not surprising. anyone with an ounce of media savvy produces images that are open to a multiciplicity of readings. it's actually taught in film school these days, at least that's what the film students in my "media and society" classes have told me. i'm more apt to think that it's a little more about script writers just doing what they're asked to do: "make everyone feel good" (as M.Ventura wrote in a LA Weekly long ago)
>taking the last lines about "rooting for your team" at face value and so
>on. So watch it and decide for yourself :)
>Nathan
i was gonna say: either root for the team or get out of the stadium is a strange metaphor--not so strange really: there are two teams to root for. leave it to USers to forget that, eh?
i was talking to Testosterone Central (my kid and his friends who hang out here) a couple of weeks ago about what's happening. CNN aired, once again, the images of the northern alliance on horseback (you know, they've been airing that footage for about a week now on CNN). like a lot of kids, they think it's about "getting ObL". i tell them that we're killing a kids like them--that ObL's kid got killed. they say, "but they killed all those people, so?" and i play on the line, "but we should be better than that, right? if we think it's wrong for them to kill our kids, then why should we kill their kids in retaliation?"
so one asks, "then why are we fighting at all? afghan people have nothing to do with it." I explain that mess as best I can. Taliban aren't really a government. people there can't really influence them. that the Taliban did offer to help us with ObL inc. but we declined. we liken it to two kids preparing for a big fight after one disses the other. i ask them what they think about that: two guys preparing for a rumble, as they used to say in my mom's day. in all the preparations, they can't back down, but when you stop and think about it is just stupid to fight...
they shake their heads. they think for a bit.
my son looks at the images on CNN. Rumsfield is blabbing away. or maybe it was Stufflebeam. Danny says: "you know, mom, the world would be better off if kids ran it instead of old white guys. they really mess it up."
my son and his friends all think we should "get ObL". but i guess they think they could do it better by actually "getting ObL". How? I don't know.
at any rate, I have to tone down the lefty talk with him, sometimes. He went to school one day and related the story about the CIA and bin Laden. the teacher flipped a lid and told him he was wrong.
kelley