The Duh Of The Day
Is the media providing the American public responsible, fair and balanced reporting about the unfolding drama of democracy in Iraq? Well, du-uh!
Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq
Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.
"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"
"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"
Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq
Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.
"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"
"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"
posted by BigBubba at 8:14 AM
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15 Comments:
The media is wonderful for telling us all the unusual things that happened "today" and ignoring all the dull and routine things that are going on in parallel in the "background". And then, when it comes to keeping track of "trends", they tend to have only maintained a record of the "unusual" events and so have a very biased data set (like bodycount) on which to comment and draw conclusions.
A newspaper that could draw an "across the board" baseline of "normality" and then establish reporting "alarm thresholds" would better serve the interests of its readers... but I doubt that they would necessarily sell more papers. For after all, how many people subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, compared to the NY Times, compared to USA Today and the local city/county paper?
Instead, every newspaper should carry a disclaimer at the bottom that reads "For entertainment purposes only"... a mandatory warning label.
-FJ
Duck, and all, I have some distractions at the moment. I may go see my 93 year old cousin in Valley Mills, Texas within the week. So what? Because, I have to drive through Crawford. If I make it I may have some photos to post soon.
Duck, my son was just up in Somerville. He got lost in the woods up in Boston around Massachusetts St/Jarvis. He was going to Tyler Street which is less than a block long hidden away street. He couldn't find it in time Friday so he went to Sturbridge for the week end. I can understand almost everything about driving up there except the Northeasterner's phobia about truck stops. Everybody wants their goodies. They just don't want to see the trucks that bring 'um. He left for New Hampshire this morning and is now on his way back south to Maryland.
He is impressed with Boston women with brown hair and high proportion of blue eyes. Just like us down here in G-d's Country, black hair and blue contacts. My granddaughter has been bugging me for contacts and she got "hazel eyes" just like grandpa the Old German.
mr ducky,
You are absolutely right. We need to cut and run. We need to bring our boys home immediately and get them out of uniform. We also need to take all the tanks and jets and ships down to the scrapyards and get them turned into razor blades. We need to stop fighting wars. Wars are just awful! People get killed. And dying is bad.
And if Iraqi people die in the process, hey, not our problem. It was all George Bush's fault. If the region descends into civil war and they blow each other up and Iran gains control of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, so what. We don't need their oil. We can simply use biofuels.
And when Iran builds their uranium enrichment reactors and start extracting and stockpiling tritium and plutonium, again, not our problem. The French will take care of it.
And as for Darfur, Sudan, Israel, Palestine, Chechnya, the Balkans, Pakistan, the ex-Soviet Republics and the rest of the world, screw them. Let someone else wipe their noses. We should never ever under any circumstances send our boys out of this country to fight someone elses war or use our technology to kill innocent people.
We need to get back to doing all those things that made this country great. Franchising MacDonalds restaurants, inventing hoola-hoops, and playing with silly putty.
And just think, if we divert all that DOD and Iraq money to solving our Social Security deficit, you and I and BB can all spend the rest of our leisure years blogging about the latest fashions from Paris, the latest trend in post-modern art, and blissfully spend our golden years playing video games and watching Alec Baldwin win Oscars.
And as punishment for getting us into this mess, we should send George Bush to Cindy Sheehan's house and have him kiss her ass every day for the rest of his miserable life.
Then, and only then, would there be true justice in your world.
-FJ
ps - And yes 2,000 men have now died in Iraq for absolutely nothing. I think you should start writing your apology letters to the families of those soldiers right away. You could start with Cindy Sheehan...I suggest something along the following lines:
Dear Cindy,
As you know, I railed against this war from the start. I helped sap America's will to support the war effort, and made sure that the NY Times published stories with explicit details of every American's death to convince them that the effort was futile from the start. And whenever the terrorists succeeded in killing an innocent Iraqi, I made sure that everyone knew who to blame. George Bush. In fact, as soon as the war started, I helped spread the rumour along with Noam Chomski that we had killed at least 200,000 innocent Iraqi's needlessly. And when Al Jazeera interviewed me, I informed the entire Arab community and the world press that America did not have the will to fight and would be out of Iraq post-haste. I also told them about how awful we were treating POW's at abu Ghraib, and Gitmo. This gave them all the encouragement they needed to defeat us.
