The CBS Ambush– this week’s Creators Syndicate column
Via StrategyPage.
The lede:
Remember the “Arab street,” that riot-in-the-road featuring flammable Israeli flags, Saddam Hussein posters, clenched fists and chants threatening “Death to America”? The street may have lacked pavement and a fire hydrant, but it had beaucoup television cameras.
Flames, clenched fists and death threats — a heart-pounding collage of sensational imagery and rhetoric. What more could a TV exec need to attract audience eyeballs?
The “Arab street” put a calculated “image of anger” on your tv screen.
That was 1990.
The definition:
Twenty-first century Islamo-fascist terrorists, however, have refined the model and moved beyond an image of anger to a new form of prepared global ambush that integrates murder, terror and instant media.
The ambush technique coordinates blood-spilling violence with sensational imagery and rhetoric using a dispersed network of media operatives, guerrillas and terrorists. Networked, Coordinated Blood-spilling plus Sensationalism — hence the technique’s acronym: the CBS ambush.
May 2005 (Newsweek’s phony Koran-flushing story), the Danish cartoons, and now Pope Benedict’s Regensburg U. comment– that’s three major CBS ambushes in eighteen months. To pull off a CBS ambush, the terrorists and their political operatives rely on the implicit cooperation of the sensationalist media.
Your choice of ‘CBS’ as the acronym is really a bit too cute - especially inasmuch as the “other CBS” is not even mentioned in the article.
Comment by Hunter McDaniel — 9/20/2006 @ 8:09 am
The CBS acronym may be considered too cute by some, but after the attempt by CBS to influnce the 2004 election by means of a trumped-up, sensationalised ‘expose’ of the President’s National Guard service, it’s dead on. Truth hurts, I guess.
Comment by Hank Bradley — 9/20/2006 @ 8:31 am
Manuel II Paleologos was Orthodox. What Crusades did the Patriarch of Constantinople bless and lead? The Crusade phenomenon was western. Orthodox battles were a bit more practical in ideology, to avoid gettting further gobbled up by muslim imperialism. It was a game that overshadowed Manuel II Paleologos’ entire life and colored his commentary. This was a guy forced to fight fellow byzantines (in Philadelphia) under the Sultan in order to maintain even partial independence for Constantinople. The decline and the fall of the Byzantine empire is an important historical mine for learning what happens when the shoe is on the other foot. We should study it well.
Comment by TM Lutas — 9/20/2006 @ 8:38 am
So, how do rational, law-abiding people respond to violent mob protests and unconsionable media collaberation? Do we throw up our hands and sue for peace? I’d rather not lose to these guys. Let’s keep killing them in Iraq, when we’re done there, move on to the next battlefield, and free another country while killing more islamofacists.
Comment by Scott Sterling — 9/20/2006 @ 8:47 am
Why would you suggest that this Pope shouldn’t mention, or doesn’t have any moral authority, because there were crusades ages ago? Do you condemn all Catholics for that? Would you suggest that someone doesn’t have the right to be critical of mistreatment of American Indians just because her great-great grandfather was a calvaryman? ED NOTE: Read what I wrote. I characterized the comment as defensible in context, but imprudent for a man in his position. Compare my assessment to, oh, say Christopher Hitchens– who basically says what you claim I said. I read the entire speech and thought it was very thoughtful. http://www.firstthings.com has an excellent “strategic assessment” of the Pope’s speech (September 18 posts, as I recall).
Comment by DrTony — 9/20/2006 @ 8:57 am
Keep in mind that above all else, arab street violence is a control issue. It is used by despots and clerics alike to deflect attention from themselves. The idiot media of course exploits this in a mindless way that makes the despots etc happy.
Comment by howard_coward — 9/20/2006 @ 9:15 am
Why do the media happen to pick up this genre? Because it’s soap opera. There is no viable business model for hard news. People say they want hard news, but the won’t watch unless there actually is hard news (think city council meetings - nobody watches). There is a demographic that always watches if you satisfy them, though, and that’s soap opera people. The soap opera audience, not news, is what news organizations produce. They sell that audience to advertisers. That’s their end product. The news organizations will either survive on the soap audience or they will not survive at all. So that’s what you see. The terrorists happen to fit in to that business model as producers of suitable story lines. The news media can’t be shamed into stopping it. They know very well what the deal is. All that can be done is to ridicule the audience for this crap, chiefly soap opera women (40% of women, not a majority, but a lot), so it won’t be politically correct, but what can you do. Every national debate now is edited by the tastes of soap opera. It takes over all the terrain. No discussion that doesn’t interest them can happen. Soap opera : look for inner struggle, soul searching and everlasting frustration.
Comment by Ron Hardin — 9/20/2006 @ 10:07 am
“An imprudent quote by a man on a global podium? Yes — particularly since popes blessed several sword-bearing Crusades. It is, however, a defensible quotation in the context of an academic lecture.” And it’s dead on for another reason: Manuel Paleologus was specifically addressing what NEW ideass thes Muslims had brought to the world, particularly the practice of religious conversions at swordpoint. You can’t hang that on on the Christians as a moral-equivalency argument - they established their religion by force of artument and example, including submission to martyrdom. The Crusades were a logical reaction against conversions by military means, accompanied by the seizure of territory and imposition of political control. Yes, the Popes of the time blessed the crusaders, but the imperialists of the day were the Muslims. Strange how the lefties who sneer at the Crusades always omit this point from their polemics.
Comment by Hank Bradley — 9/20/2006 @ 11:40 am
Contrariwise, charlemagne’s conversion of the Saxons is an important historical mine for learning what happens when the shoe is on the Christian foot. We should study it well.
Comment by Retief — 9/20/2006 @ 11:55 am
Have we become so used to all discussions being set in the collectivist mode that we can no longer recognize the difference between what is being done by individuals in the present with that done by individuals long dead. Why are Christians of todayu being hit over the head with others did? We see no Christians burning heretics at the stake. We do see Muslims all over the world killing, and committing other acts of general mayhem, however. Individuals act in the here and now. No individual alive today is responsible for the acts of others. I will go further and say that, as a caucasian, I am not responsible for what other caucasians may do. As a woman, I am not responsible for what other women may do. I am not a Christian, but I fail to see how any Christian is responsible for what anyone living in the Middle Ages did. What is telling is that the quote the pope used is applicable to too many Muslims today. This tells me that there is something within the ideas that need to be addressed, because it is the ideas that are the one constant. Forgive any mistakes in this post. About a third of it is obscured, so I have no way to edit it..
Comment by JMB — 9/20/2006 @ 1:38 pm
MALKIN - ‘AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere’… HT Michelle Malkin Michelle’s on the warpath again. RBT has said for a long time the MSM is rooting for the enemy like some underdog in a Sunday afternoon football game. …
Trackback by Rocket's Brain Trust — 9/20/2006 @ 1:59 pm
Yup…rent a mob gets on CNNInternational… I don’t know why you are picking on CBS…try CNN’s coverage, which gives us “Bomb a day in Bagdad” without context… BBC might be biased in their reporting, but they have more in depth articles and discussions, whereas CNN seems to have reporters who smirk and ask biased questions and don’t remind us about the background of terror, yet interpret every action by the US with Democratic talking points…
Comment by NancyReyes — 9/20/2006 @ 2:28 pm
I thought the Pope’s speach was about how pure science was too strict a definition of reason and a kind of clunky way of saying that Theology still belongs in Universities as it did in his day. I thought the whole thing was rather nostalgic about wide-ranging conversations. Maybe he feels hemmed in at the Vatican. I can’t figure out why he didn’t say that the University is a child of the Church. Too painful?
Comment by Abu Nudnik — 9/20/2006 @ 4:42 pm
[…] AUSTIN BAY ON THE CBS AMBUSH—with further thoughts at his blog. His point on the mutually-supporting relationship between terrorists and the news media is well taken. […]
Pingback by Balloon Juice — 9/21/2006 @ 12:13 pm
The fact that the USA won’t lose a battle against the terrorists make the terrorist murderers the underdog — and the press, like virtually all Christian mythology, likes the underdog to win. Frodo was an underdog; so is Harry Potter; so was Luke Skywalker. Even Jean-Claude Van Damme is usually getting beat up first (becoming an underdog), before he comes back to win. There is no myth of the Good, Strong King having to fight the Evil Weak killers.
Comment by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad — 9/25/2006 @ 2:27 am