Ol' Reliable

In celeb-land, the famous and infamous constantly battle for airtime, lest the public forget who they are and what they bring to the screen. So it wasn't surprising to see our old anti-commie ally, Osama bin-Laden, pop up to spout off yet again about Crusaders, Zionists and jihad. That's his brand, his shtick, and like those who know what the public expects, Osama spreads it thick for followers and haters to chew on.

A key aspect to the War On Terror is visual, and here Osama has dutifully played his role. While there exists no new footage of him, sitting cross-legged and sternly waving his hand (Kalashnikov at his side), there's plenty in the media vault, and each new audiotape receives the-now familiar illustration. Indeed, this may be intentional on Osama's part, and it certainly serves the needs of US warmakers and their megaphones in the media as it reinforces the image news consumers are presumably comfortable with, and against which the talking heads can scream, sputter and shake.

Juan Cole, with whom I had a pleasant evening last week, feels that Osama's at-large status is yet another failure of the Bush admin, a dangerous one that needs immediate correction:

"Bin Laden has survived, and he is still taunting the US, and still attempting to polarize Muslims and Westerners. His tapes have far more influence and resonance than Americans realize. He needs to be caught and silenced, and US and Israeli actions that needlessly alienate the Muslims need to cease, as well. Otherwise, our world is willy nilly being seduced by the inferno of hatred at the core of al-Qaeda and its Christian and Jewish counterparts."

Juan is quite sincere, but does he seriously believe that Bush or Cheney have any real desire to capture Osama, much less silence him? Bush is on the record saying that he doesn't think much about this devil figure, though the specter of Osama continues to serve US interests, as is now obviously the case. Every serious production needs an antagonist, and with Saddam in the dock and Zarqawi somewhat media shy (or dead, or not), Osama's pretty much It at the moment. And even if Osama is captured or killed, the War On Terror will continue, as it is meant to, and a new Osama will appear to replace the old. Again, without an identifiable villain, the public might have to actually study the history of this conflict and dig beneath the stated claims and daily propaganda in order to understand what's really going on. More and more are doing so, thanks to the Web; but there remain plenty who are content with the crazed villain scenario, and the major media in hand with the government will continue to screen this until it is no longer useful, though, I'm afraid, it'll be very useful for some time to come.

SPEAKING OF JUAN: It appears that he's being smeared by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, in a brazen attempt to scare off Yale in its efforts to hire Juan away from Michigan. If Juan relocates to the East Coast, just up the road from Manhattan, he might have more media access than he currently does in the Midwest, and that can't be tolerated by Terror War whores like Fund and his employers. Thus shit is flung and lies pumped out. Part of the process. Happened to Edward Said and continues to dog Noam Chomsky. Means that the bastards fear you.

I tangled with Fund a couple of times, twice in the same day at a media conference in Brooklyn. On a panel dealing with the Drug War and the press, I took apart a ridiculous Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Bad Acid," in which Woodstock hippies were described as murderous long-haired Nazis who forced people to trip and barred short-haired men from dancing to Sly and the Family Stone. As the audience laughed at each fantastic sentence, Fund, seated nearby and increasingly embarrassed, stood up and said, "I had nothing to do with that editorial!" Later, on a panel about how human rights were covered by TV news, I listed numerous instances of torture and executions that rarely, if ever, made it onscreen. As I talked about the hell on earth in places like East Timor and Guatemala, Fund could barely contain his glee, at times openly laughing at so much human misery.

Years later I ran into him again, when we were both guests on Alan Colmes's radio show in Manhattan. He was still the smug jerk he was before, only heavier in the gut, and he dominated the show, talking on and on and on to the delight of Colmes who, as you know, makes his living prompting rightwingers and playing their straightman. Fund and I did agree on the virtues of homeschooling, and we shared some arcane media trivia, but for the most part he blabbed about whatever moved him, which included bombing smaller countries. I sat back and thought, "I gave up comedy for this?"