My Spanish is barely good enough to get me fed in the mercado, but sometimes I like to watch the local Spanish language programming, especially during the news hour. Tonight there was a story about a soldier, I couldn't quite get the whole picture but his name was Juan Lopez and his funeral was in Guanajuato, which is a city in central Mexico.
The man doing the voice-over had a perfect voice and his tone was exactly right, somber and genuine, dignified without being maudlin; and it had none of that insinuating familiarity US news is saturated with, where the media tries to sound like one of the neighbors, sharing your grief, but comes off sounding cheap, false and scammy. The guy on Noticieros sounded exactly like what he was, a news guy doing a sad story who hadn't sold his soul to the corporate pimp-God. He wasn't pretending to share grief he didn't feel but he honored the grief he was reporting.
So then there's this American military I couldn't tell what rank, obviously in command, there was a US flag draped over the coffin, and later a funeral procession. Evidently Lopez was an American soldier. But right at the beginning as they put the coffin in the hearse there was some kind of scene, and these Mexican soldiers in dark green fatigues were being forcefully told to get back by the American, who looked Air Force to me. He also looked peeved. And arrogant. It's hard to know exactly what's up listening like that but I guarantee you a lot of people saw what I saw, and saw it as I did.
Like dissent within the United States, the growing anger and resentment of the rest of the world is being hidden from regular Americans. As are its causes.
The man doing the voice-over had a perfect voice and his tone was exactly right, somber and genuine, dignified without being maudlin; and it had none of that insinuating familiarity US news is saturated with, where the media tries to sound like one of the neighbors, sharing your grief, but comes off sounding cheap, false and scammy. The guy on Noticieros sounded exactly like what he was, a news guy doing a sad story who hadn't sold his soul to the corporate pimp-God. He wasn't pretending to share grief he didn't feel but he honored the grief he was reporting.
So then there's this American military I couldn't tell what rank, obviously in command, there was a US flag draped over the coffin, and later a funeral procession. Evidently Lopez was an American soldier. But right at the beginning as they put the coffin in the hearse there was some kind of scene, and these Mexican soldiers in dark green fatigues were being forcefully told to get back by the American, who looked Air Force to me. He also looked peeved. And arrogant. It's hard to know exactly what's up listening like that but I guarantee you a lot of people saw what I saw, and saw it as I did.
Like dissent within the United States, the growing anger and resentment of the rest of the world is being hidden from regular Americans. As are its causes.
