The Capture of Saddam: A Sketch
The time traveler's hosts took him to a public eating place. Three television screens hung in the corners of the room, just below the ceiling. Each screen showed the same rapidly shifting images--repetitive, incantatory shots of talking people surrounded by colored windowframes and ribbons of scrolling letters. The traveler could make no sense of it.
Periodically a video sequence appeared on the screen in which a man in rubber gloves poked his fingers into another man's mouth, then aimed a flashlight into it so that the oral cavity glowed red. The probee resembled a crazed hermit. The screen would cut back to the talking people, then some shots of crowds, then back to the man being probed. After watching the rubber glove segment about ten times in twice that number of minutes, the traveler couldn't stand it any more. "What is happening here?" he asked.
His hosts looked at each other conspiratorially.
"Do you want to do this?" said Betty.
"Sure," said Bob. "You see, Qwarlo, many of our people's lives are quite meaningless. They work terrible dead end jobs with no hope of advancement. If they should be so unlucky as to get sick, they can quickly become pauperized and homeless. To keep them complacent, the corporate state amuses them with tales of frightening villains--in reality potentates from far away countries that would never have any impact on their lives, but who are made to seem like menaces to all. The man you see on the screen was recently captured after twelve years of being marketed as the Great Satan. He was unquestionably a bad guy, but our government supported him for years before deciding he was more useful as a heel."
"Why is that man sticking his fingers in his mouth?"
"Ostensibly searching for poison capsules or contraband, but since it's being filmed, I'd say the main purpose is public humiliation. Every successful TV series needs a climax, and since this man did not die in a shootout upon apprehension, the public needs to see him treated like an animal." Bob was trying to keep a straight face.
"Why do they keep showing the same clip again and again?"
"Again, the excuse would be that 24-hour news repeats things for the benefit of people just tuning in, but the reality is this is government propaganda. The constant repetition reinforces the idea of overwhelming state power, and provides a kind of 'bread and circuses' entertainment for the vast majority of the public."
The traveler looked appalled. "I realize this is my own distant past, but I can't believe things were ever this corrupt and barbaric."
"Welcome to modern times, Qwarlo," Betty said.
The ultimate gutteral gesture of dominance. Man sticks his hand in the lion's mouth.
de-fanged.
thats a good one, or a good two really. i wonder which if any of the images had specific symbolic resonance in the arab world.
creey, eh? good story, but no comfort. I like your werewolf analogy too. My friend is going around saying "I hate Americans" over and over again. I don't think he means you guys. It sucks to be Canadian and hate Bush this bad, but I figure it probably sucks even more to be American.
"Americans love werewolf movies" vis a vis the Saddam pictures is an idea I copped from Mark Dery's culturecrit book The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He talks about the before and after shots of Ted Kaczynski that the media so adored--the button down Harvard mathematician transformed into a hairy wild hermit, because of [science] [the sixties] [fill in your hated thing of choice]. As I recall, Dery ran the Ted pictures alongside similar images of Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. With Saddam I think it's just the media playing up the hair-sprouting Manimal we always suspected lurked inside this dictator.
I'm starting to think Jimmy Breslin is the only person in this country (or at least the media) that gives a shit. Here's a good column about Larry Silverstein (who wants to build the world's tallest building at Ground Zero) and all the ignorant folks out there who believe Saddam attacked the towers:
Saddam on Lips At Ground Zero
Dec 16, 2003
The guide from the tour bus stood in the center of a crowd in winter hats and announced, "This used to be called Ground Zero. We don't use that anymore. We now call it the World Trade Center."
Behind him yesterday was the Russian steppes.
Brooding and empty, with nothing to stop the icy wind coming off the river.
In the wild exulting over the capture of a defeated man, Hussein, you'd think that the trade center would not be as continually and vigorously inspected by sightseers. After all, Hussein had nothing to do with this. Bin Laden is your man.
Yet small crowds such as this one with their tour guide gathered through the afternoon for the length of the fence looking out at the famous and frozen real estate.
Each person you spoke to, and they were from all over the country, were pleased that the new trade center would be the world's tallest building. Also, they were supremely happy because Saddam Hussein had had something to do with blowing up the Twin Towers.
Here was a woman in the cold, Linda Jacobs, standing with her husband, Ken, from Newport News, Va., and saying, "He probably did. Who knows. But he probably did."
Her husband said, "Oh. yeah. He was in on it."
A couple from Knoxville, Tenn., Elaine and Will, agreed. "I believe he was in on it on some level," she said. "He was around there someplace," the husband said. Betty Hipp, San Antonio. "Of course Saddam was responsible."
I was out there for some time, taking notes and hometowns, and it was all the same. Saddam is bin Laden.
