Sunday, March 23, 2003
If I am to continue to comment on the war, and on the sad state of the world in general, I will, occassionally, have to eat some crow. It's the responsibility that comes along with constantly mouthing off online. When I am, in some respect, wrong, I should acknowledge that fact.
So . . .
The following e-mail from Larne, who I've apparently spoken with at Dragon*Con:
We've never met beyond a couple of questions asked and answered during
Dragon*Con panels last year, but I've been lurking on your blog and
message boards for a while now.
I thought you might be interested in a Reuters story (available at link) which reports that on Thursday night NBC's sitcom reruns drew significantly higher ratings than ABC's live war coverage. No information is given on how CNN, MSNBC et al faired, but as they reach fewer homes it seems likely that they drew even smaller audiences than ABC.
While I too would hope this leads to a quick cancellation, knowing how networks function I expect it is more likely they will play up the homeland terrorism angle, and go for more and bigger explosions. And when all else fails, bring out the leggy models: link.
Thank you, Larne. Very interesting. I will add two additional bits of information. Yesterday, Jennifer informed me that, in fact, the 24-hour news channels are losing something like thirty million dollars a day, from lost advertising revenues, in order to televise the war without commercial breaks. And, finally, this morning ABC stressed repeatedly that they would not air footage of casualties and prisoners. So, exceptions to my comments duly noted. I stand amended.
And, incidentally, Atlanta protesters did march on CNN yesterday.
But, this morning I watched an interview with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who stressed, repeatedly that we were not attacking Baghdad. We were, instead, attacking select military targets within Baghdad. He was quite annoyed at the misperception that the US is dropping bombs on the city itself. Later, he stated that the 9/11 attacks were attacks against all America. It seemed an odd contradiction to me. By this logic, can not we fairly say that those terrorists attacked carefully selected military and financial targets, but not New York City and Washington D.C,, per se, much less the whole of America?
Yes, that is a somewhat foolish suggestion, but it points to a certain hypocrisy and inconsistency within the administration. The terrorists attacked America, and we are bombing Baghdad.
Also, much ado is being made about Iraqi intentions to telecast images of Amercan POWs, an act which would violate the Geneva conviction. But yesterday, or perhaps the day before, I saw images on CNN Headline News of Iraqis that had surrendered to American troops. Again, I only wish to point out the contradiction.
And then there's all this noise because one of the American POWs is female. We've come a long way . . .
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