Associated Press’ Richard Pyle called the Five O Clock Follies “the longest-playing tragicomedy in Southeast Asia’s theatre of the absurd” as the US, Australian and South VN press offices gave their daily briefings on the war.
Rooftop of the Rex Hotel.
Then raw Network footages rushed to dark rooms in Hong Kong or Bangkok for processing. Voila.
The American TV audience, get their TV dinners and television war at the same time.
That’s the way it was (in contrast to viewing war propaganda on the silver screen).
The best we could hope for? a stalemate, per Cronkite.
At this stage in the war in Ukraine, the best we could hope for would be less territorial concession, and a curtailed human toll.
Musk first provided satellite internet. Now he wants Twitter.
People can crowdsource for documented war-crimes and atrocities.
Often in real time.
No delay broadcast, no waiting for the 6:00 Network news.
In Papers Soldiers, the author recalled how difficult it was to get at the truth during the Vietnam War.
MZ’s and DMZ’s on easel.
My brother, a medic stationed in one of the MZ’s, lost his first-born due to tetanus . I asked, you were surrounded by men of medicine. Yet your daughter died without medical help?
The toll of war. The talk of war. The (price) tag of war.
Bao Ninh was awarded with his “the Sorrow of War”.
Among the differences between then and now, besides press coverage, is the shouldering of responsibilities: during the first Iraq war, Bush was saying America was shedding the Vietnam syndrome.
For Ukraine, if President Johnson was still alive, he wouldn’t be able to say : “Asian boys ought to fight the war for themselves….(as opposed to him sending American boys to die in the jungle of Vietnam)”. April 1, 68 he said ” As I sat in my office last evening, waiting to speak, I thought of the many times each week when television brings the war into the American home. No one can say exactly what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion. Historians must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts on the future of this Nation”.
And we can see – President Zelensky on 60 minutes, on CNN, transparent, lucid and forthrightly without delay or defer until …oh well, 5 o clock each day on any rooftop.
We are fully invited to buy-in the Ukrainian position and positioning…Southern then Eastern front. Ain’t quiet on the Western front? It’s all out, man and machine, civilian and volunteers. There might be a few “Papers Soldiers” but from what has been coming out, there ain’t no papers leaders or tigers. Bravo!
Where is the TV dinner BTW!
Thang Nguyen 555 