I'm still calling it the Funny Hat Syndrome . At every serious protest rally, I've attended, the news media focuses its attention on the protestor with the most outre positions and the funniest hat.
Almost every television news story on Saturday's protest march in Washington ignored the substantive arguments against this war, but led with something like "the Sixties are back!" and made sure to mention that Jane Fonda was there, along with "40 or so" anti-Jane counter protestors. Can we PLEASE lock Fonda, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and every polarizing camera magnet in the basement until the grown ups are finished talking and this thing is over?
You can bet that media savvy "agent provacateurs" are rubbing their hands at how quickly the ideas behind this protest were dismissed. Did they have a hand in arranging the featured speakers?
The administration has arranged it so we cannot see the caskets being unloaded from the planes. We cannot linger on the plight of warriors who signed up to go to Afghanistan and instead went three times to Iraq. Of the major outlets, only NPR seems to have noticed that Northern Pakistan-- Pakistan, our ally-- has become an R&R camp and staging platform for al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The government of Saudi Arabia, which did much to build the Wahabi Frankenstein and now cannot control it, is, like Israel, apparently unassailable. But we CAN show you all the silly puppets and movie stars you can stomach. We CAN put Ben Stein on CBS the morning after the march to tell you that the media is trying to destroy President Bush, and not his own actions.
A disastrous invasion and a mismanaged war.
A disastrous invasion and a mismanaged war.
THAT is the story, but the protestors are again allowing themselves to become the story.
"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" 
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
No comments:
Post a Comment