Saturday, August 11, 2007

It's a Guy Thing

This morning Guy Raz gives us a peak into his soft-porn obsession with military aircraft. He begins by bragging "so in the past few weeks alone, I've ridden in an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Kuwait...hovered over Paris in a twin-rotor [sic] Marine CH-53 helicopter...flown around the world on the E-4B which is basically the most secretive and classified 747 in the world...been over Afghanistan in a Chinook helicopter...but nothing I've seen, no aircraft can quite compare to the F-22...there is nothing quite like it on earth; it looks like something out of the future....

The F-22 has caught his fancy: "...the plane is called The Raptor and there are only about 70 of them in existence, most of them at Langley...there are only 100 F-22 pilots in the world. The Air Force likes to call the plane America's insurance policy...sometimes I dream of going up in an F-22, but alas, I never will, there's only room for the pilot."

America's insurance policy! That's rich.

Given the utter non-coverage of the current escalating death-from-the-air being waged in Iraq, and the slaughter that the USAF has unleashed in places a widespread as Panama, Cambodia, Iraq (in 1991), and Afghanistan there is something positively necrophilic about Raz's panting aircraft fantasy.

Raz opens his report by describing the little windowless room that NPR has deep inside the Pentagon. He says, "It's NPR's Pentagon office and working in that windowless room under the hum of fluorescent lighting can be soul destroying..." I hate to break it to him, but it's going to be hard to destroy something that he's already sold.

4 comments:

Lucky Monkey said...

Thanks for posting this, when I heard this ridiculous segment, I thought of your blog. Good to see you caught it too.

RAZ: "F22 RAWKS D00d!!!"

Anonymous said...

Ugh, missed the report (mercifully) but it sounds pretty creepy indeed. So much for catering to the "peace and granola" audience, I suppose...

Porter Melmoth said...

Yeah, these 'reporter's notebook' segments are perfect little opportunities for NPR-oids to strut their egomaniacal stuff.

As I've said before, I get a wry kick out of the little soundbyte 'illustrations' that show-off NPR reporters are so fond of. Raz' dickweed examples of 'his' aircraft were scoff-worthy. Indeed, it's like he's giving you a quick glance through his favorite centerfold collection. He's such a fan of his field of coverage. That fact alone makes him a dubious choice for objectivity.

There was a time when editors sent reporters onto a beat because they brought with them a healthy skepticism, and so the truth could be arrived at through critical thinking rather than unquestioning acceptance.
But no one knows who H.L. Mencken was any more.

Anonymous said...

Heya Guy,

They tellin' you to never worry about the future
They tellin' you to never worry about the torture
They tellin you that you'll never see the horror
Spend it all today and we will bill you tomorrow
Three piece suits and bank accounts in Bahamas
Wall street crime will never send you to the slammer
Tell all the children in the arms of their mommas
The F-15 is a homicide bomber


-- Michael Franti And Spearhead