Summer Sequels - or- The Revenge of Abu Ghraib

It's summer! Well close to it anyway. That means its time for big summer movies and big sequels – and apparently its not just for the movies it’s also apparently true for international politics.

Just after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal may have faded from people minds – a new set of pictures shows the sequel also has to be bigger and better. So what do we get? Saddam in his skivvies! The butcher of Baghdad in his B-V-D’s!

Another photo display of what life is like for Iraqi’s in American custody. So once again the U.S. military needs to “aggressively investigate” how these photos were released to a London tabloid. Sure the pictures are pretty bad – but what is worse is that The Sun says and I quote U.S. “military sources said they handed over the photos in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq.” Meanwhile back on this side of the pond Senior U.S. military sources have said the military did not give the photos to The Sun no matter what the newspaper says. So how much did the paper end up paying for the humiliation of the former dictator? The General Manger of The Sun would only say the newspaper paid “a small sum” for the photos. He would not elaborate except to say it was more than 500 British pounds, which is about $900. Hell, pictures of British Celebrities in their skivvies bring in more then that. Even with the price tag Saddam gets no respect.

So once again we are on the receiving end of Geneva Convention infractions, though we managed to side step them by saying “it was not a government release so it is not a violation of the Geneva conventions.” Just in case you were wondering under Articles 13 and 14 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, POW’s “must at all times be protected ... against insults and public curiosity," and also "are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honor."

So these photos are once again tarnishing the image of Uncle Sam and who though we could have sunk lower then American soldiers smiling giving the thumbs up pointing to blindfolded prisoners genitals.

Also this week but not nearly as visual is the allegations by Newsweek, about the desecration of the Quran at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yet the real question is what’s going on in Iraq? The war torn nation remains calm, possibly because they are all still tuckered out about the Quran desecration. While some say the pictures are offensive to Arabs and Muslims, other Iraqi’s are saying the humiliation is just what the 68-year-old former leader deserves.

It’s a violation of privacy – or is it just punishment for a terrible dictator? It seems the world is split once again on how people feel about Saddam, Kurds who were oppressed under his regime say he deserves worse, while political parties who flourished under Saddam say it is inhuman, and immoral.

So in the end, I guess it just goes to show you that with this sequel is really like so many movie sequels, this time around the buzz was bigger, the stars were bigger, but in the end – its another sequel that just isn’t as important as the original.

What is life - or - advice for the uninspired

All too often my posts are about work – about the goings on behind the scenes at CBS, or some other pretending to be witty comments on this wacky modern world we live in. Today will be a little different.

Back in February we lost one of the greatest journalists and writers the world has ever seen when Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. The world may never know his last words – he had an ESPN column and the last posting was about a new sport Shot gun golf – yet this months Playboy had the ‘last’ writings of Thompson. SO I went out and picked up a copy to read the last words, which ended up not really being last words but the last interview. In it Thompson talks about several things including life and how to live it, what kind of guns kill what kind of animals, and basically every topic from being a gentleman to what drugs mix with what.

There is one particular section of advice I want to paraphrase here- if you want the whole words you need to go buy Playboy – and that’s right your buying it for the articles not the pictures. Thompson talks about driving on a road late at night and at a high speed coming across a deer. The deer freezes gets the ‘deer in a headlights look’ and what do you as a driver? There are several options each a parable for life. You can slow down – slam on the breaks- and the front of the car dips – you slam into the deer which in turn slams into the windshield and car head on and you will most likely become a statistic another person killed by a deer. Or you can swerve, and end up slamming into a tree and once again causing your self harm but sparing the animal. Then there is the third choice – you stay at speed – or speed up hit the deer head on and it bounces up and over you – wrecks your car kills the deer but you remain unscathed.

Sometimes the best answer in life is to simply plow ahead full speed, you know there are going to be consequences, but of all the options in front of you – it is the best choice you got.

Catching up of Platter of Poltics

So I know I haven’t posted in a while and I’m sorry, I know I suck. Don’t worry its not because I didn’t have anything to say its because I have been fairly busy. In three weekends I have been to Canada, New York, and then Baltimore. So I haven’t been falling behind. So instead of my usual long post about something – it’s going to work more like a buffet. I’ll go reverse, starting with the most recent first and work back.

--Getting Paid for Nothing or Why I hate the Giant Hamburger--

So our station gets a call from the CBS Morning Show and they are looking for a freelance producer. They want a producer to head out to Oswego (about 40 minutes Northwest of Syracuse), for an interview with the family of a hiker who died while climbing Mount Everest.

Two brothers Mike and Chris O’Brien lost their mother and sister to a hereditary disease and were climbing the mountain to try to raise money and awareness of the disease.

So after much debate I volunteer for the job. I find out I will be getting paid the flat rate for freelancers $350 a day. Then I find out they want me to leave Tuesday night – to produce the Wednesday morning segment. So they are going to put me up in a hotel, and I was going to make 700 bucks for a few hours of work. Head out Tuesday night meet and greet the family, then around four am I would have to produce a look live package for The Morning Show and also Good Morning America. Sweet – double the contacts and still less then 24 hours of work. So I go into produce my own six pm news. Then I come out and I have a message from The Morning show. I find out the family of the dead hiker, which I worked to set up, had been talking to all afternoon just a day after finding out about Mike’s death had been bumped.

For what you ask? The Pope? A cure for cancer? Nope! A 15-pound hamburger. A Pennsylvania restaurant has created something called the ‘Beer Barrel Belly Buster,’ a burger comes with 10.5 pounds of ground beef, 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, 1 1/2 cups each of mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, mustard and banana peppers - and a bun. It costs $30. http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=b2903108-051d-488b-8f6d-3a7942508fea

That’s right a great story about two brothers working to raise money for a disease that took their sister and mothers life bumped for a giant Hamburger.

The good news – I still scammed my way to one day’s freelance pay – for 350 dollars in my pocket – but ill count that once I got it in my hand.

--- Prime Time and The President ---

So last Thursday night the President in his infinite wisdom holds his major speech on Social Security. What’s on CBS at Thursday night at 8? Survivor! So what a dilemma, do we dump the number one reality TV show Survivor for the President or do we skip the show and continue to show our obvious political bias? There were plenty of rumors that this was the President’s revenge for Rathergate. The ego on us… but every other network is going to carry the speech – so after first saying we wouldn’t take the speech CBS flip flopped and decided to carry the speech and push survivor back to nine.

Now this is my opinion. But here’s how I feel. Last time I checked CBS is a network – which includes news, but there is no news in our title. It’s not like CNN, which has News right in their abbreviation. I feel much like no one watches local news for sports no one watches local news for national events. If someone wants to know why they were backed up in traffic on their way home they switch on local news, if they want to find out what the president is doing they can watch CNN or MSNBC. At 8 o’clock people want primetime shows, not news. On the sinking ship of CBS why are we playing games with our best shows? The decision to show the speech was to pretend we are an unbiased news organization, which is a legitimate cause and I must say showing a speech is way easier then actually changing the way CBS does news.