The Hypocrisy of our Democracy

this phrase was coined by chris rock on his 'never been scared' special. thanks, chris.

so, abu musab al-zarqawi was killed a few days ago. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060800340.html. i heard about it when my mom excitedly read the headline to me from the other room. (i don't think she was excited about him dying, but excited to be able to break some news to me.) anyway, i had a tinge of sadness. i don't know if it was the idea of killing this notorious person, or because i thought he was kind of cute. yeah, i know - ridiculous, huh. there's nothing cute about that picture. but the first picture i saw of al-zarqawi was:

and before all you neo-cons say i'm conspiring with the "enemy," i happen to think george bush is attractive also. a dumbass, but attractive. any time i mention it to someone, they look at me as if i'm crazy. i say, "hey, i don't really agree w/ bush's politics, but that doesn't mean i don't think he's semi-attractive." not marriage-material attractive, but affair attractive i suppose.

but i digress.

anyway, what didn't get me was al-zarqawi's death, but the presentation of it. i mean, we as the united states pretend s to be this civilized nation. so to prove it, we have an official press conference with a picture of a dead, bloated zarqawi in a gold picture frame. we get it - you killed him. can't you just, um, have an independent company verify his dna and call it a day. is it really necessary to have a huge picture of him? and in a gold frame? what the fuck was that about? that's some bogus p.r. tactic that i'd expect to see in one of the middle eastern countries. should i be surprised that it's what we americans do too?

i was at the gym the next morning and cnn was showing the headlines of or u.s. newspapers. all of them carried that foolish pictue of dead zarqawi in the gold frame.

and what the fuck is up with all these publications - including the online new sources, showing it? i mean, i'm an adult and i was disturbed by it. imagine if i was a little kid - that could be bloody traumatizing. i understand news outlets want to report the news, and nothing does it better many times than a picture. but seriously, this incessant desire for sensationalism to get more people to visit web sites or buy the papers, but it seems that they do it at the sake of decency.

if some other nation published a picture of a dead person in a gold frame, we'd call them depraved, backwards, shit like that. but us, no, we love that presentation.