Midway through Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam epic, Full Metal Jacket, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.
The correspondents are discussing how best to portray America’s faltering efforts to win a war that most of the “grunts” have come to see as unwinnable.
Lieutenant Lockhart, who’s presiding, wants his reporters to make some changes in the way they report the war.
LOCKHART: Chili, if we move Vietnamese, they are “evacuees.” If they come to us to be evacuated, they are “refugees.”
CHILI: I’ll make a note of it, sir.
LOCKHART (reading): “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”
That’s good, Dave. But why say “North Vietnamese Army regular”? Is there an irregular? How about “North Vietnamese Army soldier”?
DAVE: I’ll fix it up, sir.
LOCKHART: “Search and destroy.” Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of “search and destroy,” substitute the phrase “sweep and clear.” Got it?
Lt. Lockhart (right) briefs his Marine reporters
JOKER: Got it. Very catchy.
LOCKHART: And, Joker–where’s the weenie?
JOKER: Sir?
LOCKHART The Kill, Joker. The kill. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.
JOKER: Didn’t see ’em.
LOCKHART Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here. Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants–Winning of Hearts and Minds–okay?
And combat action that results in a kill–Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?
JOKER: It was raining, sir.
LOCKHART: Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Which?
JOKER: Whichever you say.
LOCKHART Grunts like reading about dead officers.
JOKER Okay, an officer. How about a general?
LOCKHART Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.
* * * * *
Kubrick’s film is set in the South Vietnam of 1968.
This was a war where military newspapers like Stars and Stripes offered a gung-ho, all-systems-go version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.
And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw the war for what it was and labeled it a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort.
Now, 47 years after the events depicted in Full Metal Jacket, the Obama administration wants to censor the American news media as the military censored its own.
The President wants the media to stop using footage from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during newscasts.
“We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we’ve all seen before, file footage of ISIL convoys operating in broad daylight, moving in large formations with guns out, looking to wreak havoc,” Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told Politico.
The “B-roll” is stock footage that appears onscreen while reporters/commentators talk. It’s the stuff that keeps an audience watching the newscast, even if they ignore what’s being said.
“It’s inaccurate–that’s no longer how ISIL moves,” she added.
Since August, 2014, the United States and its allies have dropped thousands of bombs on ISIL–especially on its convoys–in Iraq and Syria.
As a result, claim U.S. officials, ISIL can no longer mass its forces in daylight–or move in large convoys. Such large concentrations can be easily spotted–and attacked–from the air.
ISIL convoy
So how would the Pentagon like ISIL to be portrayed in file footage?
“One Toyota speeding down the road by itself at night with its headlights off,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren.
Warren added that some of the B-roll the networks are using comes from propaganda videos made by ISIL.
Senior State Department and Pentagon officials have begun contacting television network reporters to suggest news sources switch to using more U.S.-friendly videos, such as Iraqi army soldiers being trained, or footage from coalition airstrikes.
When contacted by Politico for comment, ABC, CNN, Fox and NBC refused to comment.
Covering how Americans behave in war has proven a challenge for American news media since the Vietnam conflict.
In 1966, New York Times reporter Harrison E. Salisbury was allowed to enter North Vietnam to cover the war from their perspective.
His reports of heavy American bombing raids and their resulting civilian casualties and infrastructure damage provoked national controversy.
Officials of the Johnson administration charged Salisbury with “aiding and abetting the enemy” by reporting North Vietnamese claims of loss.
Salisbury–and the Times–replied that of course they were reporting what North Vietnamese officials were saying. That was why he was there–to get the other side’s point-of-view.
So long as freedom of the press exists in reality as well as theory, there will always be tension between those who want to report the news–and those who want to censor it.
