| Friday, April 9, 2004 |
13:37 - This just in my brain
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I saw something odd while watching This Just In last night, and it made me think something odd.
The odd thing I saw was a sequence where Bill O'Reilly is shown fantasizing about a cruise missile (funded by his own $1 million donation) launched from a jet fighter, with his face on a decal on its nose, streaking into Paris and blowing up the Eiffel Tower in a big mushroom cloud.
Now: granted, this was presented as a counterpoint to the sequence immediately preceding it, where Brian Newport (the lead character) fantasizes about the same donated cruise missile, with his own face on the decal, zeroing in on a hole where Osama bin Laden is hiding, creating the same mushroom cloud.
But I just couldn't help but think: if I were French, and I saw this show, even in context... hell yeah, it would piss me off.
It's clear that the intent is to mock Bill O'Reilly as being just a bit over-the-top and vindictive, with strange priorities and ire aimed in rather an unproductive direction. It's clear that the writers of the show aren't actually suggesting that attacking France would be a good thing.
But it has become somewhat of a tacit staple of our collective thought process, hasn't it? Tanks in Iraq spray-painted with FIRST BAGHDAD, THEN PARIS? And we giggle mischievously?
Sure, an argument can be made that France is not an ally-- even that it's playing for the other team. But it does us no service to treat them as adversaries in a shooting war, or to let such venom seep into our pop culture, even as a way of letting off steam. After all, isn't our disdain for France largely based on French loathing of America as expressed in their pop culture, which we'd like to think is unfounded and unprovoked?
Perhaps, if we're interested in laying a legitimate claim to the moral high ground here, it would be a good thing if we could rise above such pettiness. Because it sure looks ugly from the perspective of the business end. We're trying to convince everyone we're better than that, right? We could stand to rise above such childish thoughtlessness.
Hey, I told you it was an odd thing for me to think.
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Brian Tiemann
