Joey Gibson's Blog

Archive for March 20th, 2003

Last night a brief air strike on areas of Baghdad began, followed at 22:15 by a brief address from President Bush. The news networks went wall to wall and kept telling us the same few known facts and speculations. For hours. Over and over again. It was painfully apparent that this was not the beginning of the campaign in earnest. As was said so many times last night, this was a strike at a “target of opportunity” and not the start of the “Shock and Awe” phase. There’s a point when a network talking head has relayed the same piece of (non) news so many times that it gets tedious. All the networks past that point pretty early on and never looked back. I understand wanting to be ready to cover any “breaking news”, but for crying out loud just show your regular programming and then break in if something happens!

And how about that address from “Saddam?” I put that in quotes because I’m not convinced that it was really him. As soon as I saw him I had my doubts. It’s well known that he has a gaggle of body doubles and this guy just didn’t seem to totally match. What about those big thick black glasses? ‘Sup wi’ dat? And as for being a “live” address, there are already video experts(?) who are saying it was probably a tape, made earlier in the day. We’ll see in the days to come, but I am skeptical about the authenticity of this broadcast.

And I have a real problem with every network showing the “Saddam” tape. Why should he get free airtime to spew his anti-American propaganda? (Just so you know, I never agreed with showing the Osama tapes either.) That may be ok for Al-Jazeera, the Terrorist News Network, but the American networks shouldn’t do this. Don’t give our enemies unfettered access to our airwaves! Do you think Saddam is going to let President Bush make a translated address to his people? I don’t think so. So let’s don’t do him any favors, eh? The networks should have just relayed bullet points from his screed and left it at that.