Channeling the Onion… or was it an audition piece for “Saturday Night Live”?… British Channel 4 “Presenter” Hugh Thomson has written one of the most inadvertently comic opeds yet for The Guardian. Mr. Thomson apparently sees the WoT as “Christian fundamentals” vs. “Islamic fundamentals”. [What happened to Jewish neocons?-ed. Must have slipped his mind. What about you agnostics? Where do you fit in? We've been brainwashed by Billy Graham, don't you remember?].
Meanwhile, Mr Thomson informs us:
In the ideological and military clash of Christian fundamentals with Islamist fundamentals, the western media are simply off-limits to the latter. I am still getting emails every week from viewers demanding why we are not in Falluja, Tikrit, Amara covering this war properly and showing the other side.
What Thomson seems to be saying is that the “balance” situation would be rectified if some of our journos were embedded with the suicide bombers, etc., instead of with those indiscriminately war-like Marines. Care to volunteer, Mr. Thomson?
Via Clive Davis… and don’t miss Harry’s Place as well.
Well as a genetic Republican who just happens to be a libertarian/imperialist agnostic, I’m just shocked, shocked I say that Thomson views are so misplaced.
Hopefully the Guardian will embed reporters with the jihadis. I need a good entry to put forward for this years Darwin awards.
Strange editorial.
Lines like “But at least the hacks remained in town, and were able not just to capture the ‘shock-and-awe’ fireworks but to visit Baghdad’s hospitals and discover the impact of modern British and US high explosives upon the flesh and organs of children.” showed his bias.
I would think the “other side” of the story would be how the “other side” fight their battles, but hey… what do I know?
He seemed to be complaining that it was too dangerous to cover the “other side” of America’s brutish war because the “other side” was liable to chop off the heads of reporters. I wonder if he would recognize the ridiculous irony of his position if it was drawn in crayons for him?
I keep getting the feeling that large parts of the media and academia have simply gone insane. The thought that keeps tickling at the back of my mind is: perhaps it was always so and the curtain has simply been drawn back, exposing the idiocy, or has something happened to drive these folks over the edge. I am beginning to think it was always so.
Memo to self:
Prepare pitch for “suicide bomber” line of clothes for Banana Republic.
Idea #1: Add customized vest pockets for C-4 on the classic
photography vest.
Typical of the Guardian to have an op-ed guest who doesn’t know the difference between fundamentals and fundamentalists.
It looks like a number of journalists have already been "recruited"
for the job according to Greyhawk:
We are still waiting for those 20 journalists to file their reports….
Thomson asks: (If embedding with the other side happens), how will we respond?
Answer: Stockholm Syndrome and homo-erotically.
Western journos are already smitten by the misunderstood, naughty, uber male and strict, underdog terrorists who are exotic and attractive in a Lawrence of Arabia kind of way. If they embed with them, they’ll fall hopelessly in love.
(!! I’m a straight Republican who has supported the legalization of gay marriage for 15 years. No gay bashing here- just observation.)
it’s not appropriate to use words like “enemy” or even “terrorist”
- Alex Thompson
The radical journalistic neutrality ethic or removes truth while pretending to pursue objectivity.
If it is not appropriate to use the word “terrorist”, why can’t each occurrance be replaced with more specific words, like the phrase person who saws civilians’ heads off, or person whose aim is to kill as many innocent people as possible.
That would be objective, and true, but that’s not what people like Thompson want. They want to move the content of the reporting from objective truth to a particular falsehood, in which the US is no different from terrorists, just more powerful and more dangerous.
How can we be surprised at the confusion of foreign left wing news (redundant?), when our own MSM is reporting from what they call a “reality based” framework – a positively Orwellian name?
To those of us who don’t go around with exotic theories can find the result rather puzzling.
Only slightly OT, a syndicated cartoon that ran in this week’s edition of my local idiotarian weekly can be found here: http://www.derfcity.com/n/newtoon.html
As a fairly libertarian agnostic/leaning-atheist, imagine my surprise at learning that this was who I was, and what I voted for. Seems to me this cartoon exemplifies two of the Dems’ main problems: 1) Demonizing your opponents is a dubious way of proving your own moral superiority, and an utterly ineffective way of encouraging peopple to re-examine their opposing views, and consider adopting yours. You don’t win votes from social conservatives by telling them they’re just like the people who murdered Margaret Hassan. 2) Caricatures like this tend to be isotropic–i.e., I doubt that Joe Lieberman and Mickey Kaus look at Bush and the Republicans like this, but I’m pretty sure that Michael Moore and Ted Rall do.
