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talkpoliticsI'll set the stage. It's December of 2002, so I'm still in uniform and my ship is in port at Norfolk, but not for long.
Bad vibes all around. Bush and Saddam and both of their respective camps have done so much saber-rattling that everyone, military and civilian alike, knows what's coming down the pike, especially since we're set to pull out of port for our next operational deployment shortly after the start of the New Year, but officially, all our plans say it's supposed to be a standard cruise to the Gulf.
I've put in my leave chit for Christmas and New Year's, which has already been approved, but at the last minute, I'm told that everyone who plans to take two weeks of leave for the holidays has to trim it down to one. I talk it over with the folks, and they agree that there's no reason for me to come home for only one week, when two days of that is going to be eaten up by travel time flying there and back again. So, I eat my leave and stay on duty, on ship, through the holidays.
There's more than a few of us stuck on ship for similar reasons that holiday season, between me, Rob Kerns (my LPO, with whom I remain good friends, in spite of our respective politics being oil and water), plus maybe Kat Whittenberger (then a seaman in our PAO, who's long since been promoted into the ranks of the khaki corps) and a couple of other shipmates from outside our shop, all hanging out in our TV studio, watching movies and cable TV on our system.
Because when you're an aircraft carrier that's in port, you get Cox Cable piped into your CCTV system, so we had all the premium channels while we were docked in Norfolk, and since the PAO's TV studio offered the most comfortably enclosed and big-picture TV viewing experience on board ship, that was where us and our circle of friends from the other departments would cluster to watch our DVDs and check out what was on HBO.
Which was how we caught Live From Baghdad.
HBO knew the score. Like everyone else, they saw how inevitable it was that Bush, the sequel president, would want to start a sequel war with Saddam, especially if he could tie it, however tenuously, to America's lingering collective outrage over 9/11. So, what better way for HBO to play on the frisson of impending current events than by tapping into the same vein of relatively recent nostalgia that Bush himself had ridden into office in the first place, and was letting steer his subsequent foreign policy?
For those who are too young to remember seeing the first Gulf War blow up on their TV screens, it was a genuine revelation. Because CNN's reporters were on the ground throughout, they were able to bring the bombs that our country was dropping on Iraq back into our own living rooms in real time, with degrees of immediacy and continuous coverage that no other news organization had ever achieved before. It was as close as my generation came to watching the first moon landing live.
I love the ugly honesty of Tom Murphy's reaction:
"He's scaring the shit out of that kid. This is great TV."
Any time you might be tempted to make the mistake of thinking of journalists, such as myself, as being actual people, just remember that, even when you're dealing with the ethical ones among us, the reptilian parts of our brains instinctively respond to other people's tragedies as opportunities for us to tell stories. At best, we are the "insect politicians" that Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundle aspired to be near the end of David Cronenberg's The Fly.
I love the journalistic ethics that are explored throughout this film, from the preceding clip's tug-of-war between the need for access versus the integrity of honest coverage, to the debate in the bar at the end of this scene between CNN and the rest of the reporters over the degree to which propaganda should be tempered by editorialization. I sympathize with both sides here, because while I didn't get into this job field to be reduced to anyone's stenographer, I'm just as uncomfortable with the notion that I need to tell my audience how they should feel about the news.
Also, because I'm me, I think I'd give my left nut to have a three-way with Pamela Sinha as Fatima, the Egyptian translator from the clip before this one, and Carole Davis as Mrs. Awatiff, the director of the international department of Iraqi TV, whom we sadly only ever see in this scene.
"What, so now they're telling us what the story is?"
"Would you rather have Dan Rather report it?"
Michael Keaton's character, Robert Wiener, was based on the CNN producer of the same name whose book, also titled Live From Baghdad, served as the source material for the made-for-TV movie's script, and while Ingrid Formanek, who's played by Helena Bonham Carter here, has politely pointed out some of the inaccuracies of what went onscreen, I still find it fascinating that Wiener was willing to chronicle his own descent into the Dark Side of journalism.
Bonus points go to Hamish Linklater for his pitch-perfect performance as CNN correspondent Richard Roth, right down to his bone-dry delivery of the speech about the karmic debt of the Middle East.
Her next line, that gets cut off at the end of this clip?
"We just became the story."
I'll be honest, I only included this clip to round out the Kuwait-and-back-again arc within the film with the feeding frenzy of reporters turning on their own, and I really wish it had lasted just a bit longer, at least enough to include Wiener's brutal phone conversation with his bosses at CNN back in Atlanta. After raking him over the coals, and not undeservedly so, they made Formanek's earlier warnings to him into explicitly stated policy. In any choice between letting the Iraqis set the terms of their own coverage versus being denied access to a news story, Wiener's bosses informed him that they'd prefer for him to get kicked out with his integrity still intact.
