The Day The Americans Came To Stay
That title is the front page headline on the Independent today, and it wasn't the only broadsheet in a philosophical mood today. Fallujah is in the middle of a gruesome urban battle between the attacking US Troops and the insurgents, and the Times was describing the battle this morning as a "savage dance of death". (full story)
It is difficult to know what to make of it. What we are getting from Iraq are facts and figures from the military, and even the television reports we see over our morning coffee are monitored and restricted. The media has become a strange presence in modern warfare, and the numbers involved are huge and increasingly leading to resentment; so your arms have been blown off, you're lying in the street gushing blood and screaming for help, and a guy sticks a microphone in your face and asks you how you feel? Your picture will be on the front page tomorrow, so give us a smile… But despite the blanket coverage on a hundred papers and a thousand channels, we still don't have a clear picture and we feel more remote from the conflict than ever.
It's not to say the standard of reporting has dropped, because it hasn’t. But the middle east has been a battleground for many, many years now. We have become used to watching these distant battles between a massively superior force and small armies of angry, proud warriors, knowing in advance that the result will be an obscene and bloody mess in which the Americans win the battle but prolong the war. We have seen computer graphics mocking up battle plans, shocking photographs of mass graves, missiles flying through the night sky and statues being toppled…but we are unshockable nowadays and prefer to get into dinner-party slanging matches over military ethics and American arrogance. But this is not an indication of a nation's rotten heart. It is the result of the ubiquitous media opinionating and speculation with which we are surrounded. We tend to talk about whatever journalists want us to be talking about…the most important topic of discussion for us all today being the size of a film character's pants in the non-event sequel to a deeply dull film, if the tabloids are anything to go by.
That's a point. Does anyone anywhere give a good goddamn about film premieres? These horrific, bloated evenings of self-congratulation do nothing for the film-goer except clog the papers with pictures of actresses in sparkly dresses. The main thrust of the "news" about the Bridget Jones premiere, for instance, seems to be "rain falls from sky – some people about to watch a film get wet. See pages 2,3,4 and centre pages…"
Okay, it's anybody's guess where this is going, so I'll conclude this by saying that after weighing up all the information at my disposal, there's still one thing I don't understand…Einstein's general theory of relativity.
(Sorry.)
It is difficult to know what to make of it. What we are getting from Iraq are facts and figures from the military, and even the television reports we see over our morning coffee are monitored and restricted. The media has become a strange presence in modern warfare, and the numbers involved are huge and increasingly leading to resentment; so your arms have been blown off, you're lying in the street gushing blood and screaming for help, and a guy sticks a microphone in your face and asks you how you feel? Your picture will be on the front page tomorrow, so give us a smile… But despite the blanket coverage on a hundred papers and a thousand channels, we still don't have a clear picture and we feel more remote from the conflict than ever.
It's not to say the standard of reporting has dropped, because it hasn’t. But the middle east has been a battleground for many, many years now. We have become used to watching these distant battles between a massively superior force and small armies of angry, proud warriors, knowing in advance that the result will be an obscene and bloody mess in which the Americans win the battle but prolong the war. We have seen computer graphics mocking up battle plans, shocking photographs of mass graves, missiles flying through the night sky and statues being toppled…but we are unshockable nowadays and prefer to get into dinner-party slanging matches over military ethics and American arrogance. But this is not an indication of a nation's rotten heart. It is the result of the ubiquitous media opinionating and speculation with which we are surrounded. We tend to talk about whatever journalists want us to be talking about…the most important topic of discussion for us all today being the size of a film character's pants in the non-event sequel to a deeply dull film, if the tabloids are anything to go by.
That's a point. Does anyone anywhere give a good goddamn about film premieres? These horrific, bloated evenings of self-congratulation do nothing for the film-goer except clog the papers with pictures of actresses in sparkly dresses. The main thrust of the "news" about the Bridget Jones premiere, for instance, seems to be "rain falls from sky – some people about to watch a film get wet. See pages 2,3,4 and centre pages…"
Okay, it's anybody's guess where this is going, so I'll conclude this by saying that after weighing up all the information at my disposal, there's still one thing I don't understand…Einstein's general theory of relativity.
(Sorry.)
posted by Jamie at 10:14 AM
1 Comments:
As an American who didn't vote for Bush, the only possible reply to this most serious post--in an effort to bring life to despair--is to present you with this piece of American culture. Enjoy.
http://nflcheerleader.blogspot.com/
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