Dressed now in the faded, bloodcaked fatigues he took off a National Guardsman he’d found beaten to death in the Treme St corridor, FOXNews’ Shepard Smith stands motionless before the listing skeletal remains of what was once a Best Western on Rampart St, his head shaved clean, jaw stiff, chin ticked slightly upward and pointing toward the on-camera spot his crew is using to augment the firelight from fifteen or so torches held by a gang of lumbering, topless refugees the sunburned anchor rounded up earlier from the wreckage of the Iberville projects.
On either side of him, a series of staggered, 8 foot-to-10 foot pikes fashioned from driftwood and stretches of gothic metal gatework salvaged from the standing water, hold the wide-eyed heads of a CNN camera crew and a couple of photogs from the Associated Press—“errand boys,” Smith tells the camera’s blinking red eye, “sent by grocery clerks to collect my Pulitzer.” In his left hand, he holds a microphone, the handle covered in a thick, stringy gore. With his right hand, he fingers a piece of sharpened aluminum raingutter, folded into a blade and snipped at regular intervals to form a kind of makeshift serrated edge, itself coated in a viscous paste of blood and tendon and spinal fluid.
As the camera zooms in, Smith doesn’t speak. Instead, he holds the blade aloft to gather the camera’s focus, where it lingers for several seconds.
“That’s hell fire, man,” his producer says off camera. “That’s purity. That’s where God is now, man. Today, this very instant—in the teeth of that blade. And these—these are his Isaacs”—at which point the camera jerks left momentarily, before pulling out to focus on the grisly severed heads that frame the serene-looking Smith like a cadre of mildly confused gargoyles.
“Shepard, man. The Shepherd, you dig?” The producer’s voice is lilting but quick, picking up cadence until it settles into sing song. “He is our Abraham, man, our Yahweh. The angels have spoken to him, you see?—and he, he has obeyed –”
— And then the satellite image, like most all of New Orleans, goes dark.*
It’s not so much that the news anchors have all gone off the deep end. We all sort of expected that. It’s that people that should know better, like the folks at the Corner, for example, don’t understand that. Media people, and that includes, Jeff jarvis, who has just tossed reason aside over on his own blog, really do live in a different world from the rest of us, and in their world emotion trumps everything. Come to think of it, that’s the way things are in the entertainment industry as well. That doesn’t speak well of news folk does it?
”…and he’s like a poet-warrior, man. He says things like ‘<b>IF<b> is the middle word in life, man…and ‘If you can keep your head while all about you people are losing theirs…hey, watch it. Those goddamn monkeys bite.’”
Dude.
The words of John Titor speaketh true!
When did Dennis Hopper become a FOX producer?
Mr Smith … he dead.
Great, just great. First of all, five months to the day after I get back from Afghanistan, my Guard unit gets called up to go down and help. And now I’m going to have to fight my way past a fanatical, post-apocalypse army of pike waving natives. Just dandy…
Good luck and God speed Major. Be especially careful of the Newshounds they’re at their most dangerous when they’re chasing Pulitzers.
Jeff, you forgot the part about Shep & his followers becoming photo-phobic albino zombies who focus their wrath on Charlton Heston’s kitzchy early 70’s swinger pad/bunker.
TW – “place”, as in “You must learn to PLACE “Omega Man” references into ordinary conversation before you can hope to snatch this pebble from my hand, grasshopper.”
His methods have become unsound.
Oh my god, please tell me we’re not all being sent to one of those “outreaches” where a bunch of yuppies wear no clothes, use body paint, scream a lot and beat drums.
Cut to Bill O’Reilly and Tony Snow:
“You understand, Tony; that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.”
Turing = feeling, as in I had a feeling that someone would beat me to the unsound methods quote!
The horror. The horror.
Before I read this, I figured Billy Jack could still take him. Now I’m not so sure.
I’m still waiting for the first reporter to be gang tackled by an unruly mob and stripped of his wallet, clothes, and water.
Notice anything about the way ABC News edited Bush’s quote about looting this evening? They cut him off just before he qualified his sentence.
tw: cause. The MSM is the cause of much inflammatory rhetoric these days.
Jeff, has anyone ever told you that you should be a comedy writer?
Well, you should.
Seriously.
I’d asked for a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. I’d never want another.
Charlie Gibson don’t surf!
Hmmm? Shephard Smith, Simpering Solipsist. I must email this to Bill O’Reilly right away.
It does not matter what Bush does or does not do, they can always find SOMETHING to foam at the mouth about specially if they ignore their own past actions.
Bobby Kennedy Jr wrote a little tome on Huffington all but blaming Bush for global warming and Katrina
as did some German Environmental Minister.
Course neither of them had a word to say about the Vote in the US Sentate before Al Gore went to Tokyo.
Nothing about the fact that the Clinton Administrarion never bothered to send the Treaty to the Seante for ratification because they had ALREADY voted 95 to 0 NOT to.
Some familiar names voted to reject that Treaty.
Names like
Kennedy, Kerry, Durbin, Boxer. Carol Mosley=Brown. Daschle. YOU get the picture.
Wonder if Bobby Boy had a talk with his Uncle Teddy after he wrote that article?
here
corvan hit the nail on the head. TV “News” has been co-opted by the Entertainment Industry. And in the Entertainment Industry emotion tops all because emotion sells.
*I’m still waiting for the first reporter to be gang tackled by an unruly mob and stripped of his wallet, clothes, and water.*
Ooooo, bring Dan Rather out of retirement. Sacrificial Dan ? I like it.
