The Blogger at War by Dennis Perrin
Submitted by Reverend Chuck0:THE BLOGGER AT WAR
by Dennis Perrin
Having exposed the inferiority of Sri Lankan-made screensavers and named his 15 All-Time Campiest Christmas Ornaments, James Lileks needed a breather from his popular blog, The Bleat (www.lileks.com/bleats). He'd refrained from commentary for most of December, and those desiring fresh Bleats were forced to settle for retro-visuals and wry captions while the blogmaster dealt with the endless deadlines that haunt his existence. Then Saddam was yanked from a hole in Tikrit, causing the American media to go nuts. The dinner bell rang, and there was no way Lileks was going to miss this call--especially since he'd been valiantly cheering on the war from the front lines of Minneapolis.
They got him! Or so they suggested, back in March. No one said it explicitly, but for a day we hoped. The troops were massed and poised; intel came in, off went the rockets. I remember watching video of flames licking the sky that night--best of all possible worlds, it seemed. The war hadn't even begun, and maybe the butcher was a pink smear on a shattered hunk of concrete. Not the case, as it turned out. Then came another decapitation attempt before the troops took Baghdad, and I thought the same thing: if only."Coalition forces have discovered a liver on a rebar, and are making DNA tests as we speak!" But he lived.
Yes, but since this "decapitation attempt" took place in a heavily populated civilian area, there were doubtless civilian casualties. Their pink smears, however, were of no evident concern to Lileks--hey, that's what happens when you live in Saddam's 'hood. Comes with the blasted turf, the "best of all possible worlds."
Having warmed up with this, Lileks went off, wildly assuming what The Arab Street thought of the event, giving Saddam a psychological profile from thousands of miles away (his imperial Joyce Brothers bit), and projecting his "ironic" Oh, isn't the U.S. just awful! routine on those who opposed the invasion. Because, you see, only a rabid America Hater could find something wrong with Bush's war.
Lileks expanded on this theme: "I've read all the nutball far-left sites worrying about the worrisome worries--does this help Dub? Was it all faked? Surely America will see that the man paraded before the cameras was a soy-based simulacrum cooked up in the Halliburton labs? It's amusing to troll the fevered swamps, but nothing they say matters in the end."
