A Long Walk Home
Years ago, I used to argue with a friend of mine about school funding. A fan of vouchers and local district funding, he argued staunchly that if a person didn’t like where they were and was disappointed with the services offered, they could just leave. Use their feet. Walk to a better place.
My recent news addiction has left me with a hollow feeling in my stomach. I look at the faces of the talking heads and they all look like my old elementary school principal. I wouldn’t have a beer with any of these guys—especially Rumsfield. I’d be afraid of detention, or worse. They might haul out that paddle with the holes in it. I remember how that hurt. I keep hearing stuff about the “liberal media”—and I wonder where they are, where I might tune in. I watch mostly CNN these days, having tired of the “objective” flag-waving of the other alternatives, but all the newscasters and politicians on every network remind me of people I hated growing up. I tried to walk away from them many times, but my parents always made me go back.
Last night, as I watched the long column of soldiers leaving Northern Iraq, I got a Neil Young song stuck in my head from a largely forgotten album named Life —“Long Walk Home.”
If Liberty was a little girl
Watching all the flags unfurl
Standing at the big parade
How would she like us now?We balance the power
From hour to hour
Giant guns rage
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home.
Though Young has been branded as an arch-conservative by lots of people in the wake of 9/11 and his song “Let’s Roll,” he has always been complex politically. Some people have a talent for sloganeering, and some people mistake concision for simplicity. In this early song, written as I recall in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal, he really captures the feeling I have right now about recent events.
From Vietnam to old Beirut
If we are searching for the truth
Why do we feel
that double-edged blade
Cutting through our hand.America, America
Where have we gone?
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home.We balance the power
From hour to hour
Giant guns rage
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home
It’s such a long walk home.
To hear the villain of that moment, Oliver North, broadcasting now from the gates of Baghdad fills me with revulsion. There’s a sick feeling as I think of those shoeless soldiers on the long walk home to Southern Iraq. And there’s an equally sick feeling when the coverage on CNN switches in the early morning from the flag-waving bravado to the international coverage.
The story that followed the long march was told by an ITN journalist who witnessed the shooting of a young Iraqi girl who failed to stop at a checkpoint. The soldiers were under orders not to leave their post, so an Arab translator ran across the field of fire to bring her back to get medical attention. The staunch British reporter in Kevlar helmet, a woman who spoke through tears, claimed that these American soldiers had no regard for who they shot. They shot anyone who didn’t understand the English instruction to stop. At least six people were shot while she was there, people who committed no crime other than be unable to understand English.
It will be a long walk home from this one. The truth is more complicated that the pictures of joyous Iraqis celebrating or innocent Iraqis shot. It was strange to remember that a barrage of shoes accompanied the statue smashing. I must have seen the little boy running barefoot, beating on Saddam’s head with his shoes a thousand times. I suspect that nothing much will be settled until the people put the shoes back on their feet, and begin to walk.
Your addiction seems similar to my own inability to turn the damn set of.
It’s gotten almost painful to listen to Rumsfeld, a person I described quite awhile ago as a “lousy liar.” We should at least demand “good liars” from our government.
Recent stories that the tearing down of Saddam’s statue was staged by the American military make me feel even more uncomfortable with the news.
Just a brief addition from the news today.
A group of Iraqis were chanting “Yankee go Home” pressing against a barricade.
A US soldier with an M-16 screamed, exasperatedly:
Yeah – I know how you both feel = Like I posted yesterday I wanted to smash my TV into little pieces when Rummy went into his Henny Penny speach. I couldn’t even get away from it by switching to the CBC, although they only showed brief clips thank the gods and were definitely not in Rummy’s camp as it were. But, in truth, I am most dissappointed in the journalists in that press room. THere wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t fully aware that Rumsfeld was blatantly lying to them yet not one was willing to put their job on the line and take him to task for it. What’s the point in having White House press credentials if you are just going to parrot the company line? Maybe it is just a phantasm of aging memory but I could swear the White House press corps during Vietnam were a good deal more confrontational.
I have to disagree. I like Rumsfeld, mainly for the way he handles the press. If he doesn’t know or can’t reveal the answer to a question he just says so; he doesn’t give some non-answer meant to sound like an answer.
The media, especially television, is not to be trusted or taken too seriously. Yes they are liberal, obviously. I’ve always thought that and I still consider myself a liberal on most issues. In fact, I can’t understand why people who call themselves liberals are against the war, but I won’t get into that here. The media bias shows more in what they leave out than in what they report. Interestingly, it seems to me that Leftists (not those I consider true liberals) tend to be more willing to believe what they hear on TV news even though they’re always screaming about “right-wing media bias.”
I wrote something a few days ago that is related to this. Here.
You are living in a dream worl Lynn if you think the media, and in particular television, is liberal. THe media is overwhelmingly conservative as numerous studies have shown. Of course the extreme right has done a very good job of shouting “Liberal” everytime anyone has the temerity to deviate even slightly from their agenda. THe right has done a good job of convincing the general public that (a) the media is liberal and (b) that liberal is a dirty word.
If the american media represented by the white house press corps were “liberal” as you insist they would be constantly calling Rummy on his lies instead of just sitting there meekly, asking mostly unimportant questions, and publishing whatever he says wihtout critique. Rumsfeld is an accomplished liar – he has the “big lie” technique down pat and uses it constantly.