{"id":6520,"date":"2020-10-15T12:53:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T12:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=6520"},"modified":"2020-10-15T12:53:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T12:53:48","slug":"john-man-up-kerry-faces-firestorm-for-snowden-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=6520","title":{"rendered":"John "Man Up" Kerry Faces Firestorm for Snowden Remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is facing widespread criticism for his comment that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2014increasingly seen by the American public as a heroic figure for exposing government surveillance\u2014should “man up” by returning home to face criminal charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a man who has betrayed his country,\u201d Kerry told CBS News<\/em> on Wednesday, just hours before the airing of highly anticipated interview between Snowden and NBC News’ Brian Williams. \u201cHe should man up and come back to the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seen widely as an attempt by Kerry and the Obama administration to turn public opinion against the 30-year-old former intelligence contractor, for many it had the opposite effect: making the Secretary look both petty and misogynistic\u2014not to mention “wrong”\u2014by characterizing Snowden as “less than a man” for his actions.<\/p>\n

Responding to Kerry’s remarks on his website, Peter Van Buren, a former government employee and whistleblower himself said that the Secretary of State\u2014who at this point sounds “more like Grandpa Simpson than America\u2019s Senior Diplomat”\u2014has apparently been “relegated within the Obama administration to the role of mumbling bully-boy statements, faux-machismo rantings whose intended audience and purpose are very, very unclear.”<\/p>\n

On Twitter, some turned the tables on Kerry’s comments, by saying that to the extent the term is cultural code for “courage or bravery” it is the Secretary of State and the government he represents who should “man up” by admitting their short-sighted and mistaken approach to the Snowden affair and foreign policy and surveillance issues more broadly:<\/p>\n

Others, however, put their entire focus on the conceit of Kerry’s use of the phrase “man up” itself, widely described as both misogynistic, petty and “obnoxious.”<\/p>\n

Writing for VICE, journalist and commentator Natasha Lennard characterized Kerry’s comments as equal parts “moronic, offensive, and dangerous.” She argued that Kerry’s use of “man up” was a “misogyny-soaked problem” large enough for its own column but also took issue with other troubling undertones of Kerry’s remarks:<\/p>\n

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, with a comment that was re-tweeted more than 250 times overnight, responded to Kerry’s ‘man up’ comment on Wednesday by focusing on its practical implications:<\/p>\n

Click Here: Putters<\/a><\/p>\n

And that’s a key point, according to Van Buren, who explains:<\/p>\n

In his interview with Brian Williams, asked why he won’t just return to the U.S. to “face the music,” Snowden himself called it a valid concern people have, but echoed Van Buren’s argument with this response:<\/p>\n

And Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner at the ACLU, told the Guardian<\/em> that \u201cthe laws under which Snowden is charged don\u2019t distinguish between sharing information with the press in the public interest, and selling secrets to a foreign enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThe laws would not provide him any opportunity to say that the information never should have been withheld from the public in the first place. And the fact that the disclosures have led to the highest journalism rewards, have led to historic reforms in the US and around the world \u2013 all of that would be irrelevant in a prosecution under the espionage laws in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Van Buren offered this as an idea for a fair compromise on holding people accountable for their actions:<\/p>\n

Likely no one\u2014least of all Edward Snowden\u2014is holding their breath for Kerry to sign that piece of paper, however.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is facing widespread criticism for his comment that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2014increasingly seen by the American public as a heroic figure for exposing government surveillance\u2014should “man up” by returning home to face criminal charges. \u201cThis is a man who has betrayed his country,\u201d Kerry told CBS News on Wednesday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}