micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Comments on the category problematically defined as "culture" "Embedded," a thinly veiled satire about the U.S. government manipulating the media in Iraq directed and written by Tim Robbins, is currently playing at The Actors' Gang group/theater in Los Angeles. (Robbins founded the theater in 1981 and is currently on the Board of Directors.) About the production, Editor & Publisher writes: Robbins interviewed embedded journalist Evan Wright of Rolling Stone as part of his research, along with Anthony Swofford, the Gulf War I veteran who wrote the popular book Jarhead.As should have been expected, the play has generated a fair amount of criticism, including William LaJeunesse's foxnews.com piece "Robbins 'Embedded' Play Not So Realistic." Criticism of "Embedded can be perfectly legitimate -I haven't seen it or read the script so I have no way of evaluating it- but LaJeunesse comes across as an idiot for this section: One person who wasn't convinced by the portrayals was Marine Maj. Rich Doherty.Sadly the article seems to be missing the section where Doherty explains what he saw it in Iraq that disproves that Team Bush "started this war simply for its own political agenda." Terrible editing, if I do say so myself. Also, Foster is wrong to suggest that just because “a lot of people in this country” or in the world as a whole believe something necessarily means that what they believe has any validity. In the play, Hardchannel calls reporters "his bitches" and says that if he doesn't like what they write, he'll write it himself and simply use their names. He also censors all reports coming out of Iraq. Fox News journalists embedded with the troops, as well as other journalists interviewed for this story, said they never experienced any kind of censorship. Reporters were only told that they could not reveal operation details that might threaten the safety of U.S. troops -- a condition the Pentagon put on the embedded journalist program.The play may have gone a bit further than is realistic, but I have hard time believing the military was all that concerned about Fox News' cheerleading. "Not everything is factual, and maybe that is our fault through satire," added another "Embedded" actor, Kirk Pynchon, who plays a journalist. "Sometimes we make those errors, but it's the same kind of laughter that one gets watching an episode of MASH."I'm shaking my head in disbelief that somebody actually wrote this. Someone needs to inform LaJeunesse, or whoever exactly is responsible for these words, that would benefit from taking a class in basic logic and reasoning. "That demeans the Marines that were killed in my battalion, (to say they) died because five guys in a room thought it was fun to go create a war," Doherty said. "That is bad, bad theater, bad taste."So let me get this straight. According to Doherty, because some people who I will assume were honorable died in the conflict, it is demeaning to point out that the Bush Administration was dishonest about their reasons for wanting to go to war regardless of the merits of such a statement. (Unless of course Doherty does in fact have proof that the Bush Administration did not invade Iraq for "political" reasons. I doubt that is the case, however, as it seems like he would want to publicize this evidence.) *** As I said above, I'm unable to evaluate "Embedded" but I'm intrigued by it greatly because it looks like it is at least aiming to be a work drama that exposes the distortions of a media culture that goes to great lengths to present itself as presenting unvarnished reality. A good example of this is LaJeunesse's opening paragraph: Embedded journalists brought the Iraq war live into America's living rooms.Who are you going to believe? Those who told you they were telling the truth or some liberal Hollywood actor? It is worth noting that I've seen several commentators on the Fox News Channel -some of whom haven't even been to Iraq- criticize other media outlets for giving a distorted picture of what is actually happening in Iraq. While there criticisms were highly different from those of Robbins, it nonetheless suggests that they don't believe the media was perfectly accurate. *** Comedy Central debuted Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, &*%$ Sunday night. The program was a tribute to Richard Pryor and featured the likes of Margaret Cho, Mos Def, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart and Wanda Sykes heaping praise after praise on Pryor. Little of it revealed anything about Pryor or those toasting him, although it was interesting to hear Steve Harvey say he had never used a certain racial epithet in his act because Pryor renounced the use of it and Jennifer Lee Pryor did mention that she realizes that a normal person would have been frightened by Pryor's violent nature even though she was attracted to it. The special was produced by Jennifer Lee Pryor and so it did have the stuffy air of being "official." *** In what I doubt is unrelated news, richardpryor.com has recently opened for business. There isn't much content but there is a blog. You can email Pryor from the blog. I feel like I should have something to say given how much I like his work, but I don't know what the email would be. *** |