Last night I lay in bed for a long time with my eyes closed
and the television on. CNN was covering ongoing
events in Tripoli and the surrounding regions and “covering” never seemed so
passive. I heard Anderson Cooper’s and Nic Robertson’s American and British voices slowly and steadily going back-and-forth, not
even rising and falling, regretting, clucking, and periodically praising each
other’s journalistic efforts. There was
a long exchange about whether the Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, whose location
Robertson had discovered earlier in the day in a Tripoli suburb, was faking final
illness and further discussion about the depth of impression his head left on the
pillow (indicating whether the pillow had been freshly placed under his head or
had been there for a while).
Constant
loud gunfire was going off in the background.
One of CNN’s female Middle East reporters (unfortunately I don’t
remember which one, but they all tend to
be pretty, bland, and western-looking like Cooper and Robertson, with Arab-sounding first or last names
and “mid-Atlantic” accents) said the gunfire was definitely celebratory and not battle-related. I imagined all of the reporters wearlng “fashion” t-shirts in varying shades
of gray (gray-blue, gray-brown, gray-black, gray-gray) and I knew I didn’t need
to open my eyes to confirm this. I couldn’t
discern even slightly their
point of view, which side they were on, or supposed I was on. A long time ago I remember hearing an English
teacher warn a fellow student away from using the phrase “a strange dream,” but
that’s what this was. To the extent it
wasn’t, that it was actually occurring, is even stranger.
1. Brice Marden: Dylan Study 2 (1963)
2. Brice Marden: Return 1 (1964-5)
