Ty's article this month about Benjamin Vanderford, who faked a video of his own beheading by Islamic terrorists, is more than a humorous glimpse into one guy's psychopathic campaign strategy and FBI gestapo tactics.  I think it very clearly shows how easy it is to focus public attention on the messenger while totally missing the message.  And that, in itself, is a lesson worth learning: hopefully people outside the United States of Amnesia will learn something, 'cause I'm none too hopeful we're going to get it via our watchdog media.  Ahh, yeah.

I don't think you've got to have a conspiracy afoot either to explain how fucked up our news coverage is.  Big Media^TM worships the God of High Ratings and Circulation.  They'll do anything for It.  And, push comes to shove, getting dirty with "fact checking" or "background" gets both pushed and shoved right into that overcrowded back burner.  They've got shareholders to support, Wall Street to impress, and 24/7 deadlines to meet.  So they focus on what's going to make a high profit and the reporters focus on advancing in their jobs.  I'm guessing they skipped their "journalistic ethics" class at Columbia because they were too hungover or still too drunk to remember where the classroom physically was.  (It could just be the cocaine, but that was only for the really rich kids.)

So, since it's a tough story to cover "where the news reporters screwed up," it's an easy story to slaughter the idiot who started the mess in the first place.  And, so there's no mistaking my take on it, the guy certain is misguided if not more than a few cans short of a six-pack.  Funny as it is to fuck with The Global Media^TM, there are more constructive avenues to pursue, like mercilessly critizing them, Photoshopping pix of public officials, blatantly faking funny news bits like a War On Monsters instead of Iraq, and running endlessly inflammatory pieces in your online magazine. (Ahh... yeah.)

Ron Harris in an AP story of August 7th quoted the hoaxster describing the stunt: "I see how it could be considered disrespectful," Vanderford said. "But I think people, if they look at it, will understand two other big issues it brings up.... A small group of disgruntled people in Iraq or Saudi Arabia could just get more attention just by easily releasing something like I did on the Internet." 
 
An interesting point.  One that nobody at Fox News bothered to pursue, even as Geraldo bashed Vanderford for playing off the tragedy of the recent beheadings.  Maybe before reporting something as "fact," news outlets should hold off running the story until they've had a chance to actually confirm it.  I dunno, Woodstein, whatya think?

I'm still not sure what this means, if anything, but in looking for web reaction to this story, I stumbled across this site discussing the hoax.  Interestingly, the graphic at the right appeared on the right hand side as advertising.  Golly, Wally, what'ya suppose their politics are?

Hmm, too subtle?  Okay, since pissing off the opposition has somehow been elevated to replace political discourse....: