Thursday, September 06, 2007
TURKEY FRENZY!
George W. Bush was only in Iraq for a few hours, but that’s long enough to spawn a
crazy new batch of plastic turkey drones, including Chicago’s
Pam Berns:
Bush’s six-hour visit and photo op in front of a few hundred troops and his traditional triple kiss to President Jalal Talabani (who arrived late) compares favorably, however, to Bush’s 2003 surprise Thanksgiving trip to Iraq in which he posed for a photo op while serving a large plastic turkey to soldiers.
Pam is on the board of
Chicago Media Watch, which “aims to ensure that this region’s media remains open, honest and responsive to the people’s needs”. So she’ll soon be publishing a
correction. The
Hartford Courant’s
Jim Shea writes:
The only difference between this visit and the first one that President Bush made over Thanksgiving in 2003 is a photo-op with a fake turkey.
Contact Jim
here. From a
St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial:
On Labor Day President George W. Bush made his third secret trip to Iraq (no need for a plastic photo-op turkey this time, not with CBS’ Katie Couric already in the field) this time landing at a remote air base ...
A
correspondent to the
Charleston Daily Mail:
Again, Bush sneaks into Iraq like the coward he is. Did he take the plastic turkey this time?
San Francisco’s Jim Provenzano finds a
musical angle:
As you may know, Franti went to Iraq, and he didn’t serve a fake turkey.
Neither did Bush. The
Oregonian’s associate editor David Sarasohn - he could do with a
note, too - is
so confident of his turkey facts that he visits the subject twice:
For Thanksgiving 2003, Bush appeared on front pages all over the nation holding up a turkey that turned out not to be, well, exactly a turkey ... like the turkey that wasn’t exactly a turkey and the close-up of Anbar province from inside a U.S. military base, the claims present problems.
As does Sarasohn’s claim. Let’s see him fix that. Best saved till last; here’s Mary Lyon, “an advocate for liberal causes,
responsibility and accountability in the media”, in a piece actually titled
Everything But the Plastic Turkey:
It made a great photo-op, until the truth got out - that what he carried was as phony as he and his policies are - complete with a turkey made of plastic. The only troops allowed to partake in that feast, or even to get close enough to be photographed with that plastic turkey display were those who obediently stuck to the script. Any dissenters hoping to press for a little truth were left outside in the heat, making do with MREs. As long as the cosmetics are there, who cares what’s really underneath? Little did Young George realize how painfully accurate that visual metaphor was.
Wrong, Mary. The
turkey was real.
(Via Doug E. and Murph)
UPDATE. The
Oregonian’s associate editor David Sarasohn
promises a correction, but Jim Shea of the
Hartford Courant wants to
do things the hard way:
Oh, dear. Looks like we have another
Mike Hudson on our hands.
UPDATE II.
This might explain Jim’s attitude:
You could probably label me a shy egomaniac, a description that fits a lot of newspaper people.