ABC NEWS, AIG, BAILOUT PROGRAM, BUSINESS REGULATION, CBSNEWS, CEOS, CNN, COLLEGE GRADUATES, CORPORATE BAILOUTS, DRUG-TESTING, FACEBOOK, FINANCE, GREED, NBC NEWS, REPUBLICANS, T.A.R.P. PROGRAM, TEA PARTY, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIMOTHY GEITHNER, TREASURY DEPARTMENT, TWITTER, UNEMPLOYMENT, USA TODAY, WALL STREET, WELFARE
GREED-TESTING FOR CEOs
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2015 at 12:01 amRobert Benmosche, the CEO of American International Group (AIG) had some blunt advice to college graduates searching for work in a tight job market.
Robert Benmosche
“You have to accept the hand that’s been dealt you in life,” Benmosche said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Don’t cry about it. Deal with it.”
Typical advice from a one-percenter whose company, AIG, suffered a liquidity crisis when its credit ratings were downgraded below “AA” levels in September, 2008.
And how did AIG “deal with” its own crisis? It went crying to its Uncle Sugar, the United States Government, for a bailout.
Which it promptly got.
The United States Federal Reserve Bank, on September 16, 2008, made an $85 billion loan to the company to meet increased collateral obligations resulting from its credit rating downgrade–and thus saving it from certain bankruptcy.
In return, the Government took an 80% stake in the firm.
(The bailout eventually ballooned to $182 billion in exchange for a 92% stake.)
College graduates, said Benmosche, needed to seize the opportunities that become available to them, even if their options are limited.
“They want me to talk to the students and give them a sense of encouragement, especially with the high unemployment,” said Benmosche.
“My advice will be, ‘Whatever opportunity comes your way, take it. Take it and treat it as if it’s the only one that’s coming your way, because that actually may be the truth.’”
Of course, willing-to-work college graduates who can’t find willing-to-hire employers won’t be able to count on a generous bailout from the Federal Government.
To which most of them will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.
It’s long past time to apply to “untouchable” CEOs like Robert Benmosche the same criteria that right-wing Republicans demand be applied to welfare recipients.
Throughout the past year Republican lawmakers have pursued welfare drug-testing in Congress and more than 30 states.
Some bills have even targeted people who claim unemployment insurance and food stamps, despite scanty evidence the poor and jobless are disproportionately on drugs.
The concept of background screening is actually sound. But Republicans are aiming it at the wrong end of the economic spectrum.
Since 2008, the government has handed out billions of dollars in bailouts to the wealthiest corporations in the country.
The reason: To rescue the economy from the calamity produced by the criminal greed and recklessness of those same corporations.
For example:
Total of federal monies invested: $3 trillion.
It’s important to note that these figures–supplied by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Congressional Budget Ooffice and the White House–date from November 16, 2009.
And it’s equally important to remember that welfare recipients did not
The 2010 documentary Inside Job chronicles the events leading to the 2008 global financial crisis. One of its most insightful moments occurs at a party held by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
“We can’t control our greed,” the CEO of a large bank admits to his fellow guests. “You should regulate us more.”
Greed is defined as an excessive desire for wealth or goods. At its worst, greed trumps rationality, judgment and concern about the damage it may cause.
Greed begins in the neurochemistry of the brain. A neurotransmitter called dopamine fuels our greed. The higher the dopamine levels in the brain, the greater the pleasure we experience.
Cocaine, for example, directly increases dopamine levels. So does money.
Harvard researcher Hans Breiter has found, via magnetic resonance imaging studies, that the craving for money activates the same regions of the brain as the lust for sex, cocaine or any other pleasure-inducer.
Dopamine is most reliably activated by an experience we haven’t had before. We crave recreating that experience.
But snorting the same amount of cocaine, or earning the same sum of money, does not cause dopamine levels to increase. So the pleasure-seeker must increase the amount of stimuli to keep enjoying the euphoria.
In time, this incessant craving for pleasure becomes an addiction. And feeding that addiction–-with ever more money–becomes the overriding goal.
Thus, the infamous line–”Greed is good”–in the 1987 film, Wall Street, turns out to be both false and deadly for all concerned.
Share this: