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September 23, 2007
NYT's Handy Talking Points for Ahmadinejad
Friday's NY Times review of Ken Burns' "The War" qualifies as the most unhinged art review I've ever read. It starts not as a review but a cry from a panicked soul angered that the artist did not hew to the reviewer's (and the reviewer's employer's) world view. Get a load of Alessandra Stanley's painful meltdown :
The war was necessary, but is this approach?The tone and look of Mr. Burns’s series, which begins Sunday on PBS, is as elegiac and compelling as any of his previous works, but particularly now, as the conflict in Iraq unravels, this degree of insularity — at such length and detail — is disconcerting. Many a “Frontline” documentary has made a convincing case that the Bush administration’s mistakes were compounded by the blinkered thinking of leaders who rushed to war without sufficient support around the world or understanding of the religious and sectarian strains on the ground. Examining a global war from the perspective of only one belligerent is rarely a good idea.
Campaign debates, standardized tests and game-show questions all suggest that as the global economy expands, Americans are growing more hidebound and parochial. And now comes a beautifully made telecourse on wartime America under the definitive title “The War.”
Somebody really likes this line of thinking. According to this Little Green Footballs posting, it sounds like Iran's Lider Maximo is picking up some great talking points for Stanley and her pals:
“The United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by IRNA as saying.
I'm glad Alessandra and Mahmoud can explain it all to me. The problem has always been our hidebound and parochial attitudes, so unnuances, so unlike what Ahmadinejad is trying -- pleading! -- with Americans to hear. How dare Ken Burns not give the Nazi perspective? How dare we not consider the nuanced perspective of why Israel should not exist?
Finally, two folks speaking truth to power in perfect harmony. Who's listening?
Van | 09/23/07 at 11:00 PM | Categories: - Useful idiots
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