War Programming

The timing of this war is all wrong. By programming the war against the NCAA Basketball Tournaments, Bush, Jr. really cut into the war ratings. It’s surprising he doesn’t understand that. You think people will be paying full attention to the war when they’ve got their attention focused on Pittsburgh and Wagner?

Thanks to Fox News, CNBC, CNN and others, I feel superinformed. CNN has their screen split into four segments, replete with banners, graphics and a news blurb streamer. Fox News keeps us primed with a big “WAR ALERT” bordered in orange, along with a ticker at the bottom with the latest sound bites in type. Fox also has a constant reminder that the “Terror Alert” is High, along with the ongoing “WAR ALERT”. Do you think they’re trying to scare us? So, what defines a WAR ALERT, and why aren’t the other networks telling us about it? I guess Fox has the inside scoop thanks to their White House connections.

I didn’t know following this new war was going to be so exhausting. We have live cameras on the battlefields with announcers talking about what the troops are doing, saying, and thinking. Like the basketball announcers, they fill the airwaves with a lot of speculative prattle. It’s the latest popular sport.

I still haven’t figured out why the networks keep showing a live shot from Baghdad that’s nothing more than a blurry, black and white satellite shot of a building or tank at night with nothing going on. I get it– Still Life. It’s the latest popular art.

The latest news from Wall Street is that the new war is great for the market. I can hardly wait for the war manna to trickle down. I’m sure it will. Just stick my share in the mail.

Until this war, I had never before had an embedded reporter in my living room. So is there a trade off between access and honest reporting, or is this just another liberal myth? We get live action of buildings blowing up and explosions in the background, with the added attraction of announcers commenting on “the awesome display of military power.” And they say it with a real sense of awe and deference in their voices. The studio anchors really love these embedded guys. They build them up and swoon over them like Ernie Pyle has risen from the grave.

The bad news is that the troops haven’t reached Baghdad yet, and they’re already tired. They’re also concerned about having enough fuel left to fight the battle when they get to Baghdad, and sleep deprivation among the troops. Fox News even said so, and that’s the Bush Network run by their old boy Roger Alies. It makes me wonder if they’re going to have a “rest day” before the invasion of Baghdad. I hope no one sneaks up on us on rest day. That wouldn’t be fair, but nothing is in love and war.

But over all, I hear, the war is going swimmingly. Entire divisions are surrendering, we may have actually killed Saddam, and we’re way ahead of projections. Now that we’ve got the market humming again, it looks like this new war was just what the economy needed.

So, if Saddam might be dead and there are already wholesale surrenders, doesn’t that mean we’ve accomplished the task and we can all go home? I guess Saddam’s demise means a new vision and new set of goals for Iraq from Bush Jr. That will come in a few days.

And how come nobody else calls him Jr’ It seems to me that’s a good way to distinguish him from Bush Sr. Now we know why Bush Sr. chose Dan Quayle as his Vice-President? because he’s so much like Jr.

So where’s Country Joe and The Fish when you need them? Probably somewhere worrying about their kids being marched off to battle like so many parents everywhere.

Now, we have a whole new wave of celebrity generals. Norman Schwartzkopf has a regular gig with NBC. So the other networks are rushing to acquire their own resident generals. I just love expert opinions. I find them so reassuring.

Some networks are cheerleaders and others actually seem a little skeptical or cynical at times. I wonder if Bush Jr. knows about that. They probably have somebody watching.

This is the ultimate boy movie’we have at least five networks of “All War, All The Time.” And we get it complete with split screens, most of which show nothing going on, banners and streamers with the latest of what they’re not talking about, and what Donald Rumsfeld thinks.

I tell you, it’s information overload, but Rummy’s thoughts matter. After all, this is his and Dick Cheney’s project. Bush Jr. is just a puppet, kind of like Robert Redford’s character in the movie, The Candidate back in 1972.

Now that Dick Cheney, he’s one smart cracker. Got his Halliburton millions in a blind trust, but by gosh, who do you think gets a big chunk of the contracts to rebuild Iraq’ Would believe me if I told you it was Halliburton? He, and an elite group that includes Rummy, Paul Wolfowitz and others been planning it since 1997. That election thing in 2000 was crucial to the plan. Thanks to 8,000 disqualified voters in Florida, several hundred elderly Jews in Miami who voted for Pat Buchanan, along with a Supreme Court and Kathleen Harris, who decided time was up, the plan worked.

I just can’t believe our president underestimates the popularity of basketball like he does. And the Texas Longhorns are one of the favorites. But then, he’s a baseball guy. I hear at one time he bought a share of the Texas Rangers with his dad’s money, and parlayed it into the governor’s job in Texas. Look where that got him. Who says a Gentleman’s C ain’t worth nothing? I mean, isn’t worth anything.

War makes the world so much smaller. At least this one does. Why, just today, one of my local radio stations gave the weather report for Iraq right after the local one. They’d never done that before, so this tells me something really special is going on. Even more special than the last war.

Some of these news anchorwomen are really pretty. They make great cheerleaders for this real life boy movie of ours. Network news is all about packaging. And pretty women are an important part of any entertainment package. But why do all the men on local TV news have the same haircut? The younger the reporters are, the more haircut-intensive they seem to be.

Please understand, I’m sacrificing important basketball-viewing time in order to offer these observations. So like the troops, I too, am making a sacrifice for the war effort. Or maybe it’s because of the war effort. In any case, there are other things I’d rather be doing. Heck, I just missed almost all of the Pitt-Wagner game’ This war’s got our priorities all screwed up.

If the siege of Baghdad draws out past the end of the basketball tournament, expect the ratings to go up. The troops will probably get the day off for the Opening Day of baseball season. The enemy would never sneak up on us on Opening Day. You heard it first right here.

H. Scott Prosterman

submitted randomly via email

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