To thaw out, I went into the Burger King on the corner of Liberty and Church, where Mary Garcia, 53, was behind the counter and looking out the big window and right at the trade center and the people there to look at it.
"For me Hussein did it, the other guy, too. These people both is together in Iraq and in the trade center," Garcia said. "If Saddam don't do nothing, why he go into a hole? Because he is afraid we catch him for the World Trade Center that he did with bin Laden? The both of them together."
She said she has a son in Iraq, Sgt. Peter Garcia.
"He was from Italy, they send him to Iraq. He's married already in Italy. His wife doesn't stay at the base in Italy. She goes home to Puerto Rico with the baby.
"Yesterday I get up in the morning and I hear they caught this Saddam. I go, oh, thank you God. Oh, how happy could you make me? Now maybe my son comes home."
It is a rule of mine not to use man on the street interviews, but this was so unanimous and forceful that I had to listen. And as I did, I could hear George Bush and his people all saying: "We went and got Saddam because it is better to fight terrorists in Iraq than in Manhattan."
No matter that Saddam had nothing to do with the attack. There were 15 Saudi Arabians who were in the suicide attack. Then immediately, the FBI gathered up those members of bin Laden's sprawling family who were in America and got them on planes to Switzerland. And soon, the Saudi Arabian prince was at Waco, Texas, for an amiable day with Bush.
How could you not blame Saddam Hussein for everything? He murdered his own, yes. And he was going to kill all of us with nuclear weapons. "I know they are there," Bush announced.
There was nothing nuclear about Saddam hiding in his hole. There was no anthrax or smallpox, just rats and lice.
But the unmistakable feeling is that more and more of the American public will consider Saddam Hussein a partner in terror with Osama bin Laden and that it was a wonderful thing we did, going to war to catch one of them.
This belief in two enemies probably is going to be welcomed by Larry Silverstein, the builder who by mouth alone, has made it appear that he owns the land, the buildings, the sky above and the water below. Silverstein has $3.5 billion coming as insurance for the raid. He contends that they were two separate attacks, one on Tower One, a second on Tower Two. Therefore, he wants to be paid double. Seven billion. The insurance companies involved are inclined to do battle. Without the double insurance payment, people around him say, he won't be able to build a front stoop to a building made of thin air. "Two attacks," Larry says.
"Larry, it is the World Trade Center attack," he is told, including by judges in early rulings that were at least ominous for Silverstein.
Perhaps there was a chance in the freezing air yesterday. He can claim that Osama bin Laden made one attack on a tower and then Saddam Hussein's suicide bombers went into the second tower. Two people. Two attacks. Two payments!
bambozeled in the usa
Also, here's a transcript of the President's evasive, shitty answers to Diane Sawyer's questions about WMD in Iraq. (found on Liberal Oasis) It's fun to read about him being made uncomfortable.
caught that in the flesh with my rabit ears. dreadful !
As a Kahlifornian, I'm on the cutting edge of government by television. You captured it beautifully.
also reiterated in sawyers interview was jr's boast of not reading newspapers or watching television news critical of his policies, as though he was above the fray of lowly media. (conceding he did watch sports - read football). such posturing BS from the most PR driven administration to date. im not buying it, he up to his ass in media and manipulation !
I'll bet he spends a whole lot more time watchin FNC than readin WSJ. "Heh, heh, that Hannity shore did stick it to Colmes today!"
You may or may not realize it, but the traveler from the future is the rest of the world. Do you think in Brasil people live frightened like americans do? Even with our 2-planes air force, and 3-tanks army, we are more at peace and live in less fear than americans, who have all the brute force in the world.
quase@matrix.com.br
Coincidentally, after re-reading this today I saw an Ass0ci4t3d Pricks story that
"Sep 7th, 2009 | BRASILIA -- Brazil's president said Monday his country is negotiating with France for the purchase of 36 Rafale combat jets..."
and
"Sarkozy, meanwhile, told a news conference that France plans to acquire a dozen KC-390 military cargo transport planes made by Brazil's Embraer..."
and
"Brazil already has agreed to buy five French Scorpene submarines, one of them with nuclear propulsion, and 50 Cougar helicopters for about $12 billion. All would be assembled in Brazil."
big bizz for france...wine cheese and guns
Indeed. It seems like Brazil is doing this mainly to get the tech and get into the arms biz itself. As opposed to defending itself from Uruguay, or the Guianas...
|
The Capture of Saddam: A Sketch
The time traveler's hosts took him to a public eating place. Three television screens hung in the corners of the room, just below the ceiling. Each screen showed the same rapidly shifting images--repetitive, incantatory shots of talking people surrounded by colored windowframes and ribbons of scrolling letters. The traveler could make no sense of it.
