Why Are We Supposed To Be Apologizing?
By Erick Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (38) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
What again are we suppose to apologize for? I'm a bit lost.
Eight days ago Streiff posted this. The photo came from Blackfive, which in turn got the photo directly from the Associated Press wire.
Yet, despite getting the photo from Blackfive, which got the photo from the Associated Press, which in turn misreported the rank of the soldier involved, somehow RedState is suppose to apologize for the fact that the Honolulu Advetiser, Black Five, and others ran this picture.
Of course the implication is that we altered the photo to make it appear that the soldier was shooting the middle finger to the photographer despite the fact that it was put on the AP wire like that. We did not alter the photo and we never even said the soldier gave the AP the middle finger, though admittedly that was an implication -- and can you blame anyone for coming to that conclusion given the media's conduct over there?
Just to set the record straight, the soldier, when asked by his commanding officer if he was giving the finger to the AP photographer, denied doing so. And Michael Yon says the AP photographer is one of the good guys.
I'm just still lost on what we're suppose to be apologizing for.
Erick
PS - One of us apparently got an email demanding an apology at some point, though none of us remembers getting such a demand. I got one claiming the photo was photoshopped, though I, like everyone else, discounted that possibility since the photo came from the AP looking like that. Why, pray tell, would the AP be photoshopping pictures from Iraq? I don't remember them getting bought out by Reuters.
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Why Are We Supposed To Be Apologizing? 38 Comments (0 topical, 38 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
And tell you why I think it's stupid: because the AP photographer took a picture of a soldier that was then insinuated into something it wasn't and then insinuated into something that it wasn't *even worse* and then a really huge, totally-non-important blog storm resulted over it and do you know what?
None of it could matter less, except to the people commenting about this stupid picture that was imputed to have a theme that it didn't and then have that theme derided by people who didn't know anything about what happened except for what they objected to about the insinuation and then it became a front page story at RedState.
It's stupid. Let it go at that.
And what is also frustrating is that people on our side expect some sort of apology, having completely ignored what actually happened.
It always amazes me that in blogospheric knife fights, the right stabs itself in the back almost every single time.
And they shouldn't expect one. Screw 'em, Erick. You shouldn't have even had to write this one. So what if an insinuation is wrong from time to time? Big deal, one in a million for this blog. We worry too much about these little things because the yappers and noncontributory parasites of the world like to make issues out of them.
I don't have any trouble whatsoever with Streiff's overwhelming, unbelievably competent body of reporting and opinion up until, and afterward, that little skylarking thingie.
People need to get a grip. Of all the photographs of this war, this was one of the least controversial I've seen. In fact, when I first saw it, I thought pretty much the same thing: it's easy to think the solider is "flipping the bird" to the photographer (maybe even deliberately, so the photographer sees it) when in fact he's probably doing two important things by 1) keeping his finger away from the trigger and 2) displaying that he is doing so. There's no big mystery to it.
So stop apologizing, and my advice is to stop worrying about it. It's stupid. I'm a little dismayed that Blackfive seems to have latched onto their interpretation so easily, but hey -- this isn't a game, it's a war, and they have loyalties and sympathies just like everyone else.
In the end, it was just one of those things, based on an image. Tell the semi-professional cryptographers to get a life, because we've debunked it ourselves. If they keep it up, tell them we think it's stupid and that's the end of the commentary over a silly subject that has now been fully reexpurgated and duly fretted and agonized over.
Even if you want to apologize over the commentary, there's no need to apologize for the photograph itself, which is accurate. So let 'em stew, IMHO.
God we've become a bunch of pu***es sometimes.
Not to mention Alan Ginsburg and hundreds (if not thousands) of lesser hacks were (and still are) much greater "exaggerators" and embellishers of the truth in the service of the truth. The only difference is that they did it from behind the imprimatur of hipness.
I love this line from Wikipedia:
To get "inside the head" of a character, the journalist asks the subject what they were thinking or how they felt.
