Israel Hates Stuffed Animals!

AJ Strata noticed an awful lot of suspiciously-dramatic juxtapositions in foreign stringer photographs, like the wedding dress amidst the rubble of a building.

Confederate Yankee then noticed a trend towards displaying children's tricycles amidst the rubble, in a piece he called, ahem, "The Schwinns of War."

Now Slublog notices a new trend in Lebanese war "journalism."

You tell me -- how is it all these Mickey Mouse dolls and stuffed animals just happen to be thrown clear of all covering rubble, and appear so darned clean and soot-free?

He calls his piece The Passion of the Toys.

It's a must read. Or, well, a must-look-at, since it's almost all photos. You don't need much editorializing. How did that very-clean lion stuffed animal, for example, just happen to land sitting on its belly, its forepaws neatly lying over each other?

Is anybody buying this picture? Well, apart from Reuters or whoever.

This picture is about real-looking as the Gelflings in The Dark Crystal.

Don't believe me? Compare for yourself:

The next thing you know we'll be seeing Muppets lying dead amidst the wreckage, pools of hot blood darkening around their felt heads.

A point I tried to make but didn't-- if the MSM had to hire Israelis to collect their photographs from Israel (which they don't; by and large they simply ignore Israeli deaths and carnage altogether), would they let such suspiciously-propagandistic pictures go from their desk to the wires without their wondering "Gee, maybe these Israelis have a stake in this war, and are attempting to shade world opinion through 'sweetened' photographs oh-so-poignantly illustrating their plight?"

Were it the Israelis pumping out maudlin, melodramatic pictures like this, I have a feeling Reuters' and the BBC's and the rest's critical faculties would be better engaged, and their skepticism aroused.

But these pics play into the storyline they believe in their own heads -- The Israelis are no better than the terrorists they're attempting to kill, and are guilty of the crime of disproportionate response -- and hence these dubious photos bypass their bullshit-detectors almost entirely.

Like Terry Lane said in defense of himself for printing up Jesse MacBeth's long-discredited tales of his soldiering in Iraq and the atrocities he was ordered to commit: "it seemed plausible because it fit the facts."

Well, these photos "fit the facts."

As Reuters, the BBC, the AFP, the AP, CNN, et al. imagine them to be.

posted by Ace at 01:22 PM

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