The Che of the '00s

Wretchard has an excellent article on the romanticization - and, for news purposes, commodification - of thugs and murderers as pseudo-celebrities on the left.

Read the whole thing - but the end caught my attention:

Though he died nearly forty years ago Che, from a media perspective, is thoroughly modern. He is so modern it would be possible to argue that both Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi are simple extensions of his great archetype. Zarqawi, for example, is by almost any measure a complete military failure unless one counts massacring women and children as some kind of martial accomplishment [As were both Guevara and Castro]. Zarqawi is even incapable of clearing a stoppage from a light machinegun he fires on video. But no matter, because it is the video not the machinegun which is the real weapon. It is the T-shirt graphic not the man depicted on the T-shirt which is important. News no longer describes war; it is war which inscribes news.

War - and the people who wage and profit from it.

And no, that doesn't mean "Halliburton".

Posted by Mitch at May 10, 2006 05:08 AM | TrackBack