[lbo-talk] Riverbend: Iraqi TV

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Tue Apr 5 20:56:11 PDT 2005


Check out Riverbend's latest blog entry on TV in Iraq.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Highlights:

[snip]

The schedule on MBCs Channel 4 goes something like this:

9 am  CBS Evening News 9:30 am  CBS The Early Show 10:45 am  The Days of Our Lives 11:20 am  Wheel of Fortune 11:45 am  Jeopardy 12:05 pm  A re-run of whatever was on the night before  20/20, Inside Edition, etc.

And the programming continues&

Ive been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so& clean. Its like hospital food. Its all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on womens rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.

[snip]

Furthermore, I dont understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender& its endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up lives of others?

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the insurgents. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)&

[snip]



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