"We're living in a world gone mad." It's not terribly original, but that's how I began a somewhat emotional verbal riff earlier today at the newly renovated CCTV International studios here in Beijing. I was there to do some commentary about the peculiarly perverse and horrific confluence of the Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal and the "beheading" of the 26 year-old American civilian, Nick Berg, for tonight's "DIALOGUE" on CCTV International Channel 9.
I must have gone a bit over the top because the beautiful, so very intelligent young Chinese lady I've come to know well and admire greatly, who was producing that segment, had tears in her eyes by the end. I had to wrap up the sound bite myself, as she was quite distracted and had momentarily forgotten we were doing TV. In truth, so had I; I was finally letting go with the jumbled up emotions of these past days and weeks of shocking news and images.
I went on to say that I have spent most of my adult life studying and writing about violence, crime, justice, injustice, punishment, revenge, retribution--but that I did not understand what we are facing now. This is new and different, terribly different; but also it is very old and not at all different, we just have to skip back in the clock of our souls by centuries, millenniums, actually, for its equivalent.
Soon there will be a full essay under this title and with this theme. But tonight, I want only to illustrate the point with the images; if you are not too squeamish, study them and look for the common denominator between them all. Then we can discuss it with some degree of objectivity, and maybe some very sad understanding.
I will actually only provide the links, you will have to choose to look at them:
