Son of Bitch 3: Son of a Bitch With A Vengeance

Michael "Showoff" Totten now goes into Beirut's Hezbollah district and photoblogs the crazies.

Buildings are sandbagged. Surveillance and security watchtowers are erected in front of restaurants and stores. A Lebanese-American historian based in West Beirut told me that Hezbollah is better armed and more militarily powerful than the Lebanese army. East and West Beirut are as free-wheeling as Hong Kong, but Hezbollahland is a virtually sovereign fascist police state. It is so near to downtown I can walk to it. Now that I've been there and know how close by it is, I can almost feel its breath on my neck.

If this grandstanding bastard gets a genuine media gig out of this, there is no justice.

As the brilliant Steven Glass said, it's not just the serious reporters who win Pulitzers. It's the guys who provide "color" and "humor," and frankly just make shit up out of whole cloth, who win Pulitzers too.

But they destroyed him, didn't they? They just couldn't stand to see their so-called "accurate reportage" model challenged by the innovation of "totally bullcrap made-up silly shit."

Damn them.

Are you mad at me, Chuck? Chuck?

I think Chuck wants to kill me.

(PS, if you haven't seen Shattered Glass yet, see it! It's really a very fun movie.)

posted by Ace at 10:34 AM

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