the handsomest man at the table
At the gym I break my own rule about never ever watching any cable news programs, not on purpose, but because the least bad thing on the wall of televisions (The Two Towers) is on a commercial break, and my eyes move from monitor to monitor while I push and pull the elliptical trainer back and forth, and on Telemundo it’s some Spanish-language Survivor equivalent, with impossibly-tanned men sweating and scheming deliciously, and on TBS it’s Michael Douglas doing stupid things because he’s anxious about getting old, moving his hand through thinning hair…
… and then on CNN it’s a series of business-suited men talking about Afghanistan, a new report or handful of casualties requiring the talking heads to start spinning again.
These three, they could be the same white man at 30 and then at 45 and then at 60. They work for the Wall Street Journal or the Council on Foreign Relations; they went to Harvard and West Point. They disagree on little things and agree on the big ones. Like we need to be in Afghanistan.
Before commercial we cut to the handsomest man at the table, who says that yes, sure, of course, there are lots of reasons why the war is a big terrible mess, but that if we pull out of Afghanistan, “there will be human rights abuses that will shame us.”
From this, we cut immediately to the sharp blue star logo of Lockheed Martin, and the words WE NEVER FORGET WHO WE’RE WORKING FOR.
Who are they working for, exactly? And who is CNN working for? And who is that handsome man, who by virtue of his handsomeness becomes the one whose words matter most, working for?
This is the same day that Wikileaks makes what it is calling the “largest intelligence leak in history,” six years/91,000 documents/200,000 pages worth of reports and documents by soldiers and analysts. These pompous grave-faced men on CNN are telling us how pulling out of Afghanistan would undo all the hard work that our deal beleaguered vital ally Pakistan is doing… even though, according to these astonishing leaked documents, “Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service guides the Afghan insurgency that fights American troops, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion in U.S. aid.”
To me, this is perfect evidence of how hard mainstream media works to keep you from understanding the realities behind the war. But then again, I already believe that this is the case, so it’s easy for me to see it. I wonder what someone who didn’t would see. They would probably see handsome confident men saying things they desperately want to believe are true.
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