The Billiken's Bluff

This video shows a non-threatening Hezbollah spokesman, in near pitch perfect English (complete with oxford shirt con khakis), taking CNN reporter, Nic Robertson, on a tour of the bombed out buildings in southern Lebanon.

CNN describes the video as:

"We will not surrender"
A defiant Hezbollah representative takes CNN's Nic Robertson on a tour of damage in Lebanon. (July 18)

Billiken's Bluff describes the video as:

"Shoot me (with the camera), shoot away"

An Arab-looking Patton Oswalt, speaking in nerdy alto voice, takes CNN on tour of southern Beirut.



I think this makes Hezbollah less threatening, more accessible. This isn't Bin Laden, turbaned in a cave, reading passages from the Koran, wagging his finger and waging jihad. This is a chubby dude in an oxford shirt who runs kind of funny. His voice cracks. He looks exasperated.

The point Patton was trying to make was that Israel air strikes hit all the wrong targets, they bombed restaurants, apartment buildings, not caches of weapons, and Hezbollah planning quarters. Maybe this is true, maybe not, it's unclear from the video. But this is besides my point. The world-wide jihadi movement has done an excellent job of branding themselves with a certain image - televised beheadings, militia men brandishing AK-47s, ski masks and faces wrapped. They have truly terrorized the world, western and eastern.

So it's good and all to have someone in Hezbollah who can communicate on a public relations level with CNN and show us varying points of view. But his whole manner of dress and presentation of speech takes away from the broader political/military movement he wants so badly to bring about. Something along the lines of this guy from the RNC in 2004:



Check it out.