AMERICA WILL BE DEFEATED BY REAL NEWS

You know things are getting serious in the Middle East when even a senior White House official says something like this:

“… Viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”

State Secretary Hillary Clinton said that. And she said it on the record to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Which is stunning for a couple of reasons:

1. It’s the first time I’m aware of that any US govt official has ever said anything even remotely positive about Al Jazeera.

2. She is going to get so much shit from the entire conservative media blogosphere for saying it.

Never mind that her actual point was that the US is losing the Propaganda Information War in the Middle East thanks in part to Al Jazeera doing a better job of covering the regional action and positioning itself as an opinion leader – something the US media used to be reasonably good at during the Cold War. Pundits are going to run with that quote and Hillary is going to be branded as an America-hating Radical Islam Sympathizer who’d rather watch Al Jazeera than American news because she hates America as much as Al Qaeda does.

Granted, conservatives have been saying that about Hillary for at least ten years (and possibly as far back as when she was still FLOTUS). So it might not make much difference. Still, I can't imagine Limbaugh, Malkin or some of the Fox creatures letting that one pass without comment.

As for Hillary's actual point, I do think she’s forgetting one important aspect of the Propaganda Information War that is giving Al Jazeera an edge over Fox, CNN and VOA in the region:

They speak Arabic.

Real news is one thing. Real news in the local language is something else, and none of the American news channels can possibly hope to compete with that with their snazzy graphics and one-sided talking-head shoutfests.

That said, given the State Dept’s really poor track record in selling Brand America in the past decade – due in part to a very wrong assumption that the problem with America’s foreign policies wasn’t declaring war on false pretenses, overthrowing govts and torturing people, but insufficient marketing – I suppose we can’t blame it all on language issues.

Anyway, Hillary does make a good point that needs to be made: much of what’s happening in the Middle East (and much of the rest of what we used to call the Third World) is being driven by young people who have not grown up with the same image of the US that their grandparents and parents did during WW2 and the Cold War. Their image of the US is a bloated superpower that runs an offshore gulag and attacks countries that give it grief – especially countries with lots of Muslims in them – and will make up reasons to do it if that's what it takes.

Okay, it’s also a superpower that invented blockbuster movies, Michael Jackson and the iPhone. So I’m not saying they hate everything about us.

News to me,

This is dF

YOUTUBE SURVIVOR SERIES #106: YOU LIE! (BIKINI AUDITION MIX)

And now, a gratuitous cameo with gratuitous bikini go-go dancing.

You could do that in the 60s.

Well, you could probably do it now. But it wouldn’t be as good.

Pants on fire,

This is dF