Thursday, July 31, 2014

News, History, "Journalism"

     Tam is watching Today and chortling, "You've gotta see this!  Savannah [Guthrie] is finger-wagging at the Israeli ambassador about, 'You say you're not targeting civilians...'"

     I spoke directly to the ambassador on the TV screen, "Hit back!  Ask her about drones!"

     Tam: "Drones?  The anniversary of Hiroshima's only a week away!"

     Funny thing: war is Hell.  Tam knows it.  I know it. Polished and perfumed professional network journalist in NYC?  She doesn't know it.  A blue zillion history books and documentaries out there and I doubt she's even seen Hellcats Of The Navy.  In Savannah's world, WW II, concentration camps, aerial firebombings, death marches, atom bombs and all, was a kind of multi-year Boy Scout Jamboree with some spirited disagreements.

     When the next World War comes marchin' in -- as seems more likely with every passing day -- it'll have stunningly white teeth and near-total amnesia.

     (Talking to Tam, I remarked the Palestinians are now into what, the fourth and fifth generation of  "displaced persons/dispossessed refugees," even the ones living behind real walls and under a solid roof; it's soaked into their cultural memes and it's not going away.  And on the other side, with the only cards that'll trump that, a nation with thousands of years of the same general experience.  Anyone who thinks there's a fix for the mess -- on a timeline shorter than centuries -- that'll work happy-good for all involved is either dippy or doped up.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

And to add to the fun, it's a family feud. When you sit down and map out the different folks who lived in that neck of the woods over the last three thousand years, you can see that it is highly likely that a significant number of Biblical Israelites are ancestors not merely of modern Jews but also of a significant number of Palestinians, which means the odds that Netenyahu and the head of Hamas have common ancestors is not trivial...at least higher than the odds of two random Americans (say, as a handy example, you and Tam) being related.
And to add to the matrix, Tisha B'Av is next two, something Israelis are very aware of.
Kishnevi

Anonymous said...

Anon,

Scientists tracing Mitochondrial RNA to track populations have verified your theory. Palestinians are largely the descendants of the Jews (both Judaic and Christian) who lived in the Levant at when the Caliphate took over the region and forced/convinced most of them to to convert to Islam.

staghounds said...

It's a satire piece and meant to be funny, but you're channeling the first two paragraphs of this piece:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/nicole-mullen/2014/07/so-jews-get-birthright-to-israel-but-white-girls-have-to-pay-to-go-to-spring-break/

Old NFO said...

Anon is right, and it's going to take wiping Hamas out completely to stop it... OR lighting up Iran like a Christmas Tree!

RandyGC said...

Gee Old NFO, Does it have to "OR"?

I'm kind of a "stuffing and potatoes" type of guy myself.

Stretch said...

The average "journalist" has an attention span of a gnat on crack. (thank you Dennis Miller!)

And Liberals think Bill Clinton as the party's elder statesman, JFK is a historical legend and FDR a godhead figure from creation mythology.

Cause and Effect? Totally alien to such minds.

Don M said...

This unworthy one wonders what the "Chortle of Tam" sounds like.

What kind of critter in Warcraft would make such a sound?

Joseph said...

OTOH, there is hope.