[marcus77]

Am I the only one here who would rather not watch "The Elizabeth Smart Story" or "Saving Private Lynch"? NBC and CBS are putting them up against each other on Sunday night, seeing which one will pull in the most viewers. I feel bad for what happened to both of these girls, but come on, this is just bad taste in my book.

[SyscoKid]

Neither - it's just bad taste. And even though they're on at 9 EST, they bumped American Dreams at 8!

[deh]

I'll be watching Baltimore Ravens versus St. Louis Rams

[angelize56]

Both are old news now. And did they need to let us know that Jessica may have been raped? Well so might have Elizabeth. Honestly the media just needs to leave those two alone and let them get back to as normal life as possible! Many other soldiers have died and many other children have been kidnapped...the focus should be on ALL of them not just these two anyways!

[ComputerFix]

Angel,

It was Jessica who "let us know" via a book. Though I do agree with you to an extent.

I will be at work, therefore watching neither. If I were at home, I would probably not watch either of them. Would like to claim some sort of rightous reason, but really the stories don't entirely interest me. (at least not in drama form, I tend to catch them documentary style)

I am glad Elizabeth was found.

I am glad Jessica did not die.

[plschwartz]

Angel:
You said that jessica was old news but the cynical distortions which used her for propaganda purposes are as active today.

Private Jessica says President is misusing her 'heroism'

Edward Helmore, New York
Sunday November 9, 2003
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...081207,00.html

When American Private Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital last April, President George Bush's administration and much of the US media was gripped by a dramatic tale of blonde, all-American heroism.

The story reaches fever pitch this week with the publication of Lynch's autobiography, a dramatised TV documentary, interviews and a Vanity Fair cover story.

Beneath the gloss of the US media and the machinations of an administration eager to show a 'good news' angle of the Iraq conflict against the reality of a rising body count, Lynch has become a metaphor not for the heroism of pretty young Americans captured by a devilish foreign enemy, but for the confusion that has marked Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start.

Misgivings characterising Lynch's story are coming to a head: last week she accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package.

While Johnson is living on $500 a month, Lynch stands to make millions from her book, I Am a Soldier, Too. She has been romanced as the media target of the moment, photographed by Annie Liebowitz for Vanity Fair, and stands to make millions more from a movie deal.

'There is a double standard,' said Johnson's father, Claude. 'I don't know for sure that it was the Pentagon. All I know for sure is the media paid a lot of attention to Jessica.'

And America is deter mined that Lynch will be a heroine, despite the fact that she never fired a shot, and instead got down on her knees to pray as her unit was surrounded by enemy forces. As she pointed out herself, it was her dead colleague Lori Piestewa, a Native American mother of two, who went down fighting.

Lynch says the circumstances of her rescue was dramatised and manipulated by the Pentagon. She was not rescued in a 'blaze of gunfire' as reported by Defence Department officials last April, but picked up from compliant Iraq doctors who had saved her life.

She was not raped, as the department said, and the Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, who was given US citizenship for his efforts, has written a book about how he risked his own life to win her freedom. Now he is described by his wife as overly influenced by John Wayne movies.

'Lynch is basically saying the whole thing was made up, a fraud,' said media critic Michael Wolff. 'At the same time, the media is going on with this elaborate production effort to make her into a hero. It's as if the size of the attention itself makes her a hero. Everyone is committed to making her the face of the war whereas the other story that this all a kind of scandal.'

But the story may be too far along to reverse. 'She can't take back being a star. The fact that she says it's all made up doesn't make a difference. It's been decided she's a star, and that's the only indisputable fact,' said Wolff.

The New York Times has pointed out how Lynch has become the Mona Lisa of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Americans have been able to read into her unrevealing snapshot whatever story they chose. Her story becoming 'a Rorschach test for homefront mood swings'.

Now, with the US forces having lost 32 soldiers in the last week alone, the mood may be turning and she stands to be come symbolic of US confusion and press credulity. The inconsistencies have not been missed by veterans' groups who don't wish to besmirch her individual valour but are uneasy over the administration's efforts to present 'good news' while ignoring the reality.

