'I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna' take it anymore!'

Noah Pollak has a thoughtful take on what National Review Online is touting as Hezbollah's "chillingly effective media strategy."

First thing it made me think of was that classic of filmaking, "Network," with Peter Finch as slowly unhinging network anchorman Howard Beale going apoplectic on-air:

It’s not clear which of my experiences last week was more educational: Sitting on a hilltop on Israel's northern border, watching Bint Jbiel getting pummeled by artillery, bombs, and missiles — or meeting the Western television reporters who were covering the war, and seeing firsthand how they made theater out of bloodshed.

NBC’s Ann Curry was on the scene. She was taken to a meadow from which a half-dozen 155mm artillery pieces were pounding away at Hezbollah. Curry approached a resting crew of artillery reservists, put a camera and microphone in the face of one pony-tailed young man, and asked (I quote from memory): “How does it make you feel to be firing artillery into Lebanon that is killing innocent civilians?” Curry, in her other interviews for NBC, has been similarly incredulous at the existence of civilian casualties in war.

Read it all.