Author Topic: Now the sane and rational reflection...  (Read 1430 times)

Offline miko2d

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Now the sane and rational reflection...
« on: September 12, 2002, 11:32:59 AM »
Who else but Fred Reed

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Mourning As A Performing Art

Migraine Television

September 9--We’re going to do it, I know we are. We’re going to celebrate Bin Laden’s Victory Day. By all indications, it will be a media circus, like when Princess Di did—a grand battle in the ratings wars. We’ll wallow in mawkishness, and whimper, and humiliate ourselves. Watch. There will be manufactured solemnity, factitious reverence, sorrow by Disney, and an unremitting ooze of therapy. Heaven help us, we’ll probably get in touch with our feelings, and Heal. Maybe booths will sell cotton candy.

It’s embarrassing.

I suppose I have a bad attitude about the upcoming festivities. On my office wall is a row of magazine covers I shot for Soldier of Fortune in a previous life as a freelance photojournalist. One of them (November, 1983, written as Rick Venable) shows Marines coming ashore in Beirut, the lead guy carrying an M-203. I spent a week or two with those guys, patrolling downtown and suchlike. Shortly afterward, the truck bomb arrived. Moslem terrorists. Two hundred forty-one dead.

America didn’t do anything about those killings, then or later. There was no carnival of mourning on the anniversary. I guess the networks forgot. What do you suppose? As for dead Marines, who cared? After all, they didn’t go to Princeton, and you never saw them in pricey booze chutes in Manhattan.

Judging by appearances, the forthcoming coverage will be appalling both in quantity and moral fraudulence. The ad agencies, I have read, are pondering what tone to use on September 11. It is a delicate question. The trick is to gull the rubes without disturbing their sensibilities. (Singing toilet paper may not be just the thing. Unless it sang a dignified dirge maybe. Mining the dead for ad revenue is harder that it might seem.)

The Moslem world is going to love every minute of it. In fact, I see in the Washington Times that they are going to have anti-American rallies in London to celebrate the great day. How convenient, they must think: The Americans are going to crawl for us. I’ll give you odds bin Laden is comfortable somewhere, probably in Saudi Arabia, laughing and laughing and laughing. I would be.

Maybe he’s not really in Saudi. Maybe he’s in Vail, waiting for good powder. But he ain’t been caught. I tell you, he’s one slick A-rab. I don’t like the guy. I’d shoot him if I could, and poke holes in his towel. I have to respect the sucker, though. He changed the United States forever. We’re going to be a scared security state for all time, with the cops reading our email. The home of the free, land of the brave.

I assume, subject to correction by events, that we’ll have every television truck on earth at Ground Zero, and the rest at the Pentagon. There will be endless tributes to the Hallowed Dead, who will be treated as saints crossed with Joan of Arc. Actually of course they were just people who happened to be at work on the wrong day. Being hit by an airliner is no more heroic or tragic than being run over by a dump truck. This is the age of Oprah Consciousness, though. We’ll have contrived tears from televised airheads who didn’t know the dead and don’t care about them.

People get mad if you say it, but, fact is, we got stomped. One raghead with a few subordinate loons took down the Trade Center, turned us into a docile police state, made us spend billions bombing peasants in Afghanistan without issue, frightened us into letting our airlines go into bankruptcy, and now we have Homeland Security, which makes flying so unpleasant that most of us will take trains. The best we could do now is just to shut up. Naw. We’re gonna wave it around on prime time. We’ll let everybody watch it again.

Time was, this wouldn’t have happened. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we squashed them. When the Nazis attacked us, we invaded. But that was before Oprah Consciousness. Now the Moslems kill a few thousand people in New York, and the President immediately goes to a mosque. Don’t you love it?

After Pearl Harbor, did Roosevelt go to a Shinto temple?

The whole thing is surreal. We can’t even admit who did it.

Quiz: What people have been consistently kicking our teeth in for decades? Chippewas? Latvians? Tibetan monks? Or Moslems?

It was the Iroquois who took over our embassy in Tehran and make fools of us for months, until Jimmy Carter sent in that comic-opera rescue team and independently made fools of us. Isn’t that what you remember? Iroquois?

The Norwegians blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, right? Damn those Norwegians. The Cole? The Starke? Presbyterians did it. I’m sure of it.

Is there no limit to our absurdity? (No. The question was rhetorical.) We all know who the terrorists are, but we won’t even search Moslems because that would be discrimination. We won’t arm pilots because guns are, Squeeeeak! so fwightening. We take away fingernail clippers as deadly weapons. This is the country that stormed Iwo?

It gets sillier. We’re going to wage an international crusade against terrorism, yet we throw little boys out of school for drawing pictures of soldiers, and we don’t let them play dodgeball because it’s so violent. The earth must be laughing.

A pretty good rule of diplomacy might be that you shouldn’t huff and puff if you aren’t going to back it up. It’s undignified. It invites more trouble. The Towers went down, and we huffed. Grrr, woof. Bush said fiercely that we were going to make terrorists everywhere wish they had never been born. For at least two weeks everybody was solidarified and America was on the march and companies sold Instant Patriotism kits, with a little flag for the aerial and a bumper sticker. Bow-wow-wow. Wurf.

And then we fizzled. We bombed Afghanistan some, but I can’t see that it did much. We sound as though we may do something unpleasant to Iraq. I guess that’ll get rid of terrorism. We’ll see. It’s hard to know what we’re going to do. These days wars are declared by the president, not congress.

