For the last few weeks the top story in the US has been (1) where Anna Nichole Smith will be buried and (2) whether her body will melt before the funeral. Really, that's apparently the only story in the whole world worth putting on the airwaves.
Just before that, though, the story was how the Democrats in Congress held a weeklong "debate" (more like "whine session" as everybody said what was on their minds, but no conversation took place) and announced that sending more troops to Iraq was "not in the national interest." Just before that, the same Congress overwhelmingly approved a new general to handle the strategy in Iraq, and it was that same general's belief that more troops were needed. Strangely, several politicians who opposed the increased numbers of troops have effectively admitted they don't know how many troops are actually needed. It seems to me, then, that they ought to consider General Petraeus's opinion on the matter -- they are paying him after all.
What I find interesting is that we haven't heard what effect the increased troop levels have had. We should have some idea how things are going, a month after the first troops were sent. If news is so slow that we're talking about the custody battle over a dead body, there ought to be, say, ten minutes for Ms Couric to say that attacks in Baghdad have fallen seventy-plus percent since the new US troops started showing up. If attacks went up seventy-plus percent in a month, I'm sure we'd hear about it (in fact, I know we've heard how things were "absolutely falling apart, given a recent increase in attacks of X%" where X is much less than seventy).
I don't want to accuse the media of bias just yet. Does anyone have an idea why Ms Smith's funeral arrangements are a bigger story than what's happening in Iraq? If that explanation doesn't include bias/attempts to influence politics, I'd love to hear it.
posted by Max Lybbert at 9:01 AM
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