The People's Cube has an outstanding satirical piece on a recent Kevin Sites interview with a Hezbollah fighter. They compare his interview with the terrorist with a fictional interview with an SS soldier in World War II.
What jumps out at me from the Kevin Sites piece is that the moral equivalence only goes in one direction. That is, we are expected to try and see the world through the eyes of the Hezbollah fighter, but not him through ours. For him, it's perfectly natural to have automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades in his house. Of course he has used them. Why not?
Put this fellow in your own neighborhood. He isn't in the army and his house has weapons designed for professional soldiers. If this guy lived on your block, you'd think he was completely insane. Does Kevin make this point? Of course not. Kevin's not there to help the Hezbollah nutjob see the world through our eyes, he's there to try and show us that terrorists have children, too.
That's the crux of the matter and why it is self-evident that journalists like Kevin are working for the enemy although he's probably too stupid to recognize it. The two sides are not morally equivalent. Kevin himself is the evidence. Hezbollah has no equivalent to him because they've squandered all their resources attacking Israel and getting blasted as a result. They are a very poor investment.
A while back I posted some questions that CNN should be asking during their Hezbollah interviews. It's worth a mention here.
Full disclosure: I can't stand Kevin Sites and I've never met the guy. His practiced, cultivated appearance of the hip, young loner screams at me, "I don't follow the rules, man. I'm edgy, hip and in your face. I speak truth to power, dude." He's all rough and tumble until he goes to the hair salon and gets his $85 cut and blow dry and then uses the special attachment on his razor to make sure his beard always has that day or two-old look. My friends who are and were in SpecOps don't look anything like this.
He's all peacock and no eagle.
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KT, I think you missed the mark here. I didn't see a defense of this guy's twisted perspective. Rather it acted to illuminate the insanity of his world. I think the fact that this guy's home is normal for south Lebanon speaks volumes about their true problems. Much of this you've already done a good job illustrating.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe your dislike for the guy, yes he does look like a smug X'er, may have overshadowed what this article was actually trying to say.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the well-reasoned comment! (That was the obligatory compliment. I will now go on to disagree with you in an obnoxious fashion with a clean conscience.)
Kevin has no problem injecting his commentary when he feels like it. He has no comments at all on this one. Silence is a point of view, too.
Kevin's piece never claims that the Hezbollah fellow is twisted. The whole interview is unnatural, like the old not talking about the elephant in the room cliche. He goes into the guy's house and describes the decor and the family as if he were a middle class American, but stops short of asking the questions that we all want answered and would be natural for us.
"Are you insane? What is your problem? What made you think that the AK-47 was a better investment than a cordless drill? Your place looks like crap. Why don't you do something about it?"
The fact the Mr. Hezbollah has a kid and a house and breaths a Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere adds no information at all. It's simply background filler and wastes our time.
"Have you ever used the gun?" is a waste of time, too. The real question is, "Why did you choose to use the gun over improving your lot in life like everyone else does?"
That is, we are expected to try and see the world through the eyes of the Hezzzzzzzzbollah fighter, but not him through ours...of course!...Its a PC world KT!..and thanks for the lovely words at my site today..meant alot to me..:)
ReplyDelete"Silence is a point of view, too."
ReplyDeleteSpot on, K.T.! Good job!
kelly the dog is a great friend of mine. We've known each other more than 25 years. I treasure our friendship. He always comes at things from a different viewpoint than me.
ReplyDeleteWrong, but different.
;-)