Cindy, I'm sorry that your son died as a result of my hatred of George Bush. I'm also sorry that because of that hatred, your son and 2,000 others like him died for absolutely no reason at all.
Proudly,
the duckmeister
-FJ
Farmer John, isolationism is not a new fangled idea. It is as old as this country. We just never will be able to get our collective heads in the sand deep enough to pull it off.
Cindy Sheehan...
Anybody remember her C-SPAN performance and testimony in the Capitol Hill Basement in the "mock" Kill the Iraq War committee meetings (Where all the progressive libs in the House and Senate "pledged" to work for surrender)? It was supposed to be a meeting on the Downing Street Memo but all of the witnesses were comprised of the Bush Lied crowd (along w/Joe Wilson). It was held and broadcast back on 6/16/05?
Anybody care to tell me that this isn't just another "progressive" publicity stunt? Anybody care to tell me that the MSM doesn't know this?
-FJ
mr. ducky,
Again, we are in complete agreement. We should have elected John Kerry president and immediately began the troop withdrawl process. hmmm. Let me start again.
Actually, the SCOTUS should have never meddled in the 2000 election and stolen the presidency from Al Gore. That way, no terrorists would have ever attacked the Pentagon or WTC, because, as we all know, Al Gore would have stopped harassing Saddam, taken down the No Fly Zones leftover from '91 Gulf War, and allowed Saddam to massacre all those pesky Shia's in the south, and Kurds in the north and Iraq would again become a multicultural paradise.
And there would have been no oil for food scandal with the UN (since there were no longer sanctions to worry about), and Saddam could have been left free to develop the Sunni bomb to offset the Iranian Shia bomb. And France could have provided all the technology needed to accelerate these efforts, and the North Koreans could have been left free to accelerate their multi-stage-missile payload delivery vehicle programs. And think of all those billions America could have saved on those useless theater level missile defense crazy Star Wars programs that Reagan and Bush Sr. insisted on developing.
Indeed, without the American bull in the china shop, perhaps the Chinese would now be free to build amphibious assault vehicles for floating across the Taiwanese Straits, and then who knows... on to the Phillipines and/or Japan? Then those lousy nips would finally receive their "just desserts" for the rape of Nanking! Social Justice at last!
And of course, all those oceans on our borders would make America safe for democracy... except for that pesky southern border that's perfect for practicing tank and manuever warfare. Ah, the glorious days of Rommel and Patton and Montgomery in North Africa. Now those were the days!
And then maybe, we could get rid of that damned electorial college and finally become a REAL democracy in this country. And if our presidents or generals screwed up we could yell "Off with their heads" and march them down to the guillotine standing before the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial.
There I could sit on the steps in my ragged cammies knitting a shawl for winter, adding one stitch for every head that rolled into the basket in the name of the people!
And my very first stitch, I could dedicate to George W. Bush. Your right as always, my feather head-dress wearing friend!
-FJ
The Duck, President Bush despises
Bush lies he frequently surmises
To make it fit
He minds not a bit
His silly accusations to fictionalize
ps
mr. ducky... we LOST! Who cares about their silly constitution. It's time to pull out! Let the damn Iraqi women don the burka. No skin off our noses.
Fo-ged-aboud-it!
-FJ
duck flies over his head
ad-justs for vel-o-ci-ty
un-leash-es his load
(end of haiku)
...Splat
-FJ
I wonder if Cindy Sheehan would be willing to volunteer to serve as a human shield for our soldiers in Iraq. Instead of adding more armor to counter the new shaped charges the terrorist insurgents are now using, they could strap her to front of a Humvee and allow her aura of righteous indignation to set of the explosives at a safe distance... and I estimate that distant to be about the distance between her, and the closest camera.
-FJ
Finem respice!
-FJ
Aut vincere aut mori
-FJ
Here's one for the paranoid crowd. Bubbette just received our marriage license back from registration with the county clerk. Lower left shield with black German Eagle with "Deutschland" across the top of the shield. I told the little senorita bubbette that I was surprised there was not a trace of red, white and green. Big Bubba the old German was impressed.
Given all the Cindy Sheehan coverage of late must mean that the editors have ceased their pondering as to how to present a broad picture of Iraq and begun to actually present it.
-FJ
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