All the World's a Stage

The MSM has been buzzing about the Thursday Bush teleconference with soldiers who are currently in Iraq, complaining that it was staged and rehearsed. See here, for example.

Why is this a big deal? Every time the MSM does an interview in studio, and often in the "field", it is staged. The reporter knows what questions he will ask. The interviewee has a good idea what the topic will be. The cameraman is positioned in a certain way, so that something specific is in the background, certain people are grouped around, certain lighting is reflected, etc., etc., etc.

One must also consider the way the media makes the soldiers from the teleconference sound like mindless robots, doing the bidding of the evil scientist (though the media would never consider the President a smart man---though he is).

The soldiers all gave Bush an upbeat view of the situation.
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Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the event as a "carefully scripted publicity stunt." Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said.

"If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference," Rieckhoff said. "He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that's not a bunch of captains."

Why can't he do it in a nationally televised teleconference? Do the captains not know what their troops are doing, the problems they encounter, the triumphs they are a part of? Should the President disregard all reports from higher-ups, just because their boots are not actually, physically on the ground?

The MSM just refuses to believe that anything good is coming of the war. The soldiers who speak up about the truth are ignored by the MSM, who prefer to seek out people like Rieckhoff.

Get over it, MSM.

After all, as Shakespeare wrote:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.

--As You Like It (II, vii, 139-140)