Smoke It if you've got It

So if a major broadcaster drives you to crack addiction, is it considered poor etiquette to sue?  Apparently Lilybet might have a chance to find out, after having suffered through a fluff piece on Iraq from CBS’s Early Show co-anchor, Harry Smith.  Though in CBS’s defense, it was an early morning show and it’s as gauche to show real news as it is to drink Jack at that ungodly hour.

My favorite part is the cheap rationalization for the story of "This is the side of the Iraq war that the mainstream media won't show you.”  The joke being that this is coming from the mainstream media.  In fact, the mainstream media has a fetish for taking a break from the real world and searching for the few positive stories coming from Iraq.  As if there is any country in history which didn’t have a few positive stories of optimism and hope.

And then there’s the issue of other MSM cohorts who once denounced a man for daring to show positive images of Iraq.  But I guess timing really is everything.

Little Optimism, Little Progress

I didn’t see that news story myself, as I already had a previous engagement with my pillow to attend to; but I read the accompanying article, and it’s pathetic in its fluffery.  As Harry Smith says, "We were looking for a little optimism, and a little progress, and we found it, in a place called Saba Bor."  And of course, if you’re looking for something and are willing to forgo reality, it’s really not too hard to find it.  

For example, this little optimism and progress he speaks of is intermixed with:

"We headed to town in our armored humvee, gunner up top, at the ready," Smith says. "Local traffic pulled over. We had our eyes peeled for IEDs (improvised explosive devices)."

Just a month ago, a bomb killed 15 people there….They were almost rioting in here. They pelted us with rocks."  So, the 4th closed off every road into town but one, making it harder for the bad guys to get in.

April was a particularly deadly month. "We've lost eight men in combat," an emotional Thomson said, "all great Americans."

Encouragement tempered, Smith concludes, with the realities of incidents such as one last week, when a local contractor hired to run an elective line into town to provide desperately needed power, was kidnapped. He hasn't been heard from since.

CBS News: Looking for a little optimism and a little progress, and finding just that.