I have such mixed feelings about this clip.
More than any other, this was probably the scene that Formanek had in mind when she diplomatically expressed her reservations about her own onscreen portrayal, since it essentially condenses her character into Wiener's personal Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
And yet?
I'm not even sure that I can adequately put into words why I love the "We're All Going to Die!" party so much. Take any crisis situation whose risks might be stimulating in the short term, and stretch it out over enough of a long run, and those who are actually experiencing it firsthand will eventually, inevitably start treating it like any other day-to-day routine. Almost any threshold of danger can ultimately feel mundane, and even tedious, to them what has to wake up and go to bed with it every day, living and working through it the same way you slog through rush-hour traffic.
So it's no wonder that a roomful of reporters is celebrating in anticipation of the bombs that they're thinking are about to be dropped on their own heads, because at least that means that something NEW might finally happen. On an emotional level, it's so surrealistically TRUE.
That this scene is also an '80s soundtrack lover's dream is simply gravy.
I could go on about this film forever, between Bruce McGill's flawless impression of Peter Arnett, whom I met on our ship's decks during our subsequent stint as the tip of the spear in the early months of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and David Suchet delivering a chillingly dead-eyed performance as Naji Al-Hadithi, based on Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Information Minister during the first Gulf War (not to be confused with the infamous "Baghdad Bob," who filled that position during the second Gulf War).
But back in December of 2002, as me and my shipmates are watching this film for the first time?
As the movie wraps up, the last line of white epilogue text against the black background reads, "Saddam Hussein is still in power," to which Rob wryly adds, "To be continued." Not one of us gathered around the TV laughs, because it's not a joke. Three months before the official commencement, or even christening, of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and all of us already know where we're headed.
Nearly a decade later, and re-watching this film has become an exercise in double-dipped nostalgia for me, because it reminds me not only of the high school kid who was blown away by seeing the night skies over Baghdad explode in his living room, but also of the 20-something enlisted sailor that young man grew up into, who spent one dark, lonely and decidedly non-festive winter holiday waiting to go to war.
Bad vibes all around. Bush and Saddam and both of their respective camps have done so much saber-rattling that everyone, military and civilian alike, knows what's coming down the pike, especially since we're set to pull out of port for our next operational deployment shortly after the start of the New Year, but officially, all our plans say it's supposed to be a standard cruise to the Gulf.
I've put in my leave chit for Christmas and New Year's, which has already been approved, but at the last minute, I'm told that everyone who plans to take two weeks of leave for the holidays has to trim it down to one. I talk it over with the folks, and they agree that there's no reason for me to come home for only one week, when two days of that is going to be eaten up by travel time flying there and back again. So, I eat my leave and stay on duty, on ship, through the holidays.
There's more than a few of us stuck on ship for similar reasons that holiday season, between me, Rob Kerns (my LPO, with whom I remain good friends, in spite of our respective politics being oil and water), plus maybe Kat Whittenberger (then a seaman in our PAO, who's long since been promoted into the ranks of the khaki corps) and a couple of other shipmates from outside our shop, all hanging out in our TV studio, watching movies and cable TV on our system.
Because when you're an aircraft carrier that's in port, you get Cox Cable piped into your CCTV system, so we had all the premium channels while we were docked in Norfolk, and since the PAO's TV studio offered the most comfortably enclosed and big-picture TV viewing experience on board ship, that was where us and our circle of friends from the other departments would cluster to watch our DVDs and check out what was on HBO.
Which was how we caught Live From Baghdad.
HBO knew the score. Like everyone else, they saw how inevitable it was that Bush, the sequel president, would want to start a sequel war with Saddam, especially if he could tie it, however tenuously, to America's lingering collective outrage over 9/11. So, what better way for HBO to play on the frisson of impending current events than by tapping into the same vein of relatively recent nostalgia that Bush himself had ridden into office in the first place, and was letting steer his subsequent foreign policy?
For those who are too young to remember seeing the first Gulf War blow up on their TV screens, it was a genuine revelation. Because CNN's reporters were on the ground throughout, they were able to bring the bombs that our country was dropping on Iraq back into our own living rooms in real time, with degrees of immediacy and continuous coverage that no other news organization had ever achieved before. It was as close as my generation came to watching the first moon landing live.
I love the ugly honesty of Tom Murphy's reaction:
"He's scaring the shit out of that kid. This is great TV."