“Courage”
The guy who bugs me most is CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
This is the first time I have visited your blog. I think I like it… I’ll go ahead and link you at Juggernuts.
Cheers, -Yarbz
http://www.juggernuts.com
http://imageevent.com/yarbz/photoshophumor
Man, I thought I dreamed that.
Now that’s funny.
Ok we need to cast Captain Willard (Martin Sheen).
He/she needs to be young hip.
Do y’all think Anderson Cooper could fill role?
And thank you for Jeff for the laugh. Sometimes you watch these things in vacuum and you think is this me or is this guy unhinged. Then I come here and I find others find this reporting surreal and absurd.
Jeff, that is F’in FUNNY. I was thinking the same thing as he made the camera man zoom in on the dead body lying on the freeway. he was losing it..
Juggernuts? I’m pretty sure my at-work porn filter will block that site…
Batonga! Batonga! Batongaaaaaaah!
Ahh, the permalink didn’t work
Here’s what I thought was funny
I’m just waiting for Shep to do a hula dance and shake the egg rolls from his pants.
hsssst…
“PBR Streetgang, this is Almighty, over…”
Don’t look now, but over at the corner Mark Levin finally woke up and showed some sense. Of course he was immediately attacked by Andrew Stuttaford. Please, go over there for the posts, they’re very informative.
In response, I repeat my first comment, and would add this: Media people (none of them, of any stripe, on any side of the partisan divide) do not view any problem with an eye towards helping solve the problem, or even towards simply reporting upon it. Instead, they work slavishly hard to make their nobility, their, courage, their intelligence the point of the whole spectacle, all the while not doing one single thing to actually help, and in some cases, actually hindering the efforts of those working to improve things.
I don’t mean to pick on the Corner, every other journalist is engaged in the same sort of nonsense, but the point is this (journalism) is a deeply, deeply warped field that perhaps should be put out of its misery. After all, no one needs a j-school degree to write a news story.
TW-wish, as in I wish we had the media we need instead of the mdeia we have.
Hey, Corvan, did you catch that a-hole Derbyshire making a spectacle of himself, informing anyone who still bothers to read his Archie Bunker-esque screeds (Why isn’t he writing for Buchannan’s mag instead of Buckley’s? I thought William F. ran the nativists and Huey Long types out of respectable conservative movement)just how much money he’s already generously paid into the federal budget? Apparently, contributing some of the bread he’s made opining about obscure mathmatical equations and rhetorically pulling the door shut on the brown skinned other after he got his British ass into the States is OUT OF THE QUESTION.
There’s hardly more than one or two people that I would want to share a foxhole with over there at that world headquarters of conservative pantywastes. Nothing but mewling and whining and hand-wringing over political implications. Sweet mother of all that is holy, can we PLEASE leave that shit to the leftists, at least until we’re finished pulling the bodies from the water. How about a phucking link to relief websites so readers can more easily contribute a few bucks (don’t worry, Johnny Derb, we’ll pick up the slack for you, you friggin’ tool)? Something? Anything?
Damn. The chattering classes really are worthless when the crap hits the fan. Worthless.
Nice Seinfeld reference. At least, I think it was a Seinfeld reference.
“Well, you’re the only white poet warlord in the neighborhood.”
OK, last slag on NRO’s The Corner, but this begs to be mocked:
Wow.
I am waiting with baited breath for the ceremonial animal sacrifice in which Shepard hacks the head off of a cow with a dull machete. And feeds the masses and he then becomes the savior of New Orleans….
Oh the drama……..
*I’m still waiting for the first reporter to be gang tackled by an unruly mob and stripped of his wallet, clothes, and water.*
OK, I’ll be the asshole that says it, but that would have happened in large parts of New Orleans before the flood. New Orleans outside of the touristy spots was a relatively lawless area. Murder rates several multiples above the national average and non-violent crime rates off the charts.
Yeah, yeah, crime rates, headless cows, savior of New Orleans.
Whatever.
WHAT ABOUT THE TREES, MAN? WHAT ABOUT THE TREES?!?!
Corvan: You are wise, indeed.
Last night, Bill O actually said to Shep “I hope you win the highest award in journalism”, look on Shep’s face was … well, it was creepy.
Shep: How do you get this stuff lit? Mine’s all wet with thick gore. There you go – blow torch works well. Eeuuuww, got some tendon in my smoke. Whew! So I’m thinking an ear necklace might work well next. Whatcha think?
“Captain, my orders say I’m not supposed to know where we’re going, so I don’t. But one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be hot.”
Fox News Producer to Geraldo Rivera who is bound and gagged with his own microphone: “The heads. You’re looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far. He’s the first one to admit it.”
[…] we forget, Shep has an angry […]
FOXNews should probably stop featuring faux-Dennis Hopper newscasts from Smith then. I mean, Smith’s obviously weary from trying to come up with a counterpart to the “Worst Person in the World!” invocation: “the Least Bad Person in the..,’ naa, too vague. ‘The Most Malapropos…’ well, sure who doesn’t like alliteration, how about ‘The Most Inopportune Person…,’ mmmnn, doesn’t really sing…how about ‘The Most Inauspicious Person in the World!’
-by Jove, he’s got it!–“The rain in Fall, falls mainly on the Palin.”
[…] Alternate Title: When I stopped paying attention to any newsreaders and learned to love SMOD. […]