A Picture is Worth 1,000 Tons of Bullshit

What does the Israeli assault on Hizbollah in Lebanon have to do with OJ Simpson? They were guilty, and they were framed.

As with everything else surrounding the perma-conflict in the Middle East, your opinion of the recent Israel-Hizbollah war seems predetermined by the opinions you already held about Israel, Arabs, Islam, Zionism, or terrorism. So it is that the pro-Israel world jumped all over the revelations that some photographers and editors were staging and even altering pictures to make the damage in Lebanon look more severe. One of the photogs, Adnan Hajj, enhanced the smoke over Beirut (see above) in such a hackneyed way that a color-blind orangutan should have been able to spot the Photoshop chicanery. (Seriously, the Daily Show has better Photoshops than that crap.) And now the right-wingers who think the world media is universally comprised of anti-Western, pro-Islam leftists get to trot this out as evidence for their paranoia.

The fact remains that even if unscrupulously scummy photogs, journalists and editors are staging and doctoring the war's visuals, Israel still bombed the shit out of Lebanon and killed a lot of people, albeit in the pursuit of their own survival. But just as the Los Angeles DA and LAPD let OJ escape whatever justice he deserved by unethically padding an already airtight case, anti-Israel elements of the media have cast doubt on whatever case they were trying to make to the world. CBS News was guilty of this, too; the righteous scandal about false documents overshadowed the fact that President Bush still never reported for Guard duty during Vietnam. They were guilty, and they were framed.

(I'm not really comparing Israel to OJ. The analogy would only be fair if Nicole had been slipping ground glass into his oatmeal and dropping her Sony Watchman into the hot tub when he was taking a schvitz.)

Amid all the hubbub, CNET ran a wicked photo gallery of famous doctored pictures, from OJ's darkened Time cover to John Kerry's non-appearance with Hanoi Jane. But of all of them, I think this one is still my all-time favorite:

Can you guess which person on the cover of Wisconsin's 2001-2002 application booklet was not at Camp Randall that day?

Comments

[robert webb]

You may be right about the picture but try firtilizing your field with a picture.
(You must forgive me.I have no control!)