Any time you might be tempted to make the mistake of thinking of journalists, such as myself, as being actual people, just remember that, even when you're dealing with the ethical ones among us, the reptilian parts of our brains instinctively respond to other people's tragedies as opportunities for us to tell stories. At best, we are the "insect politicians" that Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundle aspired to be near the end of David Cronenberg's The Fly.
I love the journalistic ethics that are explored throughout this film, from the preceding clip's tug-of-war between the need for access versus the integrity of honest coverage, to the debate in the bar at the end of this scene between CNN and the rest of the reporters over the degree to which propaganda should be tempered by editorialization. I sympathize with both sides here, because while I didn't get into this job field to be reduced to anyone's stenographer, I'm just as uncomfortable with the notion that I need to tell my audience how they should feel about the news.
Also, because I'm me, I think I'd give my left nut to have a three-way with Pamela Sinha as Fatima, the Egyptian translator from the clip before this one, and Carole Davis as Mrs. Awatiff, the director of the international department of Iraqi TV, whom we sadly only ever see in this scene.
"What, so now they're telling us what the story is?"
"Would you rather have Dan Rather report it?"
Michael Keaton's character, Robert Wiener, was based on the CNN producer of the same name whose book, also titled Live From Baghdad, served as the source material for the made-for-TV movie's script, and while Ingrid Formanek, who's played by Helena Bonham Carter here, has politely pointed out some of the inaccuracies of what went onscreen, I still find it fascinating that Wiener was willing to chronicle his own descent into the Dark Side of journalism.
Bonus points go to Hamish Linklater for his pitch-perfect performance as CNN correspondent Richard Roth, right down to his bone-dry delivery of the speech about the karmic debt of the Middle East.
Her next line, that gets cut off at the end of this clip?
"We just became the story."
I'll be honest, I only included this clip to round out the Kuwait-and-back-again arc within the film with the feeding frenzy of reporters turning on their own, and I really wish it had lasted just a bit longer, at least enough to include Wiener's brutal phone conversation with his bosses at CNN back in Atlanta. After raking him over the coals, and not undeservedly so, they made Formanek's earlier warnings to him into explicitly stated policy. In any choice between letting the Iraqis set the terms of their own coverage versus being denied access to a news story, Wiener's bosses informed him that they'd prefer for him to get kicked out with his integrity still intact.
I have such mixed feelings about this clip.
More than any other, this was probably the scene that Formanek had in mind when she diplomatically expressed her reservations about her own onscreen portrayal, since it essentially condenses her character into Wiener's personal Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
And yet?
I'm not even sure that I can adequately put into words why I love the "We're All Going to Die!" party so much. Take any crisis situation whose risks might be stimulating in the short term, and stretch it out over enough of a long run, and those who are actually experiencing it firsthand will eventually, inevitably start treating it like any other day-to-day routine. Almost any threshold of danger can ultimately feel mundane, and even tedious, to them what has to wake up and go to bed with it every day, living and working through it the same way you slog through rush-hour traffic.
So it's no wonder that a roomful of reporters is celebrating in anticipation of the bombs that they're thinking are about to be dropped on their own heads, because at least that means that something NEW might finally happen. On an emotional level, it's so surrealistically TRUE.
That this scene is also an '80s soundtrack lover's dream is simply gravy.
I could go on about this film forever, between Bruce McGill's flawless impression of Peter Arnett, whom I met on our ship's decks during our subsequent stint as the tip of the spear in the early months of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and David Suchet delivering a chillingly dead-eyed performance as Naji Al-Hadithi, based on Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Information Minister during the first Gulf War (not to be confused with the infamous "Baghdad Bob," who filled that position during the second Gulf War).
But back in December of 2002, as me and my shipmates are watching this film for the first time?
As the movie wraps up, the last line of white epilogue text against the black background reads, "Saddam Hussein is still in power," to which Rob wryly adds, "To be continued." Not one of us gathered around the TV laughs, because it's not a joke. Three months before the official commencement, or even christening, of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and all of us already know where we're headed.
Nearly a decade later, and re-watching this film has become an exercise in double-dipped nostalgia for me, because it reminds me not only of the high school kid who was blown away by seeing the night skies over Baghdad explode in his living room, but also of the 20-something enlisted sailor that young man grew up into, who spent one dark, lonely and decidedly non-festive winter holiday waiting to go to war.
(no subject)
Date: 31/7/11 15:27 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31/7/11 15:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31/7/11 15:45 (UTC)It brings a few things to mind: Chris Hedges on war and the press, (http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/8351/chris-hedges-on-war-and-the-press/) Dennis Hartley on depicting the relationship between press and politics (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/saturday-night-at-movies-conspiracy-go.html) in State of Play, and the eventual finding that the story about incubators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_(testimony)) was a propaganda fabrication.