GREEN ZONES & YELLOW JOURNALISM

My wife knows I love war movies. Correction, historically accurate war movies, something you just don’t see anymore unless John Milius can slip one in via HBO. Anyway, she got us the movie Green Zone on Netflix, with Matt Damon. Babyface just doesn’t cut it for me as an action hero, BTW. Not the like 80’s action heroes…Stallone, Willis, Norris, Arnie…who would have kicked his ass. And still can, including Clint. As for the movie, it was about as pathetic as I figured it would be. Not to worry. I won’t bother with a movie review. For those of you who haven’t seen it, don’t. For those of you who have seen it, may God have mercy on your soul.

They did appear to get a few things right. Namely, our foreign policy is a muddled, contradictory, uncoordinated fuster cluck. Not that this is any kind of new development. Egyptian President Nasser explained our foreign policy well way back in the 1960’s. “The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.” Bad as foreign policy may have been under Bush, it has only gone rapidly and swiftly downhill since the Messiah reared his empty head. If he has even a semi-coherent foreign policy, other than insulting the Brits and shitting on the Israelis, he has apparently hidden it from even himself.

Anyway, the heart of the movie’s plot involves Greg Kinnear (small part, and he couldn’t save this movie) as an obviously Bush administration high-level official who tips off a reporter about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq prior the invasion. Why, it wasn’t true! And Damon, as a Warrant Officer (WTF?) leading a platoon in combat, figures it all out and takes the reporter to task for not confirming and verifying her source! Oh, the horror! How could a media personality possibly take any source at face value without investigating the story!?!? I’m sure this was a shocking revelation to anyone who’s lived under a rock for the past 30 years.

An example which springs immediately to mind is Obama’s membership in the Socialist Party. His worshippers and the MSM (but I repeat myself) went out of their way to deny it and attempt to crucify anyone who even mentioned it as a crackpot, racist hate-monger. When Obama’s bald-faced lies and denials by themselves weren’t deemed enough, his minions came up with the official Obama “Fight the Smears” website so people could narc on fellow proles who might repeat the “lie”. It became a “myth”. AP even went so far as to use their vast information gathering services to dig deep and do an “in-depth fact-checking investigation” op-ed piece to disprove the legend once and for all.

Two weeks after AP’s exhaustive research concluded, “Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at theWisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was amember of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publiclysupport and associate himself with the New Party while in office.”

Did you ever even hear about that stunning revelation on the news? I thought not. Type “Obama Socialist” into a search engine and it still pops up with “Obama Socialist Party Myth”. The truth is out there, but it has been ostracized, buried and burned.

So, for you aspiring journalism students and college professors out there seeking to avoid any actual thought and/or investigative effort when writing a “news” piece or are simply looking for something to plagiarize, I will provide you with this simple list so you can know immediately whether or not a source of information is reliable.

SOURCES WHICH ARE THE GOSPEL TRUTH, 100% FACTUAL AND NEED NEVER BE VERIFIED IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM:

1. Obama Whitehouse press release
2. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Shumer, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc. (See full list in Appendix A)
3. Any fellow Mainstream Media “journalist”
4. The Koran
5. Al Jazeera
6. Vague Internet rumors
7. Saturday Night Live skits
8. Ouija board
9. Southern Poverty Law Center
10. Reading of chicken entrails
11. Any union spokesperson
12. Hollywood celebrities
13. Tenured college professors
14. Three-word sound bite taken out of context
15. Communist dictators
16. Rabid jihadist spokesmen
17. Rappers
18. Snopes
19. Lawyers
20. Bobo the Wonder Chimp

SOURCES WHICH ARE COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY UNRELIABLE AND SHOULD NEVER BE USED EVEN IF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED THROUGH DOZENS OF OTHER SOURCES

1.      The Voice of God Himself booming down from the clouds

2.      The U.S. Constitution (except that “freedom of the press” bit)

3.      The Holy Bible

4.      Whitehouse press release when President does not have a (D) behind his/her name

5.      Anyone (Bush, Buchanan, Palin, Paul, Joe the Plumber, etc.) not listed in Appendix A.

6.      Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary

7.      Anything ever said on talk radio, especially by Rush Limbaugh

8.      Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary

9.      Encyclopedia Britannica

10.  Any police spokesperson

11.  Photographs (unless edited by Reuters)

12.  Audio recordings (unless edited by NBC)

13.  Video recordings (unless edited by CBS)

14.  Eyewitnesses

15.  Your own eyes