The book is one I just finished and reviewed. It's The Great War for
Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk,
released in this country last month. It's long--1100+ pages, if you
count the notes--and the print is smallish (the frequent asterisked
segments at the bottom of pages are even smaller), but it is entirely
worthwhile, if you have an interest in the subject. This is a guy who
has spent more than 30 years of his life covering the Middle East, and
when I say "covering," I don't mean attending government press
conferences and passing that along as The Way Things Are. This man
lives in Beirut, and has been in Baghdad while the US was bombarding
it; traveled in a bus going towards the Russian border during that
country's invasion of Afghanistan; and was almost beaten to death by a
mob--being saved by a man he simply dubbed "a Muslim saint." In short,
he's been there, including several face-to-face interviews with Osama,
before and after he became The Name of Dread in these-here parts.
There's another reason I'm recommending this; Fisk is "embedded" with
no one but his own intergrity. He provides a kind and quality of
journalism you simply won't find in the well-heeled corridors of the
polluted mainstream media. He has compassion for all the cannon-fodder
soldiers, the victims of torture and fly-by shootings, people
dispossessed of their homes, refugees forgotten by the world, and he
gives no quarter to bigots, liars, and mlitarists. In short, he's my
kind of guy, in addition to being a very good writer.
The movie: currently in theaters in the U.S., "Good Night and Good
Luck" is a black-and-white movie with a fair amount of speckling on the
picture...the kind of thing you associate with an old film that is
wearing with age and use. That's deliberate, produced this way to give
the visual feel of an old documentary. The clothing, sets, and
references are all in the mid-50s, when the events covered by this film
occurred. It is centered around the person of Edward R. Murrow, a man
rightly regarded as a legend in American television reporting. The
film begins--and ends--with his being feted at an awards meeting to
honor his contribution to American TV. Characteristically, he delivers
a challenging speech noting that TV can be a blessing or a curse, can
take up a public obligation...or become merely a medium of
entertainment (sound familiar?).
The core of the movie is Murrow's criticism of the famous witchhunter
of the Fifties, Senator Joe McCarthy. But this movie is transparently
about us, and our time, now, in terror-obsessed America. It is about
our fears, the failure of our "leaders" to lead, and it is also about
the failure of media to perform its public duty.
I'm going to write a review of that movie now, so I'll see you later
on.
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