Saturday, August 19, 2006

Staging War

'. . .
-- Photos two weeks apart showing the same Lebanese woman bemoaning the destruction of her apartment by Israeli bombs. The photos showed her in front of two different buildings, leading one blogger to write, "Either this woman is the unluckiest multiple home owner in Beirut, or something isn't quite right."

Most major newspapers and magazines have not admitted their complicity, but three cheers for Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times, who noted that the stuffed toys poised atop rubble were "miraculously pristinely clean and apparently untouched by the devastation they purportedly survived. (Reuters might want to check its freelancers' expenses for unexplained Toys "R" Us purchases.)"

Of course, the larger question is why those corpses and that rubble are there. So kudos to photographer Daniel Etter, who wrote on one blog, "The real staging happens before the rescue worker shows the dead children to photographers. It happens when Hezbollah builds (a) kindergarten right next to its positions." '

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