I’m watching Larry King and wondering why he hikes his shoulders so high up. His elbows lean across the all too familiar desk and he seems to have his chair slightly too low. I believe this will give him back trouble and it concerns me.
He is concerned, as we all are, because the pictures and video of the prisoner abuses in Iraq have been viewed by Congress. Apparently, they are worse, far worse than anything we have seen so far.
Yet there is a paradox. In the wake of media assault on the public with the footage of Nicholas Berg’s terrible death, the prisoner scandal has been eclipsed. The word used by the congressmen present to watch and review all the photographic evidence of the abuse, is ‘heinous’ – although one of them kept saying it was “hyenaous” which made me want to throttle him.
Another word used was “barbarous.” Barbarous just conjures up images of Conan (the Barbarian not the talk show host), swords and sandals, impalement, and people being drawn and quartered. Barbarians are inhuman. This word makes them seem more like monsters encountered by Jason and the Argonauts than human. “Heinous,” although, a bad thing, and definitely something to be reckoned with (and to be released to the public), is slightly softer. It is veiled in a kind of secrecy, behind pixilation. It is to be viewed with discretion. It is the skeleton in the closet, the Pandora’s box yet unopened.
Now the Bush administration is using the death of another innocent child, Nicholas Berg, to indict the ‘barbarians.’ By showing the beheading over and over on the news and the internet, like we were locked in some “Faces Of Death” marathon, they stir up anger and the public’s ‘patriotic’ rage, letting us forget that we have been at least equally barbarous ourselves.
I don’t justify actions on either side, but we must remember, we started it. “We didn’t start the fire,” Billy Joel would sing, when his music and driving got bad. He may not have started the fire, but he did write some righteous songs (GLASS HOUSES is a masterpiece, and just for that, all is forgiven and I remain a lifelong fan), but in this case, we actually did start the fire. George W. Bush started a war with Iraq to punish them for 9/11 when they actually had nothing to do with it. Now, we have destroyed their country, committed dire offenses in the name of ‘freedom,’ and lost too many of our own children for what basically amounts to a lie.
I worry about Larry King’s shoulders, for he seems to carry so much weight on them, showing America its dirty drawers five days a week. However, this has not altered my deep, complex affections for Aaron Brown.
This is a Holy War. Strange. There is so much religion in the world, but only enough to make us fight over who is right. Not enough to make us love each other.