Reality TV?

It seems appropriate to begin writing my own account of the events of April 9, 2003 on Monday, the Hussein's own birthday. One of the questions I set out to answer was how the plunging bronze's photo-op differed from the coverage of the hanging dictator himself. How differently did the US recieve each event? And, of course, why?

I think (off the top of my head) that it's pretty obvious that the statue's demise was hailed and lionized because it was the right action at the right time in the right place and an appropriate closing shot for "Gulf War; the Sequel". From what I've dug up so far, news coverage of the war actually dropped by 70% on Fox news and up to 26% on real news channels following the big "victory frame" of the bronze Saddam's fall.

But with Saddam's execution, it was the wrong action at the wrong time in the wrong way and a messy sequence in the ongoing series- "Axis of Evil; Season I". The world was angry, the US was at fault and we had, obviously, picked up the mantle of evil that had fallen from the dictator's shoulders as he slipped kicking and screaming through the trap door at dawn. And it was over fast- at least in the US, while the image of April 9 lingers on to this very day as the most famous war icon in US history (and, yes, that includes Iwo Jima...).

Americans, at least the last two generations of them, have a terrible time telling reality from fiction. Most don't even realize that "reality" shows are, in large part, scripted. They also have huge difficulty in sorting out important, significant, news from junk. Take the Anna Nicole Smith saga, for a big example. But we won't go into that. These two stories are really examples of that insanity (let's call it what it is).

So where does that leave me? Well, I know tons about the statue, and not much about the hanging- so I guess it's time to dive into that cesspool. See you on the other side....