Until liberals unambiguously disassociate themselves from tripe like this and stop relying on moral equivalency, most voters are going to regard them as too shrill and irresponsible to trust with American policy.
Does anyone forget the AFP ‘journalists’ embedded with the terrorists who fired on US aircraft outside Baghdad airport? Or the stringers who always appear to be in the right place at the right time when the insurgents let loose with one of their RPGs or AK-47s at coalition forces? Apparently Hugh does.
We’ve got more than enough coverage from the enemy side. MSM goes out of its way to portray stories with ‘objectivity and balance,’ bending over backwards and into knots in a way that makes Svetlana Khorkina look downright amatuerish, though both Khorkina and MSM whine whenever anyone questions their abilities or dedication (or objectivity in MSMs case). If MSM was interested in objectivity, they’d be running more stories on the torture chambers, the execution rooms, and continuing problems with terrorists and insurgents feigning surrender, only to open fire on US forces.
Maybe the author of this oped would like to volunteer to take the place of some hapless captive like Ms. Hassan. He could give an objective report right up tot he moment they killed the silly bastard..
This thing is like a monty Python skit.
Can you imagine him in WW2 at Dachau?
I hate to take sides old boy but it does seem rather unkind putting that jew baby in a furnace. Can you tell our viewers just what compelled you to such anti social behavior?
utron:
The problem with the left is that they project their own education level [a bad proxy for smarts]
with the entire Democratic Party voting base. Well, there is an old saying that goes “its better to be vaguely right then precisely wrong.” Our Dem/left friends have it precisely backwards. The difference between us and them is education. The Democrats dominate the high school and below education group. The are only competitive because of the presence of a large poorly educated African American underclass that is concentrated in a few states. If African-Americans voted like Hispanics then the blue universe would consist of New England and perhaps the Pacific Northwest.
Now as Republican, I just chuckle over the Democrat’s [except for Carville] analysis of the last election. You folks just keep on dreaming that all intelligent [meaning well educated] Americans think the way you do. Please believe that liberals are made up of high income productive Americans. Every two years the number of Democratic elected officials will go down and Republicans will go on increasing. However, as an American I want to see a healthy two party system and the Democrats are the only other real party that we have.
Message to James Carville: Please speak the truth. Tell your party that the average Bush voter is better educated and more productive then those voters who went with Kerry if only because the underclass votes exclusively for Democratic candidates. Explain to them its OK to let the Republicans capture some more African American votes if you can gain other votes in return. Otherwise, the larger African American community will eventually figure out its better to vote like Hispanics and that will be the end of Democratic Party.
Morgan,
Very astute, as usual.
If Thomson’s goal was to avoid any moral judgment at all, I think he succeeded remarkably.
The way he described the danger to embeds of the other side–it was as though the heads are simply rolling off of their own accord, the result of a strange disease or bad luck. The terrorists themselves have nothing to do with it and when weighing the merits of the two sides, there’s no sense in taking the head rolling into account.
Great stuff.
Actually it’s the want to live fundamentalists vs. the want to kill fundamentalists.
Maybe Mr. Thompson and his ilk lack the want to live gene.
My first thought was, Who did he think sent those tapes of Brit hostages pleading for their lives? That’s the terrorist version of embedded journalism.
I feel now that if it hadn’t been for journalists “explaining” things to us, Bush would have won in a landslide. Terrorism is a miscalculation against Americans. It assumes that if they make themselves terrible to us, we will abandon the field. It was a near thing, but I think that the message of this election has been that we are not as far gone as the Europeans–that Americans, Britons, Aussies and the rest are made of sterner stuff.
Maybe it’s necessary for this horror to continue until the Iraqis understand that freedom from fear must be won again and again, and in every generation. Freedom requires a stubborn streak. I hope they can learn to understand that, because The world will never run out of Alexanders, Khans, Caesars, Stalins and Hitlers, and Saddams. We must be prepared to meet them with men like the Marines and the Black Watch. Sadly, it seems as though it will never run out of pseudo-intellectuals like Alex Thomson, either.