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TALKING TORSOS

In re my post on the 27th about the new perspectives afforded the expatriate, and about the relativity of freedom (SHALL WE EAT?), since the invasion of Iraq I've broken my news fast a couple of times, now and then watching both Japanese tv and US tv via satellite for updates on the progress of this very sinister precedent. The difference between these two perspectives of the very same event is extremely unsettling. On Japanese tv, from the weeknightly news program News Station I learn more about the true nitty-gritty of the goings-on in Iraq than I get from any length of satellite tv news from the US. On Japanese tv I see lengthy, actual, impartially shot video takes of dusty, dirty, shocking events as they unfold that include the horrific and heart-breaking details of actual war, as it happened on that day. On US tv I see an endless parade of coiffed and pancaked career-oriented talking heads yapping airfill about the weather in Kuwait (cut to weatherperson), or drinking-water problems somewhere in Iraq (clips of marines handing out plastic bottles of water to grateful children), or there's a whole talking torso in front of the white house, or standing in the way of some vague smoke rising from somewhere in a distant, shimmering, unreal Baghdad, cut to Bush smiling and waving on the way to his helicopter or addressing an audience of pumped-up marines (talk about a captive audience). I see the US flag, I see US families of US soldiers holding US flags, I see a black brigadier general of the US Marines wearing camo, showing selected reporters carefully edited black-and-white surgical-strike silent-film clips of geometric shapes exploding. Hard to believe there's a war going on. Too bad they can't get satellite Japanese tv in the US.