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August 27, 2005

Yon vs Bochco

I don't really need any new information about the War in Iraq. As I've said any number of times, we're in it to win it and I'm not panicky over how long we stay. It's basically US bases in Iraq keeping a lid on the Middle East, or nuts like Netanyahu, who by the way is nuclear in case anybody forgot. So while it's really pitiful how GWBush has completely botched the opportunity to create War TV, I have to depend on Hollywood and blogs. Blogs may have a much higher reality ratio, but the TV is damned convenient.

I watch Bochco's version, sometimes with a bit of nausea, on the regular and have realized that it's the closest thing I have to any verisimilitude on Iraq. I put up with its melodrama in order to place my head into the context of the skirmishes units are probably engaged in. There are no photojournalists worth a damn in America any longer. If Dan Rather was the best we had, it's because of the whole culture of the punk kids we send to J-School.

Standing in stark contradiction to the puff-blonde tradition of American news is Michael Yon. Remember his name and blog about him yourself. His blog, which I catch maybe once every two weeks, is by far the most down and dirty, grit eyeball view of troop actions. It's simply True. It's easy to say that Hollywood is Hollywood, but until you read Yon, you have no idea how bogus it might be.

Yon is getting his props in the 'sphere, but I wonder how long we have to accept that his name is not household knowledge like that of Cindy Sheehan. I'm not satisfied that we have to cynically take this problem with truth as just another bit of evidence of the dance of the MSM swirling around the drain. I feel shame, plain and simple. We can do better, and we need to.

Posted by mbowen at August 27, 2005 10:33 PM

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Comments

Posted by: everyman at August 28, 2005 11:23 AM

Posted by: matt at August 29, 2005 08:34 AM