Aerosolpoetic

Regretfully I have not been keeping up with the news. My nose has been buried in pages of html, css, and php for the past couple of weeks, months even. However, my eye for vilifying media photos and skewed journalism remains unchanged.

I was standing in line at the grocery store today and I came across the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly which displayed a sort of American Gangster film poster with accompanying headlines.

Russell Crowe’s face must have taken up 90% of the page with Denzel bathing in his shadow, almost footnoted in the background of the picture.

I thought to myself, who is the movie really suppose to be about and why the fuck is his face so big. When I got home I opened my powerbook and google searched the image so I could have visuals for a blog entry about how fucked up Entertainment Weekly is. What I found was the same cover, only this time Denzel was in front, but covering roughly 60-70% of the front cover. I mean come on, a black man can’t get 90%, it’s really his movie, shit.

Anyway, I mention that to mention this. Right below the section for Entertainment weekly was this, the newest issue of Newsweek. The headline boldly states,”The most dangerous Nation in the world isn’t Iraq, It’s Pakistan.” I take issue with this cover and any media of the sort because it takes a country, a people, a single human being and turns them into something inhuman.

This cover tells me that i should not only fear Iraq, a country this United States of America has bombed without ceasing for years, but I should also fear Pakistan, apparently the most dangerous nation in the world. Some of my best friends are from Pakistan. What do i have to fear in the phone calls from them just to see how I am doing, or the gut busting laughter they incite during late movie nights.

Why should I not fear these, so called, United States, the government that abandoned my brothers and sisters during Hurricane Katrina, the government that is doing its best to crucify the Jena 6. America has bombed countless countries off the map, starved children with sanctions and imprisoned its own citizens in concentration camps. Dangerous? An understatement if I’ve ever heard one.