March 25, 2003
WE LIVE in a gilded
WE LIVE in a gilded age. Our lifespans are longer, our freedoms more abundant, and our dreams more achievable than for any generation prior. Yet still emerge talents so sublime as to remind humankind of our massive potential, thus far unrealised.
I speak, obviously, of Margo Kingston.
No other living practictioner of the paranoid arts can compete with Australia's gift to irrational panic. Margo's latest is a masterpiece:
Hi. I stopped watching the war after Saturday night, when US troops planted the United States flag after conquering a port town, and Turkey decided to send its troops into Iraq. This war is unbearable, a frightening threat to world peace. This should not be Australia's war.
Margo has refused to follow other wars; prior to the conflict in Afghanistan, she decided it was phoney and unworthy of her attention. Hers is an unconventional approach to journalism.
This is not a war of liberation. It is a war of conquest. We are all in danger.
Australia is next to be crushed by Bush's rapacious war machine! It would be worth it, actually, just to see Margo's reaction.
The photograph just about all the papers ran on Saturday - of an American soldier giving water to a captured Iraqi - looked like a still from a Hollywood movie. And I haven't seen any shots in our papers of Iraqi casualties - have you?
Hey, lazy gal, if you can't be bothered following the war, why should we?
On the right hand column of Webdiary, another staged shot which tells the tale of not just an ordinary war of conquest, but a religious crusade, a religious war.
The shot is "staged"? How so? Where is the fakery Margo implies? What part of the image is inaccurate or deceptive? How has the photographer manipulated events? Does Margo even know what "staged" means?
An American soldier, Saddam in his sights, has a picture of a naked, buxom woman on his dashboard, an obvious affront to Muslim sensibilities.
Shocking nudity! Muslims will be offended! Curiously, Margo didn't give a damn about Muslim sensibilities when she was promoting naked anti-war protests. Australia's 300,000 Muslims no doubt reeled in terror. They probably don't think much of the fact that Margo has a job and gets around burkha-less, either.
And on his helmet, lines from Psalm 37: "The wicked plot against the just and ground their teeth at them, but the LORD laughs at them, knowing their day is coming."
Well, that proves it. One soldier writes somes scripture on his helmet, therefore the entire war is a religious crusade.
And all along I thought it was about oil.
Posted by Tim Blair at March 25, 2003 12:17 PM