Heart Of Stone

In a Huffington post (the kind that won't allow any talkback, lest the whole house of cards collapse), Geoffrey R. Stone quotes queen bee Arianna that the Iraq War is "not only founded on lies but conducted on lies." He hurriedly notes "This is certainly right." I agree, except that I'd change "certainly right" to "obviously wrong."

But how I feel is neither here nor there. What is it that bothers Stone so much? He believes our free press is not sufficiently anti-war. Which means we must add him to the ever-lengthening list of opponents of the war too busy forming opinions to have actually read a newspaper in two years.

The BIGGEST NEWS STORY OF THE DECADE SO FAR, after 9/11, has been the troubles we've been having in Iraq. It's been front and center in all our media, even when the reports have often been wrong, dishonest, or almost never sufficiently complex to give proper context. We have been beaten over the head with the bad news. Nothing has affected public opinion more than the relentless, inescapable anti-war message that the media, intentionally or otherwise, have been putting out day after day after day.

Ah, but Stone says, where are the photos of the dead? Well, actually, there have been many photos of dead and soon-dead bodies, and of blown-up buildings and vehicles and people. (More than photos of anything positive going on, that's for sure.). But, and this may be beyond Stone's comprehension, even on days when there are not death photos (you know, like there usually aren't when the media report on the many more dead due to crime or disease or acccidents), the media still faithfully report on the number of deaths, which average readers understand, if there's a camera around, someone could take a picture of.

I'm not calling Stone a ghoul. He merely wants everyone to "feel" more about the war--people thinking deeply about it would be disastrous to his cause.

At least there's one media outlet that reports things as he sees fit--Al Jazeera.