Posted on 02/20/2006 5:46:08 AM PST by SJackson
Every war and its aftermath is fought on two fronts. One front is where human life is destroyed by shot and shell, but the battlefield is not always where the winners and losers are determined. The other front belongs to reporters, photographers and pundits, who wage war with words and images. Through observation, selection and interpretation, the will of the people is wrought.
Julius Caesar knew exactly what he was doing when, returning to Rome triumphant, with great fanfare made the great gesture of turning down the crown. Mark Anthony, his talented public-relations flack, supervised the spin. All roads led to Rome, and the crowd went to the actor and orator who could best manipulate events. We lack great orators today, but we're awash in public actors. The image remains a powerful weapon, and outcomes are determined by those who manipulate best.
This truth is writ large in the Middle East, where as one realistic cynic puts it, "a picture is worth a thousand lives." Images suggest that what you see can't be a lie, which only makes the spin doctors laugh. The pervasive image as manipulated by the media is often merely deception by selection. This is demonstrated in the way the world sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there's new peril as Hamas moves into a position of power.
Stephanie Gutmann, who covered the second intifada, documents in her book, "The Other War," how Israel, in spite of — or maybe because of — its strength as a democracy nearly always loses the battle for soft and sympathetic minds. The David and Goliath story is updated to "Large Mechanized Brutes versus Small Vulnerable Brown People."
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
This is the war that the USA is also losing.
The world is being convinced that we are terrorists and torturers. Americans are being brainwashed with the lie that homosexuality is just another civil right, that filth is freedom, that lies are truth, that left is right, that the President is always wrong and that values are worthless.
We need to recognize this war and go to battle and win it.
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The properly Anglicized version of the name is "Mark Antony," Suzie-Q.
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