Ramadi. Where US forces have cut power, water and phones. Dexy is there.
But Dexy isn't there in any useful sense. He's not interested in reporting on what's going down. (Shades of Falluja? He notes the lack of power but fails to tell readers why that is. Apparently all of Ramadi just forgot to pay Con-Ed.) He's not interested in reporting period. Not hard reporting. He wrote a feature article. Nothing necessarily wrong with that; however, "Suddenly, Sand Bags and Potshots at Post 1" isn't hard news. (Don't look for the potshots in the article. To save the headline writer, we'll offer some here.)
For 37 paragraphs, Dexy offers a feature article, in the hard news section.
Now Dexy's been there over three years. In Iraq. Hiding in the Green Zone, in the villa, with the black t-shirted body guards. Every now and then, as the embed, he ventures out with US forces. Such as Falluja. He won an award for that -- for lying about the slaughter -- and the lies only look more ridiculous with each year and each revelation of what went down in Falluja in November of 2004.
So maybe that's why he's going for soft porn this morning?
That's what any newsperson would call this nonsense. It's nonsense when it runs in the news section. There's nothing wrong with it (though hard news people would sneer at it as "soft" -- they tend to sneer at all features) in and of itself.
But 37 paragraphs. On one person. And it's an American.
You can almost picture Dexy turning to the camera, a la Charles Kuralt, and intoning, "I went to Iraq expecting war, I went to Iraq expecting loss. What I found was . . . the heart of America."
See, here's the problem, besides the fact that Dexy chattered all through a shift where a soldier wasn't supposed to be doing an interview but keeping watch. (Dexy thinks he's the Barbara Walters of the war-set, prompting the soldier to talk about his love life.) The big problem is, he's been in Iraq for three years.
There are Iraqis there, right?
Three years and he's never profiled any of them.
Like John F. Burns, possibly he's gearing his coverage to "Americans who pay taxes"?
It really doesn't matter.
Three years in a foreign country and his profile is on an American. It's a bit like spending three years in France and eating every meal at McDonalds.
It's an embarrasing piece for Dexy. He'll start a paragraph with the soldier's response and probably doesn't realize how obvious it is that the soldier is responding to Dexy's question. Or maybe he thinks we're all stupid?
"I did have a girlfriend until two days ago." That's how one paragraph opens, after Dexy says writes: "The talk turns to love." The talk turns to love?
He's a sh**ty reporter. That's what he is. The talk didn't "turn" to love, Dexy asked a question. Nothing wrong with that if it's reported as such. But Dexy makes it out like it just happened. If he tried that in TV journalism, his ass would be canned. What he's done, and maybe the standards for print journalism have dropped so low that people don't even grasp it, is that he's conducted an interview and wants to pass it off as topics that were brought up without any prompting from the reporter. He's interjected himself into the story, influenced it and when "reporting" on it, acts as though that doesn't happen. He's lucky he's not in broadcast journalism because if this were a transcript of a segment that aired, someone higher up would be calling for the tapes so that they could review them.
There are plenty of rules (most of which are ignored in journalism) and one of them is that if you're reporting that something happened (feature or hard news), it better have just happened. If you write "Robert Altman decided to hail a taxi . . ." you better not have said, "I don't feel like walking, could we take a taxi?" You've influenced the actions.
Dexy's conducted an interview but, so heady from his false prize, he doesn't want to acknowledge his part in it. He wants to make it appear that he's just recording what was said for no reason. The talk didn't turn to love, Dexy steered it to that. (Hold on for a comment there.) As such he can't write: "The talk turns to love." That's not how it happened.
Comment? Who the hell is he? Loretta f**king Young asking, "You got a girl, soldier?"
I mean, really, come on. This is so disgusting. It probably won't even rate a critique. It'll probably be linked to as though it's good writing and good reporting when the reality is it's neither. He's made himself a joke, long, long ago. But now it's so bad, the jokes coming back from Iraq might go something like this: "Dexy? That old tramp. Throw a Hershey bar in the tent and he'll drop to all fours."
This is so bad, it's laughable. After you've had your laughs, go back and read it again for the details and realize how hollow Dexy's writing is when he's depending on word of mouth from stringers -- which he then writes up with his own byline. You don't get descriptions of the locale in those pieces, you don't get descriptions of the people in those pieces. It's not just that it's badly written (and a feature, not hard news), it's that it demonstrates (yet again) what a bad writer he is and has been.
I'm tired but ABC had a show, late night show, years ago. Called One or One to One or something like that. (When I go to sleep the title will hit me, I'm not logging back on.) And it was a half-hour show where the cameras were on the singular subject for the entire half-hour. The questioneer was off screen. But you knew what questions were being asked. Dexy's bound and determined to act like he just happened to overhear the following. He's acting as though he didn't shape every second of it. But he's not smart enough to cover his tracks.
In TV journalism, if this were a transcript, he'd be in trouble:
He peers into the scopes of his rifle.
"I'm a decent shot. Pretty good," he says. "Not like the snipers."
Another shot echoes in the distance. "What do I hunt? Whatever is in season . . ."
The whole monologue that is supposed to read like it just happened is influenced by Dexy's questions which are left out of the reporting and never noted or acknowledged. (It's the equvilant of a photo-journalist posing a photo as opposed to capturing what's actually happening on its own.)
He's bad, he's really bad. Picture him with Loretta Young hair, wearing a tight wool skirt and jacket, standing in his Joan Crawford f-me pumps, elbow resting on one hand while the other holds a lit cigarette to his mouth as he asks, "So soldier, got a girl?"
It's pretty frightening.
Well, he's always treated war as a video game, maybe it's not so surprising that he'd cast himself in some movie concept of 'war reporter.' But who knew he'd go for sob-sister?
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. And yes, we're posting at The Third Estate Sunday Review. Things are currently going up and everything should be up within 15 minutes (if you respond, "Yeah, right," I hear you -- Jim asked me to put that in.) Dallas grabbed the link for me (thank you, Dallas) and advises it's called "On a Rooftop in Ramadi" online. Meaning for the sountrack playing in Dexy's head he can choose from either Ronnie Spector or Cher's version of "Love On The Rooftop." Wo-oh-oh-oh-oooh.
For news on Iraq, check out "Iraq" and avoid Edward Wong -- but to follow up on the problems with his reporting yesterday, check out, "Uh, Correction Time, New York Times."
the new york times
dexter filkins
