CBS Retracts, Apologizes

[Dana Sheets]

Adams photo:
http://www.yale.edu/yale300/democracy/m ... ooting.jpg

[Bill Glasheen]

That's the one. Thank you, Dana.

Imagine this. At the age of 13, I witnessed the film of that on television. It was the 6:30 CBS news with Walter Cronkite - "the most trusted man in America."



I distinctly remember being so disturbed by the video that I called my best friend up to talk to him about it. He had seen it too. Several years later, he became an ardent anti-war activist.

Now he's a pediatric surgeon, practicing in Southern Florida. We are still best of friends, although we only see each other every few years.

BTW, he's a Jew. And these days he is so pro-Bush, pro-Iraq war, and anti terrorism that he scares me. Go figure...

- Bill

[IJ]

I was writing from a modern set of expectations. It's similar to our expectations of battle. Back in the day, we used to do many more things with men on the ground with machine guns. As Rich explained, we have such advancements in armor and laser guided bombs and whatnot that we expect to go into war and lose more men from accidents than hostile fire. Our media expectations have changed too... there wasn't internet and there wasn't beheading video (to control, if they could then or now.) Since Vietnam we've expected a different kind of coverage. If the coverage is honest and makes us not want the war, well, that's what we want to see. Who wants to be mislead into battle in 2004? Convinced that things will go better or are going better than planned at a time when we should know more than ever before?

[Panther]

I was writing from a modern set of expectations. It's similar to our expectations of battle. Back in the day, we used to do many more things with men on the ground with machine guns.

...

Since Vietnam we've expected a different kind of coverage. If the coverage is honest and makes us not want the war, well, that's what we want to see.

Please indulge me to write from a medievel set of expectations. "Back in the day", battles were fought face-to-face... sword-to-sword... hand-to-hand... eye-to-eye. War was different when you had to look your enemy in the eye and dispatch him with intent by your own hand. In those days, there was no "coverage of war by the media" and there was no "limiting of civilian casualties"... If you were on the other side, you were a target for all manner of plunder and pillage. Media coverage of the "horrors of war" was unnecessary then even if it had been available, simply because of the intimate nature of war, those "horrors" were experienced first-hand. Now, war is a push-button and evening news affair, but in most regards the goal is still the same regardless of the purpose...

War is the health of the state. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The nation in war-time attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating in the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. The State is intimately connected with war, for it is the organization of the collective community when it acts in a political manner, and to act in a political manner towards a rival group has meant, throughout all history... war...
- Randolph Bourne (1886-1918): 1917; unfinished essay The State

[IJ]

True today... sounds like it could have been written even later... like 1984... people come in all types and constitutions. I knew a guy who loved being at a big football game in the upper corner of the bleachers, watching the whole place roar in unison. I find that kind of stuff scary.