Four years of media hell was just redeemed by these famous words "You are Stuck on Stupid"!

I love General Honore! He sure knows how to save the day.

I'd put a "Don't get stuck on stupid" bumpersticker on my car!

I love Gen. Honore!

My boss has used this phrase for the year I have worked for him. We are addressing a lot of culture change and as the HR department, we are in the thick of it. When times get extra hairy he says "ya know, we are just stuck on stupid". I've loved that phrase from the first time I heard him say it and to hear it in this context it is all the more endearing!

Heh, it's amusing, and it's used properly in this paticular press conference.

But I can easily see this phrase being used to shut down any questioning that the speaker doesn't like.

I love shutting down discussions when I'm responsible for getting things done. It's called leadership in the military, and too often called management elsewhere.

The news conference was supposed to be a about evacuation preparation. The local officials kept on answering (or bloviating)in response to any question asked, and lost focus on why they were there in the first place.

General Honore didn't. He redirected the focus of the press conference (after three tries) and may have even impressed the newsies enough that they might put "the buses will be at the Convention Center, and there will be troops, law enforcement, and medical support in place to help" at the top of their stories, instead of burying that tidbit under ten paragraphs of "the mayor is upset with federal high-handedness" or "Governor Blanco still wants to punch the President's lights out" or "Louis Farrakhan is negotiating with space aliens to influence Rita's path".

The mayor, the gov, and the tens of thousands of rescue workers in New Orleans wanted the media to, like, get the word out related to getting ready to deal with Rita. The General, obliquely and unconsciously, put his finger on the great blind spot afflicting old media - it's NOT ABOUT THEM. What Katrina did, and who screwed up or fell short or succeeded last week are subjects for another day.

I came here via Instapundit. "Stuck on stupid" rang a chord, but I don't know where I heard it before. It may well have been back in the Corps. Hearing him speak those words to the media was electrifying.

Most of that should be required reading in Journalism School, Disaster Reporting 101.

I think my favorite line is "let's not confuse the questions with the answers."

After thinking about it some more, I'm not at all bothered about the media being "shut down" during press conferences.

I can't remember the last time any one of them brought up a worthwhile point.

Another great line:

Female reporter: "Where do they move on..."

Honore: "That's not your business."

BITCHSLAP!

Best Line:

"Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay?"

In other words, Mr. MediaPerson ... IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU.

Shut up and report.

That General is a genius of temporal reality. "Who gives a good God-Damn about the last storm when we're trying to get people out of the way of this storm?" The media is dead. They serve zero purpose. Their whole game is "gotcha" and any other momentary hype they can create. The original ideals of the printing press are long long dead. Maybe blogs can resurrect the real purpose of dessimanting information but once Congress gets a hold on that I doubt it. I think sky righting or smoke signals may be are only hope.

...I also like the phrase "you are ate up with The Dumbass," or in the South, abrreviated EUD, for "et up with the dumbass."

I first heard the phrase "stuck on stupid" from an instructor at the police academy, who used it to describe belligerent suspects.

Apropos, no?

Honore for President!

There is a corollary to this:

"You can't fix Stupid!"

Where I work we always say, "you can't fix stupid". But I like this one better. New catch phrase for my hospital!

Yep, the media qualifies as "belligerent suspects" all right, and they have long forgotten that their role is to report the news, not to be the news.

In the UK, they have 'news readers', not 'anchors', and that is what we need too.

My local Fox affiliate (5-Washington DC) just showed a bit of a Nagin press conference, with Gen. Honore behind him. I strongly suspect it was the same press conference...and it was all Nagin. No word of anything from the General at all.

TmjUtah

Great post!

You can't make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.

Ron Burn

We have a sayin down south.....

Stupid should hurt !

I'm told that this is fairly common military slang.

Hey Jeff, I believe that's "8-up" rather then "ate-up". I learned that from a former army guy I worked with once. I forget what he said it was derived from, though.

SG — It's right up there with your Sarge's "Son, don't be dumb on purpose."

Courton,
I think "ate up with the dumbass" is meant to liken stupdity to a disease; e.g. "he is eaten up with cancer."

Oh man! I can just hear the General turning around to Nagin and saying "Git 'er done!"

Honore rules!

Tough one to google, but came up w/ this: http://www.pseudodictionary.com/8 up

Courton,
Very interesting! I've never seen that one.

yah - he sure bitch slapped her! Who needs freedom of the press when you're right??

I noticed Honore sort of grunting occasionally during that press conference and figured it was some military call meant to convey something. So I looked it up and now I'm wondering if he intended it to be ambiguous:

Hooah, Hoo-rah or Hoo-yah
(US) A spirited cry, meaning "affirmative" or "I am motivated." Short for "Heard, Understood and Acknowledged." Hoo-rah is chiefly used by the US Marines. Not to be confused with HUA which is pronounced much the same.

