I am the first contact people have when they arrive in the U.S. I am also,
as a result, the first contact they’ve had with the outside world in up to
16 hours. Imagine what can change on a busy news day in 16 hours: you
leave the ground and when you land the U.S. has tanks rolling through
Panama City. “WTF?” right?
That means I get all kinds of questions about the latest sports scores
during the Superbowl or World Series (“who’s up in what inning?). Recently
the question shifted to “are we at war yet?”
Dude. Ask me about the World Series.
A follow up from last
time: I’m no longer curious what Red
Alert looks like. Nope, not in the slightest. See, even if you’re
snowed in, I still go to work. Don’t think about it.
Moving on, I got a new list of countries today, the travelers from which
will recieve more unspecified attention than usual. These aren’t the well
known (and all ready heavily scruitinized) “countries of interest”, though
Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria are on the list. These are the Axis of
Somewhat Naughty “countries of mild curiosity”. Included on this list are
countries most folks would never imagine. Meanies like Paraguay, Panama
and Argentina now somehow pose a threat of some kind because of the
conflict with Iraq.
Conspiciously absent from this list is terrorist-supporting Cuba, which
shares an ideological tie if Iraq is indeed a socialist dictatorship (as
I’ve seen alleged in various circles). I trust this over-sight will be
corrected as soon as someone from Upstairs reads this.
This list and it’s contents is probably classified in some way, but it’s
prominently posted in the inspection booths. Anyone with eyesight
sufficient to drive knows the list is there, even if they can’t read the
names. They will know immediately if their country is on it because the
instructions are printed in 48-point font.
It’s kinda like there’s a poster up saying “If we do THIS, you’re from a
hostile country” and when we do THAT you discover you’re from a hostile
country. “Surprise! You’re against us!”
It’s not a short list. In fact, by my count, it includes nearly a third of
the nations on earth. You didn’t read it here.
—WARBLOGGING
I can tell already that the war coverage is going to suck this time
around. I think I’ll stick to reading Salam Pax.
We’re going to get a constant cycle through the same green-screened
talking heads discussing a slow procession of press releases. Why hasn’t
anyone given those field correspondents digital cameras with satellite
pulse-modems? I don’t think I’m alone in perfering slightly aged footage
with better quality than the crappy sat-video phones they’ve been using
since 1990. What’s the point of having “embedded” journalists otherwise?
oh.
All of a sudden Iraq’s is being placed between the national and local
weather forcasts. Is this what happens when the weatherman has to include
a war-angle into his segment? I don’t even want to talk about the sports
guy…
I noticed that the story moved from “we don’t know what the targets were,
we don’t know where the targets were, we don’t know if the attacks were
successful, etc” seamlessly to “we targeted Saddam Hussein and we won’t
know for days if we got him” to “we targeted Saddam Hussein and missed”
without any admission of having recieved new information.
Hussein’s speech turned from a possible pre-recording into evidence that
he was alive but shaken and scared by the attacks. The only reasons given
were the observations about his posture and that he was reading from note
pads. On-air speculation became fact right in front of me!
—WARBLOGGING
I obviously have no tolerance for this war nonsense after all. I though I
could sit down and shut up, I really did. But I’m irritated already and
we’re not even 8 hours into it. This is going to be a long summer…