Thursday, January 26, 2006
Rock the casbah
When I first spotted today’s RedEye in its coin-op rack at the Arch, I thought to myself, “Hey, that’s a really cool design.”
And it is. It’s the rare instance of a great pop icon essentially acting as the art, on its own: If you live on this planet, you have already seen the Burger King commercials with the terrifyingly kitschy resurrected plastic head of the King from its ’70s campaign, Burger King Kingdom. Lately, BK has run spots where they take iconic football footage and swap the Burger King in for one of the characters — say, Steve Young’s legendary rush against the Vikings, or Deion Sanders. The article in RedEye asks what, exactly, is up with that, and that Nextel commercial with the two guys dancing. The cover art is fantastic. Again, I think this is a success, visually speaking.
But there’s a problem. The RedEye barely mentions what I think is probably the single most important news story of the day; and, odder still, it’s the Trib’s lead story in their rack edition. That would be the story of how Hamas will be forming the new Palestinian government. An outright terrorist organization has now been elected to government, possibly for the first time in the history of the world (Batasuna, Sinn Fein, et al., are political affiliates of terrorist organizations, not actually the terrorist organization itself).
Now, I realize that commercials are very important to the RedEye’s readers, and there’s probably an argument to be made that they impact its readers more. But sometimes, the bigger story has to win. Are you telling me the story about commercials couldn’t hold till tomorrow?
I have, for the sake of argument, made a super-wiki-wiki dummy of how I imagine today’s cover should have looked. (Hi RedEye guys: Sorry the quality’s so bad, but I didn’t exactly have the Quark doc to play with. Or even a PDF.)
This post is not a judgment on the merits of democracy, of Fatah vs. Hamas, or anything like that. I am attempting to be purely non-judgmental — anyone who disputes that Hamas is a terrorist organization lives on another planet, and I think that’s a pretty big story. President Bush said, today, that the United States will not conduct relations with a foreign government which it helped create, because it is run by a terrorist organization that does not acknowledge its neighbor’s right to exist. I think that’s a pretty big story. These were democratic elections, which means that the people of Palestine chose Hamas over a formerly terrorist organization which has denounced violence against civilians, Fatah. I think that’s a pretty damn big story.
It’s irresponsible for the RedEye to ignore all of that, which might be 2006’s biggest story depending on how things shape up, just because they had a cutesy feature package ready to go. You have to sit on it.
And it is. It’s the rare instance of a great pop icon essentially acting as the art, on its own: If you live on this planet, you have already seen the Burger King commercials with the terrifyingly kitschy resurrected plastic head of the King from its ’70s campaign, Burger King Kingdom. Lately, BK has run spots where they take iconic football footage and swap the Burger King in for one of the characters — say, Steve Young’s legendary rush against the Vikings, or Deion Sanders. The article in RedEye asks what, exactly, is up with that, and that Nextel commercial with the two guys dancing. The cover art is fantastic. Again, I think this is a success, visually speaking.
But there’s a problem. The RedEye barely mentions what I think is probably the single most important news story of the day; and, odder still, it’s the Trib’s lead story in their rack edition. That would be the story of how Hamas will be forming the new Palestinian government. An outright terrorist organization has now been elected to government, possibly for the first time in the history of the world (Batasuna, Sinn Fein, et al., are political affiliates of terrorist organizations, not actually the terrorist organization itself).
Now, I realize that commercials are very important to the RedEye’s readers, and there’s probably an argument to be made that they impact its readers more. But sometimes, the bigger story has to win. Are you telling me the story about commercials couldn’t hold till tomorrow?
I have, for the sake of argument, made a super-wiki-wiki dummy of how I imagine today’s cover should have looked. (Hi RedEye guys: Sorry the quality’s so bad, but I didn’t exactly have the Quark doc to play with. Or even a PDF.)
This post is not a judgment on the merits of democracy, of Fatah vs. Hamas, or anything like that. I am attempting to be purely non-judgmental — anyone who disputes that Hamas is a terrorist organization lives on another planet, and I think that’s a pretty big story. President Bush said, today, that the United States will not conduct relations with a foreign government which it helped create, because it is run by a terrorist organization that does not acknowledge its neighbor’s right to exist. I think that’s a pretty big story. These were democratic elections, which means that the people of Palestine chose Hamas over a formerly terrorist organization which has denounced violence against civilians, Fatah. I think that’s a pretty damn big story.
It’s irresponsible for the RedEye to ignore all of that, which might be 2006’s biggest story depending on how things shape up, just because they had a cutesy feature package ready to go. You have to sit on it.