HUA
Head up Ass

To put it another way Sean, who needs/deserves the right to freedom of the press when you're stupid?

It reminds me of an old John Wayne quote: "Life is tough, but it's even tougher if you're stupid."

Honore for President in '08. Might be fun to watch him kick Hillary around in the polls.

Stupid MT. Sorry for the double trackback. Not sure what happened there.

I can just see it now. The reporter slinks back sulking to his rental car, and then about five minutes later, slaps himself on the forehead with the comeback he SHOULD have made:

"Well, I may be stupid, but you're ugly, and I can study."

Though at that point, who KNOWS what Honore would have done. :)

"The media is dead. They serve zero purpose."

Well, geez. Reporters, just go home. TV, radio, newspapers -- shut down. The people will get their information from new, secret frequencies, or maybe they're all lugging around laptop computers and can pick the right one of the 28 billion blogs that happens to have the information they need.

"Stuck on stupid" IS funny, but the first time the general used it was when one of the reporters was trying to clarify whether there was a second evac point that had been talked about previously, but which the general hadn't mentioned. It wasn't a stupid question by any means, but no matter. If you ask it, you're stuck on stupid.

I do hope you people eventually reach your nirvana where there are no newspapers, no TV, no radio, just those blessed blogs where people can type, link to each other, and chew the same cud, ad infinitum. You can circle jerk each other to the point of exhaustion. Have fun.

Dexter,

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Poor widdle Dexter doesn't like it when his bubble headed bleach blond reporters get deservedly bitchslapped for being not only arrogant but stupid.

I have worked in television long enough to know what reporters are like. They ARE arrogant and stupid. They are also totally clueless, just like you Dexter.

Dexter,

Your comment certainly qualifies as "Stuck on Stupid". You take the one over the top sentence from dozens of comments and let that serve as your straw man for shooting down those of us who are (rightly) critical of the press in this country.

General Honore had JUST STATED that "The initial place is at the convention center. We're not going to announce other places at this time" right before the idiot reporter asked his stuck on stupid question.

What's so difficult about that to understand? Unless, of course, you are also stuck on stupid.

Good job!

Shortly after Honore arrived in New Orleans, he was traveling in some sort of open-air vehicle, with some media people tagging along. One of the reporters asked with great gravity about the dangers of snipers, and Honore looked at him incredulously, and fairly snorted (paraphrasing), "Snipers? In Iraq there are snipers. In New Orleans there are just a few nitwits running around firing off shots. There's a difference."

It was pretty amusing.

Just say SOS.

The MSM has been SOS for about 50 years now.

It's a real Patton moment. When he's done there, do you think he'd take the job as Bush's press secretary?

Or head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

I heard the General use that phrase in response to another dumb question, just days after the hurricane. Some reporter asked some dumb question, and he said "We're not stuck on stupid here..."

Anyway, I think this has to take its place among the great quotes in American military history, like General McAuliffe's response to the idiotic German surrender demand at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge:

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. [...] There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. [...] If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. [...] All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity. - The German Commander.

General McAuliffe's reply was

To the German Commander: "Nuts!" - The American Commander

But he might just have well have said "You are stuck on stupid, Hans..."

I listened to that news conference. General Honore had to take over because the mayor of NO, once again, was losing it. (Has anyone else noticed some of the people standing around this walking advert for The Peter Principle? There are some real thugs there!) I'm not sure how this man managed to become the mayor of a major city (okay, there's Berry in DC as well, but we all know that's a town that's SOS), but the Good General could begin his political career as the Honorable Honore of NO. Talk about stuck on stupid! -- there's a whole city SOS and could use some straightening out.

I thank the General for giving me my belly laugh for today.

Because everything the man says is GREAT...like

"If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I'm talking about. If it's easy, it would have been done already."

So I just did a Bumper Sticker on Cafe Press...and will do a t-shirt in the morning...

http://www.cafepress.com/sosstupid

The phrawsewill be worn to death in a few weeks. We love Honore because at last someone seems to be a take-charge guy--afte all our president was nowhere to be seen for some time and then popped up for arranged photo ops; the mayor and the gov acting like typical pols defending their actions...Honore doing a real job and not posing.

If it hasn't been said, Honore for President!

The man cuts to the chase, says what is and calls reporters for what they are.

And, this applies to Dexter, reporters are talking heads. They try to show dirty laundry. The real stories are being broken on the blogs now (ever heard of Matt Drudge?)