Periodically a video sequence appeared on the screen in which a man in rubber gloves poked his fingers into another man's mouth, then aimed a flashlight into it so that the oral cavity glowed red. The probee resembled a crazed hermit. The screen would cut back to the talking people, then some shots of crowds, then back to the man being probed. After watching the rubber glove segment about ten times in twice that number of minutes, the traveler couldn't stand it any more. "What is happening here?" he asked.
His hosts looked at each other conspiratorially.
"Do you want to do this?" said Betty.
"Sure," said Bob. "You see, Qwarlo, many of our people's lives are quite meaningless. They work terrible dead end jobs with no hope of advancement. If they should be so unlucky as to get sick, they can quickly become pauperized and homeless. To keep them complacent, the corporate state amuses them with tales of frightening villains--in reality potentates from far away countries that would never have any impact on their lives, but who are made to seem like menaces to all. The man you see on the screen was recently captured after twelve years of being marketed as the Great Satan. He was unquestionably a bad guy, but our government supported him for years before deciding he was more useful as a heel."
"Why is that man sticking his fingers in his mouth?"
"Ostensibly searching for poison capsules or contraband, but since it's being filmed, I'd say the main purpose is public humiliation. Every successful TV series needs a climax, and since this man did not die in a shootout upon apprehension, the public needs to see him treated like an animal." Bob was trying to keep a straight face.
"Why do they keep showing the same clip again and again?"
"Again, the excuse would be that 24-hour news repeats things for the benefit of people just tuning in, but the reality is this is government propaganda. The constant repetition reinforces the idea of overwhelming state power, and provides a kind of 'bread and circuses' entertainment for the vast majority of the public."
The traveler looked appalled. "I realize this is my own distant past, but I can't believe things were ever this corrupt and barbaric."
"Welcome to modern times, Qwarlo," Betty said.
- tom moody 12-15-2003 9:58 pm
The ultimate gutteral gesture of dominance. Man sticks his hand in the lion's mouth.
de-fanged.
- steve 12-15-2003 11:44 pm
thats a good one, or a good two really. i wonder which if any of the images had specific symbolic resonance in the arab world.
- dave 12-16-2003 12:17 am
creey, eh? good story, but no comfort. I like your werewolf analogy too. My friend is going around saying "I hate Americans" over and over again. I don't think he means you guys. It sucks to be Canadian and hate Bush this bad, but I figure it probably sucks even more to be American.
- sally mckay 12-16-2003 2:20 am
"Americans love werewolf movies" vis a vis the Saddam pictures is an idea I copped from Mark Dery's culturecrit book The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He talks about the before and after shots of Ted Kaczynski that the media so adored--the button down Harvard mathematician transformed into a hairy wild hermit, because of [science] [the sixties] [fill in your hated thing of choice]. As I recall, Dery ran the Ted pictures alongside similar images of Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. With Saddam I think it's just the media playing up the hair-sprouting Manimal we always suspected lurked inside this dictator.
- tom moody 12-16-2003 3:25 am
I'm starting to think Jimmy Breslin is the only person in this country (or at least the media) that gives a shit. Here's a good column about Larry Silverstein (who wants to build the world's tallest building at Ground Zero) and all the ignorant folks out there who believe Saddam attacked the towers:
Saddam on Lips At Ground Zero
Dec 16, 2003
The guide from the tour bus stood in the center of a crowd in winter hats and announced, "This used to be called Ground Zero. We don't use that anymore. We now call it the World Trade Center."
Behind him yesterday was the Russian steppes.
Brooding and empty, with nothing to stop the icy wind coming off the river.
In the wild exulting over the capture of a defeated man, Hussein, you'd think that the trade center would not be as continually and vigorously inspected by sightseers. After all, Hussein had nothing to do with this. Bin Laden is your man.
Yet small crowds such as this one with their tour guide gathered through the afternoon for the length of the fence looking out at the famous and frozen real estate.
Each person you spoke to, and they were from all over the country, were pleased that the new trade center would be the world's tallest building. Also, they were supremely happy because Saddam Hussein had had something to do with blowing up the Twin Towers.
Here was a woman in the cold, Linda Jacobs, standing with her husband, Ken, from Newport News, Va., and saying, "He probably did. Who knows. But he probably did."
Her husband said, "Oh. yeah. He was in on it."
A couple from Knoxville, Tenn., Elaine and Will, agreed. "I believe he was in on it on some level," she said. "He was around there someplace," the husband said. Betty Hipp, San Antonio. "Of course Saddam was responsible."
I was out there for some time, taking notes and hometowns, and it was all the same. Saddam is bin Laden.
To thaw out, I went into the Burger King on the corner of Liberty and Church, where Mary Garcia, 53, was behind the counter and looking out the big window and right at the trade center and the people there to look at it.
