More on embedded reporting

When I heard the explosion at 11 a.m. Monday morning, I had no idea I was listening to my colleagues being killed.
The blast sounded just like the two other blasts - booming, rumbling,
base sounds like claps of thunder – I’d heard before 9 a.m. From Richard Engel, NBC News.

I can't imagine. I'm glad my friends cover poker tournaments. The most I'm worried about is Pauly passing out in the fountain at the Bellagio and drowning (not an unreasonable fear). But what fascinates me is not the pain that these writers are feeling, but the responses to this blog. The comments range from supportive to retarded, from the praising God for these brave journalists to slamming reporters for not paying enough attention to the deaths of soldiers.

These guys lost a friend. Let them mourn. Don't take this as an opportunity to slam coverage of the death of troops, or to say "you shouldn't have been there in the first place." Let them honor their fallen comrades.

Fuck Karl Zinmeister and his lack of integrity

NEW YORK Karl Zinsmeister, the new chief
domestic adviser to President Bush, while embedded as a reporter with
the 82nd Airborne in Kuwait in 2003, declared that "many of the
journalists observable in this war theater are bursting with knee-jerk
suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A
significant number are whiny and appallingly soft." From http://www.editorandpublisher.com/.

Fuck him and the high horse he rode in on. Two more journalists died in Iraq this week, bringing the total killed to 71. Soft? These people ride in Humvees with troops wearing the same body armor, but instead of guns, they carry cameras and micropohones, putting their asses on the line to bring the story home. It's true that they don't have to do that, but they can stop reporting as easily as I can give up writing or performing. It's who they are, it's what they do, and a lot of these guys are friends of mine. We've got a Pelican case in the shop with airline and customs stickers from all over the Middle East where a customer of ours went over to shoot, and he fortunately made it back safely.

But fuck Zinmeister and his "soft" journalists. These guys didn't have to go back and edit their own copy after it was published to cover their asses. They're real journalists, not professional kiss-asses.

WTFF?

From CNN.com

The day after USA Today broke the story that the National Security
Agency (NSA) aimed to "create a database of every call ever made"
within the U.S., as one of the paper's sources put it, a Washington
Post-ABC News poll found that 63 percent of those who were asked said
they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to fight terrorism,
and 44 percent said they strongly approved of it.

Still, the news
comes at an inopportune moment, given that Senate confirmation hearings
are expected to begin this week for General Michael Hayden, the former
NSA director whom Bush has nominated to be director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.

No, really, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!?!? I don't really give a shit that the NSA may be watching me, I expect it after all with my left-leaning liberal hippy-ass blog-writing tendencies and the fact that I think GW Bush is a fucking draft-dodging war criminal without the cojones to fight in a war himself but plenty of stones to send a bunch of poor kids and weekend warriors to die in a desert, but why in God's name (or whoever else's) does the NSA need a record of "every call ever made?"

Orwell called this one, boys. This shit is really starting to get scary.

Mr. Burns Comes Out

Harry Shearer put out a new CD and DVD. He's Mr. Burns. That's Cool.

This is a performancing test. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog reading.