I’ll root for us, but bet on them. The Moslems have got our number. They have the momentum. They appear to rely on what is becoming an international formula for defeating the United States: Don’t give the Yanks a point target, and draw the war out until they get bored. Do you reckon it’s working?

Fred Reed 2002
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 miko :(

Offline LoneStarBuckeye

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Now the sane and rational reflection...
« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2002, 11:47:45 AM »
Beautiful.  I don't know if you posted that piece because you agree with it or to poke fun, but, from my perspective, he pretty much hit the nail on the head.

- JNOV

Offline miko2d

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« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2002, 11:51:37 AM »
I don't know if you posted that piece because you agree with it or to poke fun
 I used the sad icon - that pretty much implies that I find no fault in his logic.

 miko

Offline hawk220

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« Reply #3 on: September 12, 2002, 11:55:37 AM »
Yup... very sad, but very true..

anyone who watched TV or had a radio on could not help but be barraged by the media orgy of self pity. I don't think it reflected the real feel of the people. I think most people are sad but resolute. We are being told by the media when to be weepy and pathetic, then angered by repeated loopings of the jets collisions with the buildings.. right in time for President Gump to wage war on Iraq.. coincidence?

Offline midnight Target

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« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2002, 11:56:08 AM »
Its Racist roadkill.

Offline Thrawn

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« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2002, 12:10:38 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by midnight Target
Its Racist roadkill.


Yep.  He's implying all muslims are terrorists and hate the US.  That's not true.  It's a sweeping racist generalisation.

I wonder how he thinks the problem should be solved.  I wonder who he thinks your congress should declare war against.  Does he think that the US should go to war at all?  He doesn't explain some points very well at all.

Pretty poorly written article in my opinion.

Offline miko2d

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« Reply #6 on: September 12, 2002, 12:26:16 PM »
What planet are you from guys? Have you heard of such thing as context? History? Particular history of the planet Earth that Fred Reed is referring to?

 What happened with those pesky germans and japanese which Reed uses as an example of what should happen to muslims?
 Were all of them evil? Did we slaugher them all in a racist manner?

 Americans smashed their military might and institutions that made them dangerous (and allowed evil fraction of them to make good fraction cooperate in hurting others) and then americans went out of their way to make their living conditions as good as ours.

 What's wrong with that approach (other than our inability to repeat it due to general sissiness and cultural decay?)

 miko
« Last Edit: September 12, 2002, 12:28:43 PM by miko2d »

Offline Mickey1992

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« Reply #7 on: September 12, 2002, 01:47:10 PM »
Who is this idiot and where did he come from?

I started to read the article and agreed with a lot of what he said about the "TV network mourning" crap.  But as soon as he started with the "Moslems are the root of all evil" racist garbage I started to hunt for the power button to turn it off.

Offline Elfenwolf

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« Reply #8 on: September 12, 2002, 02:02:09 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by miko2d
What planet are you from guys?
miko


Earth... sorry Miko, I agree with some of what he says, but when people start calling other people contemptious names like "Raghead" or "cupcake" they lose my respect. Since you and Lone Star agree so much with his accessment that bombing Afghanistan accomplished very little then how come you supported it???

Offline Thud

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« Reply #9 on: September 12, 2002, 02:03:11 PM »
Same here, initially I thought he made some valid points but then he started the racist bullsh*t as midnight target put it so accurately.

BTW, is there anyone who can discover even a remote connection between the xenofobic ranting of 'mr.' Reed and the thread title which has the words sane and rational in it......?

Offline Eagler

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« Reply #10 on: September 12, 2002, 02:06:36 PM »
I did wonder why we didn't have cameras in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, to name a few, watching them watching our memorials on television .... guess it wouldn't have been PC to watch them cheer again as the buildings fell
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Offline gofaster

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« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2002, 02:14:40 PM »
Well, at least he admitted he was having a bad attitude.  Too bad the rest of it was wrong.

His perception of Moslems is small-brained and narrow-minded.  Somehow, I don't think Mohammed Ali, Ahmad Rashad, Az-Zahir Hakim, or Kareem Abdul Jabbar were part of a militant Moslem movement designed to overthrow the government and kill Americans (though Ali sure did beat the crap out of a lot of guys in the ring).  Then again, Ali was at the Olympic opening ceremonies in Atlanta, and a bomb did go off.  Prelude to something bigger?  I don't think so.

Offline senna

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« Reply #12 on: September 12, 2002, 02:18:58 PM »
It aint over till the fat lady sings.

Offline Udie

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« Reply #13 on: September 12, 2002, 02:21:21 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by senna
It aint over till the fat lady sings.



 There ya go senna!  Keep to the one liners it's easier to keep people on your side :D

Offline LoneStarBuckeye

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« Reply #14 on: September 12, 2002, 02:21:44 PM »
Elf:

Contrary to your statement, I didn't support the action in Afghanistan, because I thought before it started that it would be ineffectual.  

And, although I think it is unfortunate that the article uses terms like "raghead," the author makes very good points.  Also, I didn't read the article to claim something like, "All Muslims are responsible for the acts of terror on 9/11," or "All Muslims are evil."  I think the point he was making is that the perpetrators and enablers were Arab Muslims and that to ignore that fact in the name of political correctness is not only stupid but dangerous.

- JNOV
« Last Edit: September 12, 2002, 02:24:16 PM by LoneStarBuckeye »