio... only I don't find any of this laughable:

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

I was all set initially to fisk the mucus out of this snot-nosed sorry excuse for a compassionate leftist but I'm simply not in the mood.  If you are, go see Uncle Jimbo over at BlackFive... he does the kid some justice.

And he has to be a kid... this would only sell to the MTV or VH1 crowd, all of which would have to be high or drunk to find this fecal matter funny.

You can also see Michelle, who finds Stein to be loathsome and insufferable.

The only word that I can come up with is pathetic.

UPDATE: Stein has made Reverend Sensing simply emote.  Reynolds thinks it definitely ok to question Stein's patriotism.  And Protein Wisdom sums it up for me:

... it is easy for me to look at Stein’s pseudo-philosophical bit of puffed-up provocateurism and call it what it is:  the nadir of the me generation, and the ultimate passing of the buck.

MORE: Juliette has chimed in with words I enjoyed:

I want to thank you, Joel—may I call you Joel?—for taking the decidedly un-wussy option to display the thoughts that many others of your profession attempt to obfuscate in order to ward off criticism of their actual position. May this open attitude of yours result in many more of your ilk coming out from behind the bogus “we-support-the-troops-but-not-their-mission” shield.

None of your fellow travelers will get a beating from me; well, as long as they don’t spit on me, that is. However, they--and you--should be prepared for the returned verbal contempt dished out. It’s our right also.

And Radio Blogger has the transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview with Mr. Stein that makes me want to change my one word description of him from "pathetic" to simply "clueless".  Check the whole thing out and understand what I mean.

Sigh.

YET MORE: Gerard at American Digest has not only read the Radio Blogger transcript mentioned above but has listened to the audio and reacts:

What is of interest to me here is not what Stein writes or says. His own words damn him more decisively than a thousand bloggers blathering blithely What interestest me is how he speaks.

If you focus on it, you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the "service" sector -- be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It's a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.

It is the voice of the neuter .

Read it all.  Please, just go and read it all.

Comments

[Rebecca]

If you supported the troops, you would enlist pressure officials to increase military pay and benefits, push for armor for every troop, volunteer your services to wounded troops. The only way Americans support troops is by vapidly proclaiming "I support the troops," then returning to our safe lives.

[Grace]

You neglected to post the important part of what he wrote. I think this part more accurately sums up why he feels the way he does...
"After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable."