News Round-Up

I’m completely inundated with work. I needed to take a break, so here are some curious things in the news.

Jessica Lynch to tell story in book. Of course. Here’s a quote from her “spokesman:” “Jessica and her family have concluded that the most appropriate and complete telling of this story will be in a book, which they will have more to say about soon.”

By “appropriate and complete” he means “lucrative.” This is why she wouldn’t tell her story from the beginning. If everyone knew the facts in the beginning, who would buy the book? Also, she was probably told to keep quiet so the governmental propaganda machine could have fun with her “rescue” or “hero” story.

Piecing puzzle of Sept. 11 flight. The article revisits the theories of how this flight was brought down in a field in the middle of Pennsylvania. Mysteriously gone from the list of possibilities is the formerly widely-accepted theory that the military air support shot this plane down. As far as I know this hasn’t been disproven, and according to the flight data originally released (and later tucked away for security reasons) this seemed to be the most viable theory according to many. Now it’s not even mentioned at all; instead the tale of the downed plane has become another “hero story.”

Picture a mother walking with her teenage daughter along the beach. “Do you ever get that… manipulated feeling?” the daughter, a young adult learning about the way of the world, asks her wiser mother.