Media grows bored with Iraq; Americans don't like to lose in summer

[Grimmlok]

Frank Rich has a brilliant column today about how the US news media is basically ignoring the war in Iraq:

CNN will surely remind us today that it is Day 19 of the Israel-Hezbollah war — now branded as Crisis in the Middle East — but you won’t catch anyone saying it’s Day 1,229 of the war in Iraq. On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report. On Thursday, Brian Williams of NBC read aloud a “shame on you” e-mail complaint from the parents of two military sons anguished that his broadcast had so little news about the war.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined. When Nouri al-Maliki, the latest Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington last week to address Congress, he too got short TV shrift — a mere five sentences about the speech on ABC’s “World News.” The networks know a rerun when they see it. Only 22 months earlier, one of Mr. Maliki’s short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi, had come to town during the 2004 campaign to give a similarly empty Congressional address laced with White House-scripted talking points about the war’s progress. Propaganda stunts, unlike “Law & Order” episodes, don’t hold up on a second viewing.

The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn’t happenstance. It’s a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. “It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror,” said Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on July 18. “I mean, it’s summertime.” Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality..

He's right, of course. And even though Americans aren't paying attention to the war in Iraq, those American soldiers everyone talks about supporting are still dying in Iraq:

The Marines, from Regimental Combat Team 7, died Saturday in Anbar province, the heavily Sunni Arab region west of Baghdad that includes such flashpoints as Ramadi and Haditha, a U.S. statement said without further details.

So far this month, 44 U.S. service members have died in Iraq -- including 10 in Anbar province during the past week. That underscores the threat to U.S. troops from Sunni insurgents, despite the attention paid to recent sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Baghdad.

Iraq is a real summertime bummer for those soldiers and their families.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/

[pacific breeze]

^^While Americans are barbecuing burgers and hot dogs in their back yards, Iraqui civilians continue to be BBQed for democracy, oops, I mean oil. And nobody gives a damn.

[Grimmlok]

I would have to say the grand democratic experiment that is America is pretty much dead.

[pacific breeze]

I'm a little more optimistic than you, but I'm not really sure why.

[Grimmlok]

The few people left like yourself scattered about?

[pacific breeze]

Just can't give in to utter hopelessness and despair -- especially not in the summertime!

[Grimmlok]

You know, I don't even feel that.. disconnecting yourself from the world for a week or 2 leaves one curiously ambivalent about the usual worldly nonsense.

[pacific breeze]

I know, that's how I felt on my holiday and for a couple of weeks after I came back. But the glow has worn off now, *sighs heavily*.

[Mr. Authority]

Why I'm I not surprised? The same damn thing happened to the Afganistan Conflict, it got some media attention, then Iraq came up and Afganistan was left in the dust by the media. Now that Isreal v. Hezbollah is the new flavor of war, Iraq is becoming the next Afganistan.

Like I said before, picking and choosing wars.