Monday, April 06, 2009

Slow day in the office, Mr Levy?

We, the bloggers, can allow ourselves to write (or not to write) about whatever tickles our fancy on any given day. There is no carrot at the end of the road, no fixed hours and, aside of a very few followers, no captive audience. Only other bloggers that drop by from time to time to commiserate.

It's completely different with journalists. There are schedules, editors, readers, the salary day, the presses, the stresses, the... whatever, you get the drift. So what do you do when you* are a Gideon Levy of Haaretz doubtful fame, there is a slow day in the office and, besides, due to your total lack of charm and tact, general anti-establishment tendencies and a poisoned pen, no one tells you anything for quite a long time?

Well, what you do is sit down, stir your accumulated bile and poison with your trusty pen and produce a masterpiece on a subject you don't know anything about, don't have any opinion of, but, as usual, are loath to confess to these two drawbacks. A result: a totally empty of contents and disconnected page in Haaretz titled Was Israel's reported strike in Sudan an exercise in propaganda?.

I can save my readers the need to read the article, by quoting the only two factual sentences in it:
Nobody [read Gideon Levy] knows for sure what was bombed, how much and why. Sudan, after all, is far away.
Everything else is... how to define it? No, not hearsay, Mr Levy doesn't even attempt to add some invented titillating details to his piece. Just a jamboree of bile, poison and condescending, so typical for a pathetic hack on a slow day.

(*) I don't mean you, my dear reader. Far be it from me to compare a normal human being with Gideon Levy of Haaretz. No, really...

P.S. Fresh from the press - an example of better things to do and how to do it: Urinating dog triggered argument resulting in 3 officers' deaths. See, Mr Levy, a much more respectable way for you to earn your shekels.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

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