So, aaaaaaahhhhhh….
A few adroit observations from Ted Turner, Leftmedia mogul and Patron Saint of the Leftist Glitterati. “Red” Turner, as he is known affectionately around our shop, is noted for his drunken tirades. But even when sober, his comments are stupefying as plainly in evidence below. Turner is the ex-husband of “Hanoi” Jane Fonda (we presume even she could no longer tolerate his inane dribble). He is a close confidant of ultra-Leftists Jean-Francois Kerry and Albert Arnold Gore, and like the aforementioned, an outstanding spokesman for Communist dictators. Of course, Ted maintains, “It’s been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid.” Read further and decide for yourself.
On Christians:
“[My] Christian sect was very intolerant…Christians thought they were the only ones going to heaven…and I said heaven is going to be a mighty empty place with nobody else there.” –Turner, at his U.N. Summit chastising Christianity for “religious intolerance” and its oppression of “of religious freedom.”
On Religion:
“Religion is for losers.”
On American ignorance (CNN’s market share?):
“…Americans are woefully uninformed at the current time about international news in general, and I’ve always said we were doing that at our peril.”
On Cuba’s Communist dictator:
“We spent all night drinking and smoking cigars. He told me CNN was invaluable to him. And I thought, if Fidel Castro can’t live without it, we ought to be able to sell CNN all over the world.” –CNN founder Ted Turner on how Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro inspired him, in 1982, to broadcast CNN around the world. (After his 1982 meeting with Castro, Turner commented, “Fidel ain’t a communist. He’s a dictator just like me.”) **Confirming the “Commie News Network” is “invaluable” to Reds around the world….
On what ended the Cold War:
“I thought, between sports and news and television and friendship, that you could end the Cold War and, by God, we did.” –Ted Turner, founder of CNN and the Goodwill Games, taking credit for ending the Cold War (as reported by CNN)
On women and himself:
“Women? I love women. Life would have been virtually zero without them. Journalism? I really feel like I am a journalist… And courage? I had a boat named Courageous.”
On Terrorism:
“There’s a lot of despair out there. Despair and poverty… these breed anger. And, I think, that’s one of the reasons terrorism exists. There’s so much frustration, anger, and despair. In the Arab view, America doesn’t do enough to help them and that’s why they’re so angry at it. The battle against terrorism is a battle against poverty and injustice. People are willing to die when they don’t have anything to live for.”
On the 9/11 attack:
“The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don’t have any hope for a better life.” Asked moments later if he would allow public access to his vast landholdings in Montana, Turner replied: “Can I live in your home with you? We believe in private property in this country.” No room for the impoverished masses on Ted’s playground!
On Iraq:
“[E]ven with our $500-billion military budget, we can’t win in Iraq. We’re being beaten by insurgents who don’t even have any tanks.” On the jihadis’ motives, Ted declared, “I think that they’re patriots and that they don’t like us because we’ve invaded their country and occupied it. I think if the Iraqis were in Washington, DC, we’d be doing the same thing; we’d be bombing them too. Nobody wants to be invaded.”
“We got all the bombs and they don’t have very much but a few guns. It’s the high-tech wealthy Western nation against the Third World country; it’s kind of a foregone conclusion that we’ll win. It’s a question of how many civilians get killed over there – that’s what worries me. We’re trying to get one man, right? And we’re going to kill tens of thousands of people to get him. It seems like a pretty inefficient way to do things.”
“I would give strong consideration to pulling our military forces out of the Middle East. I don’t know why they’re there in the first place… The things that they’ve asked of us, and I think we need to… really make a real solid serious effort to concentrate on bringing peace to the Middle East as far as Israel and its neighbors are concerned so that we can stop at some point furnishing military aid to Israel. Those are, I think, the two things that the Muslim extremists and a lot of other Muslims, too, would like to see us do, is get our military out of the Middle East. I mean… what are they there for, anyway?”
On Israel:
From the “Moral Innumeracy” Files: “The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists?”
On Global Warming:
“There’s too many people. That’s why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people they’d be using less stuff.” He warned that if we don’t combat global warming now, the results “will be catastrophic… We’ll be eight degrees hotter in 10, not 10, but in 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.” It’s doubtful, however, that Ted’s liver will pass USDA standards.
“It’s the seventh inning and humanity is, ah, down by two runs. Now, we’ve got to score three runs in the, in the next, ah, in the next two innings, and we’ve got to hold them right where they, where they are. So, it’s, it’s, it’s real tricky. It’s ah… We’re in a dangerous spot, but we can, we can pull it out if we, ah, if we really work together and, and go to work on it, and do the smart things and, and stop doing the dumb things, like bombing, ah, Third World countries.” Turner added later, “If there is a God, he is not doing a good job of protecting the earth. He’s kind of checked out.”
“If I had to predict, the way things are going, I’d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.” –Turner in a perfect example of what Paul Johnson has dubbed the west’s new ideology:pessimism
On what other people need to do:
“It’s time for humanity to start acting like mature, intelligent, educated and civilized human beings.”
On Iran:
“I’m much more worried about our nuclear arsenal than theirs. Iran, at best, can get a few nuclear weapons. We have tens of thousands. We have to get rid of them.”
But our all-time favorite diatribe would have to be Turner’s “insights” into the nuclear WMD danger posed by North Korea, from an interview with his own CNN anchor, Wolf Blitzer shortly after Turner returned from what he called a “diplomatic visit” trip to North Korea (19 September 05), on the subject of NK’s non-nuclear proliferation treaty agreement:
Blitzer: “‘Trust, but verify,’ as they used to say. We want to talk a little bit more about today’s developments involving North Korea with CNN founder and Chairman of Turner Enterprises, Ted Turner. Did this agreement come to you as a surprise?”
Turner: “I had a great time. No. No. … I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There’s really no reason ahhh… no reason for them to ahhh… cheat or do anything to violate this very forward agreement [not to develop nuclear weapons]. I mean, I think we can put the North Korea and East Asia problems behind us…”
Blitzer countered: “I’ve got to tell you, Ted, given the record of North Korea, especially the fact that, in the Clinton administration in ‘93-'94, they made a similar pledge, which they violated and they backed out of, I’m not exactly sure that I accept all your optimism.”
Turner: I looked them right in the eyes and ahhh… and they looked like they ahhh… they meant the truth. I mean, you know, just because somebody has done something wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can’t ahhh… do right in the future or in the present. That happens all the, all the time.“
Blitzer reminded Turner: "This is one of the most despotic regimes and Kim Jong-Il is one of the worst men on Earth. Isn’t that a fair assessment?”
Turner, a bit miffed at this challenge: “Well, I didn’t get to meet him, but ahhh… he didn’t look ahhh… in the pictures that I’ve seen of him on CNN, he didn’t look ahhh… look too much different than most other people I’ve met.”
Blitzer retorted: “But look at the way he’s treating his own people.” To which Turner countered: “Well, hey, listen, I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles, instead of driving in cars, but…”
Blitzer interrupted: “A lot of those people are starving.”
Turner concluded: “I didn’t see any brutality in the capital or out in the – on the DMZ. We should give them another chance. It doesn’t cost us anything.”
Then…Turner in October of '06, a year later, after North Korea’s nuclear weapons test: “Obviously, I don’t like to see nuclear proliferation, and I’m very upset about [the test].” But he quickly changed to subject: “The next most dangerous thing [after nuclear proliferation] is probably… global warming, and then, right behind that are overpopulation – we need to get serious about family planning—and trying to alleviate poverty, to get clean, renewable energy, probably with solar panels to the billion and a half people in the world who don’t have access to electricity.”
