Wars and Rumors of War 1
“You furnish the pictures; I’ll furnish the war.–Willam Randolph Hearst.
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January 19, 2012 at 11:32 am
A decade ago I pitched a column at the Village Voice on this called Weapon of the Week. One of my editors remarked I could have stuff for that forever. However, it didn’t run forever. They figured it had run its course two weeks after the fall of Baghdad. A bit short-sighted that was. There was just this endless joy in being publicists for war and all the stuff that was going to be used. I recognized it again last week:
http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2012/01/13/the-empires-dog-feces-dolphin-story/
The stupid mine-clearing dolphins if the bad guys close the Straits story was blurbed by Google’s news tab for days. As a decade ago, this is also all about how our guys and stuff are wonderful, ingenious, just and guaranteed triumphant. Kind of a tribal our johnsons are so much bigger than theirs cheer. You’ll have noted the quick cut of the Iranian Air Force, stilly flying US F-4s, Viet Nam war vintage sold to the country when the Shah was our flunky. So here we are, with a newsmedia that neglects to mention in all these pieces how any war will be against another relative pantywaists in the Middle East of wrong religion, and all the good pr that will result in after the first four weeks of shock and awe bombing sitting ducks video is done airing.