"For me Hussein did it, the other guy, too. These people both is together in Iraq and in the trade center," Garcia said. "If Saddam don't do nothing, why he go into a hole? Because he is afraid we catch him for the World Trade Center that he did with bin Laden? The both of them together."
She said she has a son in Iraq, Sgt. Peter Garcia.
"He was from Italy, they send him to Iraq. He's married already in Italy. His wife doesn't stay at the base in Italy. She goes home to Puerto Rico with the baby.
"Yesterday I get up in the morning and I hear they caught this Saddam. I go, oh, thank you God. Oh, how happy could you make me? Now maybe my son comes home."
It is a rule of mine not to use man on the street interviews, but this was so unanimous and forceful that I had to listen. And as I did, I could hear George Bush and his people all saying: "We went and got Saddam because it is better to fight terrorists in Iraq than in Manhattan."
No matter that Saddam had nothing to do with the attack. There were 15 Saudi Arabians who were in the suicide attack. Then immediately, the FBI gathered up those members of bin Laden's sprawling family who were in America and got them on planes to Switzerland. And soon, the Saudi Arabian prince was at Waco, Texas, for an amiable day with Bush.
How could you not blame Saddam Hussein for everything? He murdered his own, yes. And he was going to kill all of us with nuclear weapons. "I know they are there," Bush announced.
There was nothing nuclear about Saddam hiding in his hole. There was no anthrax or smallpox, just rats and lice.
But the unmistakable feeling is that more and more of the American public will consider Saddam Hussein a partner in terror with Osama bin Laden and that it was a wonderful thing we did, going to war to catch one of them.
This belief in two enemies probably is going to be welcomed by Larry Silverstein, the builder who by mouth alone, has made it appear that he owns the land, the buildings, the sky above and the water below. Silverstein has $3.5 billion coming as insurance for the raid. He contends that they were two separate attacks, one on Tower One, a second on Tower Two. Therefore, he wants to be paid double. Seven billion. The insurance companies involved are inclined to do battle. Without the double insurance payment, people around him say, he won't be able to build a front stoop to a building made of thin air. "Two attacks," Larry says.
"Larry, it is the World Trade Center attack," he is told, including by judges in early rulings that were at least ominous for Silverstein.
Perhaps there was a chance in the freezing air yesterday. He can claim that Osama bin Laden made one attack on a tower and then Saddam Hussein's suicide bombers went into the second tower. Two people. Two attacks. Two payments!
- tom moody 12-17-2003 9:17 pm
bambozeled in the usa
- bill 12-17-2003 9:56 pm
Also, here's a transcript of the President's evasive, shitty answers to Diane Sawyer's questions about WMD in Iraq. (found on Liberal Oasis) It's fun to read about him being made uncomfortable.
- tom moody 12-17-2003 11:05 pm
caught that in the flesh with my rabit ears. dreadful !
- bill 12-17-2003 11:20 pm
As a Kahlifornian, I'm on the cutting edge of government by television. You captured it beautifully.
- mark 12-19-2003 11:51 am
also reiterated in sawyers interview was jr's boast of not reading newspapers or watching television news critical of his policies, as though he was above the fray of lowly media. (conceding he did watch sports - read football). such posturing BS from the most PR driven administration to date. im not buying it, he up to his ass in media and manipulation !
- bill 12-22-2003 6:24 pm
I'll bet he spends a whole lot more time watchin FNC than readin WSJ. "Heh, heh, that Hannity shore did stick it to Colmes today!"
- mark 12-23-2003 6:16 am
You may or may not realize it, but the traveler from the future is the rest of the world. Do you think in Brasil people live frightened like americans do? Even with our 2-planes air force, and 3-tanks army, we are more at peace and live in less fear than americans, who have all the brute force in the world. quase@matrix.com.br
- Quase 12-29-2004 8:38 am
Coincidentally, after re-reading this today I saw an Ass0ci4t3d Pricks story that
"Sep 7th, 2009 | BRASILIA -- Brazil's president said Monday his country is negotiating with France for the purchase of 36 Rafale combat jets..."
and
"Sarkozy, meanwhile, told a news conference that France plans to acquire a dozen KC-390 military cargo transport planes made by Brazil's Embraer..."
and
"Brazil already has agreed to buy five French Scorpene submarines, one of them with nuclear propulsion, and 50 Cougar helicopters for about $12 billion. All would be assembled in Brazil."
- tom moody 9-07-2009 7:57 pm
big bizz for france...wine cheese and guns
- Skinny 9-07-2009 10:03 pm
Indeed. It seems like Brazil is doing this mainly to get the tech and get into the arms biz itself. As opposed to defending itself from Uruguay, or the Guianas...
- tom moody 9-07-2009 10:16 pm