Playing the WWII Card

Perhaps it was like this even before 9/11, but lately it seems as though every guy in every plane I’ ve been on is reading either a Tom Clancy novel, or one or another book by flag-waving historian, Stephen Ambrose. The hot sellers at the airport bookstores, and indeed bookstores in general, are tales of wartime heroism, with retrospectives on World War Two and the so-called “Greatest Generation” leading the pack.

This bodes well for the Bush Administration, which needs the public to continue thinking about victory and the triumph of good over evil (a constant in Ambrose’s history offerings and Clancy’s provincial spy stories), especially as the war on Afghanistan drags out, and weeks go by with no terrorists “brought to justice.”

Listening to commentators and everyday folks discuss the current war in Central Asia, one gets the distinct impression that Americans are in fact desperate for another “greatest generation.”

Tim Wise deconstructs the WWII analogies. AlterNet

Adbusters Magazine‘s annual anti-consumerist call for a Buy Nothing Day on the day after Thanksgiving runs headlong into post-nine-eleven patriotic shopping exhortations (“Shop While the Bombs Drop”) , polarizing its readers.

New Harrison Song A Telling Sign? — ‘When it comes to music, apparently, George Harrison isn’t afraid of “knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door.”

Harrison, 58, who was reported to have undergone more cancer treatment for a brain tumor in New York recently, has recorded his first song since radiotherapy. It’s part of musician Jools Holland’s new album, and the song’s publishing credit is RIP Ltd. 2001.’ Thje Boston Channel

A Yugoslav journalist’s advice to US media: ‘Jasmina Teodosijevic-Ryan is a broadcast journalist with an extensive background in Yugoslav media, and served as an analyst for the United Nations Liaison Office in Belgrade’:

“How and when does journalism become propaganda? As a writer, broadcaster and media analyst from the former Yugoslavia, I have observed the process first-hand. It starts slowly, then spreads like a stain.” Tompaine.com