Scary stories

Nice rant from Stephen King at Entertainment Weekly (via Cursor) chastising journalists for skewed priorities, lack of perspective and editorial judgment, and general irresponsibility. The proximate cause of King's column was the obsessive coverage of the Michael Jackson trial, but the deeper cause is his clear frustration over the shallow, incurious nature of most reporting on the war in Iraq:

With the enthusiastic collaboration of the American news media, the sideshow has somehow become the main attraction in American culture; the weirder the guy, the bigger the headlines. It's sickening that it takes a columnist in an entertainment magazine to point out that more than 2,000 newspeople covered the Jackson trial — which is only a few hundred more than the number of American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. On the same day that crowds gathered in Times Square (and around the world) to learn the fate of the Pale Peculiarity, another four suicide bombings took place in that tortured, bleeding country. And if you tell me that news doesn't belong in Entertainment Weekly, I respond by saying Michael Jackson under a black umbrella doesn't belong on the front page of The New York Times. ...

The media first turned the trial into a freak-show by emphasizing Jackson's peculiarities rather than his humanity, and stoked the ratings with constant, trivializing coverage while other, far more important stories went under-reported or completely ignored in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Washington, D.C. The press might respond by saying, ''We gave the people what they wanted.'' My response would be, ''My job is to give them what they want. When he steps into a recording studio, it's Michael Jackson's job to give them what they want. Your job is to give the people what they need.''

I like Stephen King, but nothing of his I've read has scared me as much as reading The Atlantic Monthly the last few months. Richard Clarke's nightmare terror scenario in the Jan./Feb. issue apparently set the tone for the year. Titled "Ten Years Later," the piece looks back from 2011 at a second wave of terror attacks on the United States. The piece is fiction, but it's frightening -- Stephen King frightening -- because its premise is a terrifyingly real description of the persistent gaps in America's homeland security still ignored by our all-style, no-substance administration.

James Fallows takes his turn this month at looking backward from a fictional near future. His topic is less lethal, but scarcely less devastating: America's vast fical irresponsibility and the increasing likelihood of a catastrophic "hard landing."

Fallows and Clarke are both serious, thoughtful people who know what they're writing about. It's worth tracking down the hard copies of these (subscription only) articles, even though neither one is liable to help you sleep easier. (If anyone has a link to a "liberated" copy of these online, please let us know.)

It suggests something about the spirit of the times that Clarke and Fallows -- sober, lifelong members of the "reality-based community" -- are resorting to a kind of fiction to make the case for reality.

The other scary story in this month's Atlantic is Scott Stossel's summary of a Pentagon-style war game on dealing with North Korea. Here's how Col. Sam Gardiner described what he learned from the exercise: "I left the game with a firm conviction that the United States is focusing on the wrong problem. ... Iran is down the road. Korea is now, and growing. We can't wait to deal with Korea. ... The military situation on the peninsula is not under control."

That's grim enough, but there's also this:

Whereas Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction, North Korea is believed to have large stockpiles of chemical weapons (mustard gas, sarin, VX nerve agent) and biological weapons (anthrax, botulism, cholera, hemorrhagic fever, plague, smallpox, typhoid, yellow fever).

That's in addition to maybe two, maybe 10, maybe more nuclear devices. All of which they're likely willing to sell to anyone who's willing to pay.

Such a scenario raises the possibility of a military intervention, but no one's even willing to pretend, Cheney-style, that such a step would be a cakewalk. The most optimistic possibility suggested in the war game came from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who thought that a perfectly executed strategy might result in only 100,000 dead in Seoul during the first day of such a war.

The good news, sort of, is that North Korea is not sustainable. Even more than the former Soviet Union, it is doomed to one day crumble under the weight of its own contradictions. That's perhaps the best scenario for which we can hope. Yet, as with the collapse of the Soviet Union, this would mean a period of instability during which North Korea's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons would need to be secured to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. If this were to occur during the next few years, then the people responsible for securing these weapons would be the same people who failed to secure Iraq's suspected nuclear sites and who even now are refusing to fully fund efforts to secure the former Soviet arsenal.

Reading the Atlantic is not contributing to my peace of mind. It's almost enough to make me want to watch another hour of Larry King talking about the Michael Jackson trial. Almost.

Comments

[Sophist]

Hey, rogue nations with nucular/biological-weapons stockpiles are one thing, but the Jackson trial was about protecting our children. Why do you hate our children?

