Biteline - Lileks is in

Biteline - Lileks is in rare form today, even for Lileks.

On last night's Nightline, which like much of the media yesterday focused more on The King of the Freak Show Michael Jackson; James got Nightline's email announcement, bomoaning the staff strife that led to the the momentous choice between covering the War and Jacko.

The staff was split. Nightline, supposedly the Thinking Person’s Late Night Show, was split about whether a repudiation of 50 years of foreign policy was slightly more important than the arrest of a washed-up, crotch-grabbing yee-hee! squeaking nutball who was probably the horrid pedophile everyone already thought he was.

The question is whether this reflects the mood of the country, or whether it reflects the mood of our Olympian betters who hand down the news from their lofty aeries. I think it’s the latter. I hope it’s the latter. Of course Jackson is an item of interest, but it’s a below-the-fold story. It’s an artifact of the noisy empty 90s, the Jerry Springer era, the time when the networks sought out the people pasted to their sofas shoveling in Doritos and watching hapless fools throw folding chairs at their ex-lovers. Watching the nets fall over themselves covering Jackson makes you suspect that they yearn for those days, because they are profoundly ambivalent about the conflict in which we are engaged.

They fear Islamic terrorism, but it’s an abstract fear now. Their distaste of Bush is much more tangible and immediate; it’s part of the atmosphere in the newsroom. This is his war, not theirs. If it is a war at all.

Here's my question: What will the first Hollywood movie about the Iraq war be? (Leave aside Saving Private Lynch for a moment). More importantly - will it more closely represent Saving Private Ryan, or will it be more like MASH or Three Kings - a mocking, "counterculture" "satire"?

Any bets on that?

Speaking of Hollywood - Salam Pax seems to have gone it. In a letter to the Guardian, Mr. Pax mocks the President.

James isn't happy:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

Well said.

Read the whole...er, wait. You probably already did, right?

Posted by Mitch at November 21, 2003 05:33 AM