Radio Sweethearts

Hope Bowie doesn’t mind me stealing his lyric for the title. If he does, well… oops.

OTM this week was all about the war. It’s been five years. I’m sure you’ve heard.

After the jump, I’ll try to brief you on this episode, and editorialize more than we usually do in recaps.

The thing is, this is a terribly good episode. Bob’s on his best behavior, being generally awkward, which totally works for him. Brooke is insightful as usual.

I think, if you haven’t already–and if you’re like us, you probably subscribe to the podcast anyway–you should listen to this whole thing. It’s that good.

I want to point out one thing from this episode before you read further. At the very end of the episode, Brooke notes that “According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 177 journalists and support staff have died in the service of reporting this war. A hundred and fifty four of them were Iraqis” [sic].

That’s an appalling percentage. Kerry talks about and rightfully admires Real American Journalism Heroes, but it seems unjust to talk about the 23 American journalists who’ve died, if that comes at the expense of the 154 Iraqis.

Granted, the documentation on the American dead is probably more complete and more easily accessible. I’m not asking Kerry to do biographies or list names or anything.

In fact, I don’t there’s anything, really, that we can do. We’re such a small media outlet - 24 hits in one day has been the (admittedly flattering) peak since we started keeping track of that sort of thing - that I can’t even afford myself the delusion that we could have that sort of impact.

In fact, we’ve only been online at this address since early Februrary. There’s not the reputation to affect a huge Digg push (though we’ve added the ShareThis buttons, so feel free), and I’m still figuring out how to write for the medium.

But my point is not that we, meaning Radio Sweethearts, can’t do much. It’s that I don’t know that any blog or any one media outlet can affect the change in perception unless ALL major media outlets in each medium - radio, television, and newspaper - all pick up the story from the Committee to Protect Journalists and keep hammering it home.

How much media coming from Iraq right now has nothing to do with American reporters? How much of it is the responsibility of Iraqi stringers?

Probably part of the problem here is revealed by my assumption that the 23 journalists have died were all Americans. For all I know, they could be German, Austrailian, Canadian, or Zimbabwean. Despite the fact that they are our source of news, for some reason they aren’t newsworthy, and that’s a crime.

I may have this assumption because it is, after all, our war. I never wanted or supported this war, but I’ve come to recognize over the last five years that it’s terribly disingenuous to try to place blame for it on someone else. More of the American people voted for President Bush than for anyone else (at least they did the second time, but I’m not getting into that), and it’s wholly irresponsible for those of us who didn’t to claim he isn’t our President.

To do that, to claim such a disconnect between the electors and the electorate shows as much disrespect for the American political system as did the Supreme Court’s intervention in 2001, as does the White House’s wiretapping schemes, as does the Transportation Safety Administration’s repeated violations of the Fourth Amendment.

So, even though I hate it and want it over, even though I voted for Gore and Kerry, Bush is - regrettably - my President, and this is my war.

It’s time to take responsibility for it.

Happy birthday, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Here’s hoping we learn to admit our mistakes and begin to make up for them before you see another year.