As IF Times

link Anti-government protests in Libya – Yahoo! News Photos.

Here’s a brilliant idea for a business and it’s amazing no one has thought of it sooner.  The effigy business.  In particular of political figures.  Naturally, the American figures will be the most popular since it’s pretty much expected that demand for them will be at a constant high level.  We can be sure of both domestic and international demand.  Someone could have a warehouse stocked with effigies of the current President at the ready, for immediate shipment to any hot spot in the world.  Imagine the money that could have been made during George Bush’s term in office.  It’s likely that he had more effigies and images burnt of him than even Ronald Reagan when he occupied the Presidency.   The fact that they are burning Obama effigies is a bit surprising given that his ascent to power was supposed to appease the masses.  But I guess there’s no pleasing some people. 

On the other hand, sensibilities aren’t what they used to be.  A president can be burnt in effigy now at the slightest of provocations.  Because of the volatile temperaments of many in the middle east, the President’s effigy could be burnt only because  he backed the wrong sports team, which by coincidence, he generally does.  The recent round of Obama burning was caused by Qaddafi loyalists unhappy over the U.S.’s recent bombing campaign in Libya.  Well, you just can’t win.  If Obama had bombed the other side, perhaps someone would have torched an entire airplane of people in real life, never mind effigies.

However, these impolite acts of disrespect shouldn’t faze this or any President.  Obviously, you can’t have all the people love you.  There are people who don’t like Ronald McDonald and he represents food and laughter.  What chance does a guy have who drops Prius-sized bombs on people?  They should take the perspective of the Chinese.  In that culture, images of consumer goods are burnt at the sending off of a deceased person so that they may receive them in the afterlife.  Imagine if this were to actually work.  When the Muslim martyrs arrive in heaven to receive their 24 virgins, they’ll also be met by the countless amounts of American Presidents they burnt during their protests.     Allah may be great, but hopefully he also has a sense of humor.

link Jason Gay: A Snap Judgment on Cutler – WSJ.com.

In the last playoff game that the Chicago Bears played this season against the eventual SuperBowl winner Green Bay Packers, the starting quarterback, Jay Cutler was taken out of the game.  He was benched not for poor play, which would be understandable, but because of an injury he suffered to his leg.  Not having a leg to throw against is fairly serious for a quarterback because their mobility is required in every play.

For some reason, fans and players alike were quick to jump on Cutler and accused him of not being tough enough and not wanting the big game enough to play through the pain.  Football is arguably the most macho and gruelling of all professional sports since the odds are great that a body will be hit hard on every play.  Even players from other teams who were not at the game felt entitled to criticise Cutler. Cutler quickly became a despised villain.

As it turns out, after the game was over, doctors confirmed that Cutler had suffered a torn MCL in his knee. This is a serious injury which threatens one’s ability to walk, much less play contact football.  It’s been almost a month since that event, the SuperBowl has been played and the incident may have been forgotten. 

Except for the legend.  Twenty years from now, if Jay Cutler achieves nothing else in his career, people will always remember him as the quarterback who bailed on his teammates during the big game notwithstanding that he sustained a legitimate injury.  The media stories, the chatter and the record is set for life.  Even now, people are using his name as an adjective, as in ‘don’t go Cutler on me’, in reference to bailing out of a situation with a flimsy excuse. 

This kind of unfairness is seen time and time again in many other fields of pursuit, notably politics.  As most informed  people know by now, the predominantly left leaning media can frame an image or position on someone they don’t like and similar to the Cutler illustration, it becomes the truth and is hard to dispel.  In 2003, George Bush was giving a speech from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln about the state of the war in Iraq.  Unbeknownst to him, someone had placed a huge banner behind him which read ‘Mission Accomplished”.  To this day, people will claim that Bush gave a speech claiming preliminary victory in Iraq.  No such thing happened.

Of course the most well known fib about Bush is the weary canard about him lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  If they say it enough, it becomes the truth to those too ignorant, lazy or ideologically partisan to check the facts.

During the famous 2008 federal election, Sarah Palin was tagged with the line in which she claimed to be an expert on Russia because, ‘you can see them from my house’.  In fact those words were uttered in a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live by Tina Fey.  What she actually said was in response to a question by the brilliant Katie Couric about the importance of Alaska’s geographic position to America’s defence.  She responded by saying ‘of course it’s important, you can see Russia from Alaska’, which of course is true.   However, years from now, the line of  ‘you can see Russia from my house’ will be attributed to her as if it actually happened.

In his recently released memoir entitled Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld makes the point of how media can wilfully distort facts to suit their agenda and in doing so, may cause actual harm.  It was widely circulated at the time that prisoners in Guantanamo were treated horrifically and were subject to all kinds of torture, physical and mental.  Newsweek reported an incident in which a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet.  Anyone who tries to flush a book down a toilet will know that it’s impossible, so that was one hint already as to the veracity of the story.  In any case, this story was a complete fabrication, it never happened.  But it served to mobilize the crazy left to demonize the practices at the prison camp enough to push for closure of an important military tool.    The moral here is to not believe something  just because it’s in print.  There’s an old saying which can be paraphrased here.  There are lies, damn lies and then there’s the news.