[Edward Liu]

"The most optimistic possibility suggested in the war game came from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who thought that a perfectly executed strategy might result in only 100,000 dead in Seoul during the first day of such a war."

Yes, but let's not forget how well those Pentagon planners did in the run-up to the Iraq War vs. the strategy forced on the military by Sec. Don Rumsfeld. Former Gen. Eric Shinseki said that there would need to be "several hundred thousand" troops in a postwar Iraq to maintain the peace, and ....

Um. Oh. Right.

[Mnemosyne]

Reading the Atlantic is not contributing to my peace of mind. It's almost enough to make me want to watch another hour of Larry King talking about the Michael Jackson trial. Almost.

Actually, that's probably why the media is spending all of its time on stuff like Jackson -- they're very aware that they've screwed up the Iraq coverage and the Bush coverage, but it's too late to backtrack now. That's why you have them all trying to collectively yawn about the Downing Street Memo. "Oh, that? That's old news. I thought everybody knew that."

Now they're losing viewers hand over fist (CNN has admitted that the Jackson trial didn't bring anything close to the ratings they expected) because people are starting to wake up and realize that the TV "news" bears little or no resemblance to reality.

[Jeri]

I think everything you have said is right up Truth Alley and it is a shame that more Americans aren't waking up and smelling the 'Napalm of Reality'. If only every blooming American had to serve an extended 'vacation period' traveling around the world and seeing the consequences for all our government does, then we might have an enlightened base of voters. But until then, our reliance on the Free Press (which I like to call THE EMPIRE right now) is all we have for disseminating information regarding such things as the true crisis in North Korea. And unless "World Destruction Now" and "Mass Human Casualties" are such rating hits as "Dancing with the Stars" and "Law & Order", then we won't see much coming from the Profit-minded Networks.

[Darryl Pearce]

Hmm..., maybe Iraq was the "dry-run" for going after North Korea but the straw-horse turned out to be a badger.

Of course, it could all be part of the Neocon-Jeebo-Kriminey world of self-fulfilling prophecies.

[bad Jim]

Stephen King is a staunch Democrat. I remember a Diarist piece he did for the New Republic in 1984, saying something like "I'd rather vote for a dead dog in the road than for Ronald Reagan. I'm willing to vote for (arf! screech! thud!) Walter Mondale, but I'm happy to vote for Gary Hart."

Michael Jackson is entirely relevant. What the Republicans deliver is not security but the theater of security. Americans were frightened by September 11, and our Afghan adventure failed to slake our thirst for revenge. It was unsatisfying. Thus Iraq.

[bulbul]

This seems to be the liberated version of RC's article in "The Atlantic Monthly".
http://www.technologyinvestor.com/images/tenyearslater.html

[Daddy-O]

"...the people responsible for securing these weapons would be the same people who failed to secure Iraq's suspected nuclear sites and who even now are refusing to fully fund efforts to secure the former Soviet arsenal."

I respectfully disagree, although I agree with everything else written in this post.

It would naturally be China's and Russia's and Japan's and South Korea's responsibility to secure North Korea's sites. Any loose weapons would most likely be used at the closest opportunity--the Far East--and nowhere near the U.S. or her troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If and when North Korea collapses, the first troops on the scene will be from China and South Korea--from their respective borders.

The U.S. would simply smile benignly from a great distance while China and South Korea mopped up the mess. The U.S. would also take all the credit, too, just as Reagan took credit in 1989.

[cjmr's husband]

It would naturally be China's and Russia's and Japan's and South Korea's responsibility to secure North Korea's sites.

Well, maybe, except for three things:

1. The large number of US troops in South Korea (fewer than there used to be, but all considering themselves lucky...)

2. The slim possibility that North Korea, in a fit of financial realism, might sell its weapons to the highest bidder (Iran)

3. The person who screwed up the Korea reunification talks by informing the world that Kim Jong Il was a liar. (Hint: it wasn't the president of South Korea)

[nmbxnb]

this is so bogus remove it and put a real story in its place. your website sucks so badly i almost destroyed my computer and laptop and all my technology because of this one page. screw u

i will sue you because this is my story that was robbed from me. i want 200,000,000 mailed to the address of 1234 white death st. by tomorrow or i will make you wish you were dead

[tracey]

you all lick bum bums just like me i do it about 10 times a day with mi nana and i like it HEAPS

[shaelly]

all these stories suck none of em are scary so get off this site