Heh. Professional psychologists have been doing that for almost a century and they're still hard-pressed to tell what anyone is thinking or how they felt, without spending an incredible amount of time, and even then they're only making guesses.
Our "new journalists" are everywhere today and yet when Streiff makes a joke it's apparently time for the collective flagellation to begin.
Sometimes I think our problem is that we embellish much too little and we've gained a reputation for being strictly factually accurate that winds up being a trap. Because frankly if we wanted to write *stories* about why people shouldn't vote Democrat, I have a few that I'd be happy to contribute and they'd fit the "new journalism" criteria very, very well. You'll have to wait for my pseudonymous book.
In the meantime, over things like this, screw 'em Erick. The AP should laugh at itself every so often, IMHO.
In fact, this gives me an idea for a new blog...based on Republican New Journalism...so that I can be like Robert Kaiser...
in the name of the TRUTH isn't so much creative as it is lazy.
Someone should have taken the time to interview this soldier rather than an implied message attributed to him via some editor's caption.
What if the same photo had appeared on a Left Rant site? The caption might have read:
"What A Real Soldier Thinks of His Newly Extended Tour: This One's for You George W.!"
The TRUTH? Nope but Kos may have felt it served a 'larger truth'.
Honesty serves the Truth, EVERYTIME.
Your existence requires apology. Your production of CO2 as you breathe is killing us all. Your lack of bow down to every PC god makes you a heathen. Bow down and apologize for once will you? Doesn’t matter for what.
"I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance"-Socrates(the real one ;)
LOL!
I'm sure one of the Kos Kids, inbetween his acne applications and perusing rosie's blog, offered some evidence of "Photoshopping" of that picture. I would think though, that beyond just asking for an apology, they would be requesting that Karl Rove be fired as obviously he HAS to be in charge of all photoshop documentation at Redstate! :smirk:
Watching lefties burn up brain cells over Cheney/Coptix swindles is highly amusing to me, but then I'm a Phil Hendrie and Jerky Boys fan. Lefties are so wound up and angry, they're ripe for punkin'. C'mon, ye merry pranksters of Redstate, the bird is no longer in hand, but the game is still afoot!
The badder they hate, the harder they fall for it.
If, in fact, the picture showed a soldier with his middle finger extended that would violate our posting guidelines. So, by indicating that the soldier did have his finger extended toward the AP photog, streiff violated the guidelines.
So, we'll expect streiff to show up on B Fred State soon.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Exceptions to prove the rule, of course. If Streiff shows up on B Fred State, it's because B. Fred dropped the ball and somebody's got to get over there and revive things!
Do you believe that the rule that all zebras are striped cannot be proven until we find a zebra with no stripes?
Where is the logic in that?
We were accused by scads of lefties of photoshopping the picture in question, which is why Thomas's remark refers to photoshopping. Apparently, the conclusion of virtually everyone who saw this picture on first glance was that it showed a soldier flipping off a cameraman - to the point that we were accused of fauxtography to make it look that way. So, I think there's a little bit of hysterical reaction to the mistake here, which was clearly a reasonable one.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
We did not alter the photo and we never even said the soldier gave the AP the middle finger, though admittedly that was an implication -- and can you blame anyone for coming to that conclusion given the media's conduct over there?
Well, what Streiff clearly did do was jump to a conclusion that just happened to fit into his pre-existing narrative about Iraq, on the basis of some pretty thin evidence.
Does that require an apology? Not for me to say, by any means.
But I think the larger point is that we all have a tendency to jump to conclusions that tend to support our pre-existing beliefs. When we are confronted with such a clear example of having done so, we do well to reflect on that tendency in the hope of better guarding against it next time.
Here endeth the sanctimony.
And when the media continues the employment of loyal Baathist footsoldiers of Saddam to help them get accurate reports of what's now happening in Iraq, who can blame any of us for taking that view.
Well, what Streiff clearly did do was jump to a conclusion that just happened to fit into his pre-existing narrative about Iraq, on the basis of some pretty thin evidence.
What streiff clearly did do is put up an original photo straight from the Associated Press and make a crack about it. Assuming anything more than that is making an ass out of you (but not me).
But I think the larger point is that we all have a tendency to jump to conclusions that tend to support our pre-existing beliefs. When we are confronted with such a clear example of having done so, we do well to reflect on that tendency in the hope of better guarding against it next time.
Irony is a harsh mistress.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
He made a joke about it. I would have done the same thing. In fact, I wish I had seen the picture before he did, because I would have made a much more salacious joke out of it and then everyone could have blamed me instead.
If you call AP winning a Pulitzer by embedding photographers with insurgents as the executed a couple of Iraqi election workers "thin evidence" (one of that "prize winning team" is in Iraqi custody, arrested with an insurgent cell with explosive residue on his hands and hopefully will be meeting the same fate as Saddam Hussein) then I plead guilty.
Was it a misinterpretation of the photo? Well, AP didn't think so. They pulled it from the wire. I'll take the trooper at his word on the subject.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
I am among those who thought Imus deserve a two-week suspension; not being fired.
At the same time, i believe that a correction would suffice by the creator of the middle finger thread, stating that the implicit conclusion that the AP is hated by US soldiers in Iraq cannot be proven by simply pointing at this picture, since the soldier has himself said that he did not purposely give the photographer the middle finger.
Do you really mean to suggest that Streiff wasn't saying that the soldier was flipping the AP photographer the bird?
Please review the quote from Erik's post that I included in my comment. Also, Streiff's original post included the following, obviously sarcastic, observation regarding what the picture showed:
In spite of winning a Pulitzer Prize by having insurgent affiliated stringers document the cold-blooded execution of Iraqi election workers, the Associated Press remains very popular with US troops in Iraq.
That's not "jumping to a conclusion", Thomas, it's called "reading".
...that it's best to do that about which you lecture, before lecturing about it.
Please review the quote from Erik's post that I included in my comment. Also, Streiff's original post included the following, obviously sarcastic, observation regarding what the picture showed:
For example, that.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Makes me wonder, again, why anyone even felt I needed to put something up like this.
If the left had a picture of a soldier flipping off Bush it would be the new banner at Dkos, no matter what the soldier's intent was.
There is no need to apologize.
Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.
I had the aforementioned site as one of my links that I looked at a couple of times a week and when I saw their request for your apology for the picture I let them know that their ego was a little to big and who gives a crap if we took pleasure in the thought that the soldier flipped off the AP photographer and basically to get a life. I got slammed by about 4 of his readers for not being a straight arrow and we are better then the nutroots, blah blah blah. That exact thinking is what lost the 2006 elections, if conservatives don't learn to fight down in the gutter with the worst of the left they will just keep making gains. I am all for morals and honor however they work just as well after you win.
Peace through superior fire power:)
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
folks should read Kuhn
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.”
-Ronald Reagan
The libs are always trying to apologize. Does anyone remember when they tried to get Bush to apologize for whatever!
maybe.
The fact that the photo is genuine ignores the fact that your caption and the entire post was a fabrication you made up. It was a cheap way to use the guy in the picture and imply he was doing something he later denies having done. He didn't make an obscene gesture and never said any of the things like you accuse him of. Maybe he is the kind of guy who would do that, maybe he abhors that kind of incivility and is wrongly accused, maybe he agrees with you but thinks its inappropriate to act that way in uniform. Maybe his kids heard daddy's picture is online and want to know why he told the AP lady to **** off. The point is, you don't know the truth and you imagined the message, make up a caption, and used this guy as a prop in your cheap shot at the AP. So you owe him an apology, not anyone else.
This was totally, unbelievably stupid. On everyone's part.
And I'm not saying anything more, except that it was totally, unbelievably stupid on *EVERYONES* part.