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Later this week, Big Hollywood will address Tom Hanks’ comments in this interview about how long it’s taking for America to overcome racism. But for now, let us all pause and reflect on just how much more enlightened the actor is than the rest of us.
Back to the point…
In the above video, CNSNews does an excellent job questioning Hanks about his “war of terror and racism” comments. The reporter isn’t confrontational and allows the actor to complete his answers fully. And yet, under these perfect conditions, Hanks fails miserably in justifying the awful things he said about our country and veterans, past and present. For accuracy sake, let’s look back at last week’s full “war of racism and terror” quote from MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
“The Pacific” is coming out now, where it represents a war that was of racism and terror. And where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles on one of these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere was to — I’m sorry — kill them all. And, uhm, does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today?
When asked about this by CNSNews, the Oscar-winner doubles down:
“Well, I said it’s familiar with what’s going on today. You can walk into the National World War II museum in New Orleans, in the Pacific wing, and Steven Ambrose himself has made that very point. It’s up in black and white, that after Pearl Harbor, these people that were very, very different from each other, the Americans and the Japanese, who had different heritages, who had different theologies and different ways of government, had a different sense of society went at it tooth and nail.
What does that mean, exactly? The only rational explanation is that Hanks has somehow convinced himself that when two nations populated by different cultures go to war it automatically qualifies as a “war of racism.”
Furthermore, if our mentality was “kill them all,” why didn’t we? We certainly had the opportunity to “kill them all” and “terrorize” the Japanese people after their unconditional surrender. Instead, at great expense, we rebuilt Japan and handed it back over to all those “different” people.
Hanks continues:
It would be naïve to assume that racism was not part of the quotient of World War II…
Fine. We used the words “yellow” and “Jap.” That doesn’t make it a “war of racism.” Of all the elements Hanks chooses to describe WWII, he chooses the very worst and must exaggerate in order to do so. You don’t have to be a history buff to understand that WWII was quite clearly a war of liberty vs. tyranny — a war of ideologies — which is why we also declared war on those white guys in Nazi Germany.
Here’s the defense of his “terror” comments:
…and it’s historical fact by way of just simply suicide bombers from the air and as well as the terror that was visited upon civilian populations throughout the Pacific that terrorism was not part of the equation as well.
Does he mean the Japanese committed acts of terror, America, or both? You would assume by his description of suicide bombers and what was done to civilian population throughout the Pacific that he’s describing the Japanese. So why doesn’t he say so? That might seem like me picking on Hanks for not stating the obvious, but as you’ll see below he does this same kind of mealy-mouthed moral equivalency a second time.
CNSNews.com: “Now, how about the racism and terror comments that you made about the Pacific. How does that connect at all to what is going on–since you did say that it was connected?”Hanks: “Yes, I did. I did say that. Yeah, I did. And, in fact, I have talked to all sorts of people who have, in the vernacular, used incredibly racist terms about the people on the other side of the fence, and we can see all the time that comes over in the regular news media from their side, from the other side, terms that can only be viewed as racist.
So because he’s heard “all sorts of people” use “incredibly racist terms,” Tom Hanks goes on a national cable news channel and glibly announces to the world that the War on Terror is a “war of racism and terror,” you know, just like WWII.
In the next sentence he appears to have heard how stupid he sounds and backtracks a bit:
But let’s just take the word “racism” out of it and put “ignorance” instead, because it’s, racism, is a mere virulent form of what that ignorance is.
Gee, thanks Tom. Big of you to call our country and troops ignorant instead of racist.
But like his above statements defending his “terror” comments, once again Hanks refuses to distinguish between America and our enemies. Who’s he talking about? Who’s ignorant? Who’s spouting racism? Who’s on which side of that fence? More importantly…
Which side is guilty of waging a “war of terror and racism ignorance” during WWII and the ongoing War on Terror?
Is he describing America? The terrorists? Both?
Is it just me, or does Tom Hanks seem to have a difficult time seeing America as the good guys?
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