If Microsoft Office had an "Anchorman" package, the whole mishaugas would probably look and sound a lot like NBC premiere newsman Brian Williams. Pleasant, avuncular, detached, baritonal & meaningless, Williams can wander in the deep verdant garden of news cliche's with the best of them.
Today he was on Imus bloviating about Iraq being on the "brink" of civil war. If we dialed back six months or a year we could easily find Bob Schieffer or Howard Fineman saying essentially the same thing. For two full years now since Secretary Rumsfeld finally recognized an "insurgency" in Iraq, that nation has been ritually described as being on the "brink" of civil war.
This trope endures because the news media wants to sound "hysterical" in it's reportage but then the whole "brink" thing also serves the Admin's purposes as it allows everyone to believe that the mess in Iraq hasn't quite become unretrievable yet.
The fact of the matter is, civil war broke out in Iraq almost as soon as Saddam's statue came down in Baghdad. It has ebbed and flowed since then, as all civil wars do and it will continue after our troops leave assuming they ever leave.
The game is afoot over there and the players are not the emerging democratic forces that fire Tom Friedman's delusions but a ragtag collection of religious fanatics and ethnic cleansers.
That is what we've stumbled into in Iraq and that'll be our legacy when we leave.
Brian Williams cannot say anything like this, being an alleged network newsman, the last thing he dares do is report the story in stark simplicity.
No his job to evade and qualify and massage things along til tomorrow night's broadcast.
And collect a huge paycheck.
Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed Public Airwaves
And elsewhere
7-11-06
8:40am EST
God Save the Republic
God Save the Commonwealth
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