You know, I'm as up for pranks as the next guy, seriously, and I love fake news just as much, in its proper place. The Onion, Jon Stewart...all of these are pretty damn cool.
What's not cool is the prank the "Yes Men" played on New York.
New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.
It is seriously not funny. I think of that guy who's so happy watching it, and I think, how could you people, whoever you are, do it to 1.2 million people? 1.2. million papers looking exactly like a New York Times, except with the news you wish were happening? 1.2 million people, reading. Maybe some of them were soldiers (or veterans, as the Daily News took reaction from a former Marine and Iraq veteran who believed the story, for a while) Maybe some of them were families of soldiers. Maybe some of them thought for one exhilarating movement, that the people they loved would not have to run a chance of dying or being wounded anymore.
It's been done before by deluded idealists, never on such a large scale, and the sense of wrongness has been expressed much better than I could in Julia Vinograd's poem "Ginsberg", which always makes me cry when read aloud (you can hear it in my voice as I read it here).
Ginsberg
No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn't made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, "I'm going to shout
"the war is over" as loud as I can," he said
"and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going."
I thought it was a great idea at the time
a truly poetic idea.
So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled "the war is over."
And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
"My son. My son is coming home."
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.
That was the first time I believed there was a war.
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8 comments:
This poem is precisely what I thought of when I heard about this. :/
thank you for the poem. don't need to hear it read out loud. seeing it in my mind is hard enough.
It wasn't meant to be funny-- it was meant to raise consciousness about ideas which can be made a reality. It gave people an idea of the potential our world has and what it could one day be if we fight for it.
--SGT Hart (who thought Iraq was mostly just mind-numbingly boring)
P.S.
Did you read the above comment from "reji m. issac?" What a nut.
I don't think it was meant to be a joke, but I see what you mean. Perhaps if a disclaimer was shown at the beginning.... I don't see an end to the Iraq war. I see us running out of money and THEN, ONLY THEN, sending the troops home, but then again, that's my same opinion about AFGHANISTAN, as well. Both I see are unwinnable and futile, just total wastes, based on lies and deception.
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do u think all others are nutsss!!! such an asshole you are!
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