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January 16, 2007
by Daithí Mac Lochlainn
I'm addicted to news, newspapers in particular, but news in any form.
However, I'm more fascinated by information that is eschewed by the mainstream media than by anything served up by them.
It's been a fortnight now since the execution of Saddam Hussein. This extreme form of overt witness-tampering disgusted me. It was a repulsive spectacle overall.
However, I must admit that one element of that episode did and does intrigue me.
As Saddam Hussein was led to the gallows, several onlookers below chanted "Muqtada! Muqtada!".
While the media did report this, they seemed paralyzed and unable to offer any commentary or analysis, or even to clearly identify Muqtada al-Sadr.
After all, the presence of Sadrists at the foot of the gallows, cheering on the execution of the Bushling's favorite enemy, throws a monkey wrench into the Manichean propaganda structure shoveled out by the White House Press Office, parroted by the mainstream media and swallowed by the undereducated populace.
The Council on Foreign Relations describes Muqtada al-Sadr as "a young, fiercely anti-U.S. Shiite cleric and the head of the Imam Mehdi Army, an armed militia that has waged an intermittent insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq".
Where, then, are we to fit him into the Bushling's little world in which "either you're for us or you're against us"?
The world which, we are assured, is distinctly divided into two internally cohesive, and externally polarized, camps. George W. Bush, with his direct line of two-way communication with the Divine, has made his advent among us, to separate the sheep from the goats [Matthew 25: 32].
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So too, all of humanity is thus divided respectively (and conveniently): the "democratic" Iraqi government from the "t'rrists", Shiites from Sunnis, cars with yellow magnetic ribbons from suicide car bombs, Republicans from Democrats, "Conservatives" from "the Left", Red States from Blue States, O'Reilly from Olbermann, Fox News from Air America, Donald Trump from Rosie O'Donnell, William Kristol from Cindy Sheehan, Judeo-Christianity from "Islamofascism", American heritage from "San Francisco values", "the "coalition of the willing" from the "axis of evil", war-enthusiasts from "traitors", "supporting the troops" from "undermining the Commander-in-Chief", the "Freedom Agenda" in Iraq from "another 9/11", our "allies in the war on terror" from "extremists", "patriots" from "liberals", and the "good guys" in white hats from the "bad guys" in black ones.
We heard this yesterday afternoon, again, during KSFO's special broadcast in which the hosts maintained their "fer-us-or-agin-us" stance.
My favorite moment occurred when a caller made some rather uncomfortable points.
Conveniently for the hosts, the caller's cat could be heard in the background. One host talked over the caller, repeating, "Are you torturing your cat? Are you torturing your cat?".
Several days earlier, the óinseach Gretchen Carlson assured her ever-astute Fox News viewers that Senator Edward Kennedy (along with seventy percent of the U.S. population) is a "hostile enemy right here on the homefront ", because of his introduction of the Bill, S. 233.
Perhaps, before long, James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton of the Iraq Study Group will be cast as "moonbats" and "hippies" for suggesting a strategy that so differs from that which Almighty God revealed to the Bushling (and, hence, cannot be altered).
The fact that so many people in this country subscribe to this simplistic and dualistic worldview doesn't disturb me as must as the fact that the few men who are aggressively shaping the world do.
"I'm a uniter, not a divider." ~ George W. Bush.
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Daithí Mac Lochlainn [send him email] is a researcher, journalist, conceptual artist, community activist and shameless agitator. Find all of his writings at http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com/
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