AP's Man on the Street: Saddam's Portrait-Painter

This has got to be one of the best bits of blog-journalism I've read so far.

The AP finds a "typical Iraqi" to tell them what they want to hear about the transfer-of-power-- it's a sham, it doesn't solve anything, etc. One would imagine the "man on the street" should be kinda-sorta representative of other men on the street.

But the AP's man is not. In fact, he's a painter who prospered under Saddam and painted numerous portraits of him. And he's previously declared that he's not so hot on the whole "end of tyranny" thing:

The conversation shifts to the impending war. Qasim says if the US attacks he will sit with his Kalashnikov and wait in his house, "because this is my home and no one will take it away from me."

I'm too bad the AP couldn't find an actual typical Iraqi they could talk to. But I guess that's a danger you risk when news organizations

[rely] on Iraqi stringers filing by telephone to our correspondents in Baghdad, and on embedding with the military. The stringers are not professional journalists, and their reports are heavy on the simplest direct observation.

The last bit from Andrew Sullivan, who manages to post a little on Iraq in between his reminiscences about Ptown. The previous link from Instapundit.

Nice work, Adeimantus.

posted by Ace at 03:35 AM

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