I can remember hearing/using 'stuck on stupid' years ago when those 'I am stuck on Bandaids, cuz Bandaid's stuck on me...' was a current jingle. Great catchphrase, just not all that new.

re How Nagin got elected- he was the least worst and actually looked like a breath of noncorrupt fresh air for a while. Managed to unite the white and middle class blacks of NOLA against the typical Rainbow Push machines that fornted for the uber corrupt Morial administration. After a strong start busting the absolutely criminal auto inspection sytem and killing a few brother in law contracts, he just petered out and went to ground, not doing much. Some of us wondered if some one had comprimising photos or made a threat on him or his family. I have to admit that he has been a disappointment in this recent chance to show leadership, but the real failure is Blanco. At least Nagin is trying to do something, even if it is not the best choice. I will take a person of action who is willing to change his mind as circumstances warrant over the indecisiveness and utter lack of leadership of shown by Blanco. Not that I am defending Nagin. I am not, I voted for him and am disappointed in his performance.

Ooo-rah!= USMC

Hooah!= U.S. Army

Hoo-yah!= U.S. Navy (primarily the diving community)

The reporter in NO? "Don't be that guy"

Actually, General McAuliffe's reply was bowdlerized for the mass media to publish. The real word:

To the German Commander: "Balls!" - The American Commander

I always thought it was "ate up" as in "beat up" or "chewed up", a term generally meaning severely damaged or wounded, which then migrated to meaning "really incorrect." However, one person once told me they thought it was "8 up" referring to adjusting the rear sight aperture on an M-16 (which you adjust my moving it a number of clicks up or down). So "8 up" would mean you need to adjust your sight 8 clicks up, meaning you were severely undershooting. Seems like a pretty attenuated reference to me, so I prefer "ate up".

To me "stuck on stupid" implies dwelling on past mistakes. I think that's what the General was saying -- don't turn this into a blame game for the past mistakes with Katrina. Rather, focus on getting the right information out loudly and clearly to the public for the coming problem.

Impeach Mrs. Doubtfire!

Honore for Governor!

It's "ate up" not "8 up".

This stuff hits fast!

http://cafepress.com/URStuckOnStupid

(Not one of mine, but funny nonetheless.)

In the 3 minute mp3 of it I heard, LTG Honore hit his point 7 times which the reporters did not get. They did not get it and he stayed on his point. And the President of all the elected officials down here has done the best job staying on mission. Blanco and Nagin have been criminally inept. If not for Admiral Aleen and LTG Honore that dippy Mayor would still be pushing people in New Orleans with a Cat IV hurricane coming into the area.

Here's another, now with a tasty camoflauge background!

www.cafepress.com/smitken

LTG Honore is Storm'n Norman and Patton rolled into one. The first clip I saw of him, he was out front directing a convoy.

You also know when he is done talking, "Over".

And my own version of the DGSOS Tee

Who needs freedom of the press when you're right??

How is it violating freedom of the press to answer back to a reporter who's saying something stupid?

(Is that anything like the way that criticizing what someone* says is a violation of freedom of speech?)

-----
* For certain values of "someone". For example, criticizing the guys at Powerline is exercising your freedom of speech, but criticizing the Dixie Chicks is violating their freedom of speech.

"He was such a pitiful race car driver. He was ate up by the competition."

As in lunch for a large carnivore.

Dexter Westbrook

Don't be any more stupid than you can help.

US Navy cheer (primarily ROs) - "Super Crit". Sometimes also "Max Flux".

Dexter,

When news organizations collude in the manufacture of lies to support a gang of thugs, and such lies get uncovered I think the days of the mass media are numbered.

Of course this is not the first time 60 Minutes has "enhanced" the news. Just the latest.

Believe liars if you want to. I'll take blogs any day. They fact check yer ass.

My father's lifelong variation: It's expensive to be stupid.

"..Who needs freedom of the press when you're right?"

Right. On.

And the immortal, "There ain't no cure for Stupid."

I created a similar phrase in a health class I taught a couple of years ago, after spending a few weeks discussing the trsgic effects of overindulging in alcohol, sex drugs etc:

STUPID STUFF HAS NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES!!

Around my place it's:
"Ignorance can be cured. Stupid is forever."

"Stuck on stupid" rang a chord, but I don't know where I heard it before. It may well have been back in the Corps."

R. Lee Ermey's character in "Full Metal jacket"?

Hooah: actually dates back at least as far as the British military in Afghanistan in the 1890's. (HUA comes much later.) It's one of those catch-all words that means just about everything (except "no"): and is also used when someone is at a loss for words. I also take it no one here has ever seen Scent of a Woman ;)

8-up: Visual transliteration of United States Army slang ("ate-up") for something thoroughly useless, worthless, problematic, disreputable, shabby, or dysfunctional. Also sometimes used to describe obsessive or eccentric behaviour. It's hard to tell whether the source is the rave scene (hangover after ecstasy), or whether the rave scene adopted it from the military. (For sure it's not from semaphor!)