'The White House sent a message that they were going to tell the good news stories so now we have a situation where we are not allowed to witness the coffins coming home and there are no images of young soldiers coming home missing arms and legs,' said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Centre.

'We're just seeing one side of the story, and you've got to tell the other side, the one about the wounded, maimed and the dead.' There is growing doubt Lynch's uplifting story will help to sweeten the nation's mood about the dim prospect that the US will be able extricate itself from Iraq before hundreds, and possibly thousands, more servicemen died.

Lynch, who joined the army hoping to see the world after failing to land a job at a supermarket, is preparing to go on a media tour that will include appearances with TV anchors such as David Letterman. Yet she is unable to fulfil the role of the patriot.

The administration's game plan, enabled by a supplicant media, is showing signs of distress. The singer Cher recently visited the hospital where Lynch recovered from her ordeal and talked on TV of meeting a teenage soldier who had lost both his arms.

She wanted to know why Bush and his team weren't there having their photographs taken with the injured troops. 'I don't understand why these guys [the wounded] are so hidden and there aren't pictures of them,' Cher said.

Lynch now questions why her rescue was filmed: 'They used me to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say these things.'

[Servant of Eru]

That's screwed up. Too bad they had to exaggerate her story too. Just like everything else in this war is turning out to look like though. I used to support president Bush, when it was under question whether we would go to war in Iraq, I was all for it; but this is just plain turning out to be pathetic. I think even if he had just said we needed to go to war with Iraq in order to help rid the world of terrorism, he would have got a better end result then he did lying about the WMDs. Sad, sad, sad....

[ComputerFix]

"They" made her like that? No offense former private Lynch, but you generated the book, and signed off on the movie, and participated in cover stories.

BTW, if we are to assume that she "blessed" everything in the book, it is she that perpetuates the fact that she was sexually assulted, and this has those doctors that had taken charge of her very upset.


I was pretty much trying to hold back, but quite frankly, the two other women have much more interesting stories. Are they more or less "heroes"? I don't feel the need to debate such a distinction, but if we are to go off of certain stereotypes, Lori Piestewa's story rips my guts up, and Shoshana Johnson (and the others with her) gave quite an interview. I found them to have "colorful" (?) personalities that could make for an interesting story.


Yes, it seems that Jessica is being used. Initially by the government to give us a feel good story, by opponents to sling arrows at the government (whether true "arrows" or not), and by herself to capitalize on all of it.

I am glad she made it home, but this is out of hand.

[prospect]

I'll be watching The Chicago Blackhawks play The Detroit Redwings

[angelize56]

And the numbers are in! I watched neither. Did the same as prospect!

Smart beats Lynch in TV battle
And Lynch on '60 Minutes' beats them both
Monday, November 10, 2003 Posted: 3:29 PM EST (2029 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Forced to choose between stories about a hero prisoner of war or a young victim of a bizarre kidnapping, American television viewers narrowly went for the kidnap victim.

A made-for-TV movie on CBS about Elizabeth Smart was seen by an estimated 15.7 million viewers on Sunday, Nielsen Media Research said in a preliminary estimate Monday.

"The Elizabeth Smart Story" competed against a similar TV movie about Jessica Lynch on NBC, which had 14.9 million viewers, Nielsen said.

Smart's ratings advantage is expected to hold when final Nielsen ratings are released on Tuesday.

In a ratings "sweeps" month, the two networks chose to go after each other with similar projects. The Smart movie aired about a half-hour later than Lynch's because of a late football game.

NBC hardly considered it a defeat, however. "Saving Jessica Lynch" did slightly better among viewers aged 18 to 49, and was NBC's best-rated TV movie among this prized demographic since "Growing Up Brady" in May 2000.

Actually, more people on Sunday watched a true story involving Lynch than a dramatized account. CBS' "60 Minutes," which carried a Mike Wallace story about a hidden hero in the battle surrounding Lynch, was seen by 17.9 million people.