Correspondent 'dos: Tintins now rival shaved baldies

Speaking of headliners, the Feral Beast can't help but notice trends in the way foreign correspondents style themselves these days. The vain guys, that is.
Sure, for years now, the most prominent look has been the Alpha male, testosterone-heavy baldy. It's a low-maintenance look which is guaranteed to be wind-proof. Think Andre Agassi/Bruce Willis/ Yul Brynner/ Mr Clean: just shave the whole head and avoid the unattractive Friar Tuck/ George Costanza fringe that can emerge. I can count dozens of presenters, photographers, and reporters who fall into this category. The uber-snapper John Stanmeyer of VII agency, BBC presenter and former hostage, Alan Johnston, Matt Walberg of the Chicago Tribune, CNN's Karl Penhaul and NY Times Baghdad reporter, Steve Farrell, spring to mind immediately.


But if you check on-screen and scrutinize photo-bylines, you will be sure to spot the quiff, which can make younger and with-it journalists look nearly as cool as video-jockeys. Think Astro-Boy or Tintin. (Hmmm, I don't mean to imply that foreign correspondents look rather drawn these days.)

It is an utterly appropriate look, given that Tintin is the world's most enduring international comic book correspondent, except maybe for Clark Kent, Superman's alter ego. Yet Kent was on the metro desk, after all, and intentionally missed all the big scoops because Superman was on the scene instead.
Tintin, the boy reporter, began his first adventure in 1929 in the Belgian comic strip Le Petit Vingtieme. Created by illustrator Georges Remi, aka Hergé, Tintin became an icon with his trademark crested quiff, plus-four trousers and his faithful dog Snowy. Each year more than three million copies of Tintin’s adventures are sold across 50 countries in 40 different languages. Note that these days, Tintin is not considered politically correct; the US chain bookstore Borders recently pulled copies of Tintin in the Congo from its shelves because of too many racist stereotypes in the colonialist-era text. Tintin in Tehran is not there, though, because it has not been published, yet it seems pretty relevant in these dire Islamaphobic times. (See mock-up cover at right, with its alarming image of Snowy as road-kill! Not, apparently, from an IED. Read it and weep.)

Tintin wannabes we have spotted lately include CNN entertainment reporter A.J. Hammer, their news reporter Michael Holmes, the BBC's London presenter Matthew Wright, the Guardian's Middle East ace, Rory McCarthy; and the list keeps growing. Even footballer celeb David Beckham had a go. It's the bald truth: things are looking hairier for journalists abroad.

There is one exception to prove this rule: a singular old-school journo who looks like he takes his grooming tips straight from Bigfoot rather than from the Belgian cartoonist Herge. That would be NY Times' two time Pulitzer-winner, John W. Burns. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart once chortled that Burns was wearing his hair on the outside of his helmet.
But now that Burns is stationed in London, it has been noticed that he goes to his barber far more frequently. How soon before we see him in a Tintinesque quiff? His untamed mane already is snowy.

Jerusalem's twisted "Gruesome Post" disses BBC hostage

Not everyone is cheering the release of hostage Alan Johnston (left). Today, the Jerusalem Post was in typical strident anti-BBC fettle. Feral Beast received a link from one of its regular readers to "this extraordinarily petty and illogical bit of crap" : Why I'm not joining the party. The one good thing to have come out of the Alan Johnston kidnapping is that we now know, definitively, that BBC claims to fairness are false.
The author? British Professor Geoffrey Alderman. His spiteful piece dissects the words which hostage Alan Johnston was made to speak under duress on a kidnap video distributed by the Army of Islam, who held him captive inside Gaza for 114 days. He finds Johnston cowardly when compared with the "integrity" of ex-NY Times reporter Judith Miller, who went to jail rather than reveal a confidential source!
Alderman writes:

EVEN IF Johnston had been threatened that he would forfeit his life unless he launched into a public condemnation of Israel and Britain as the joint authors of all the misfortunes that have befallen the Muslim world, I have to say that I would have expected him, as a professional, to have defended that professional integrity, whatever the risk. But Johnston, sadly, did not rise to the occasion. And the most charitable explanation I can come up with for this extraordinary conduct is that he must actually believe what his captors asked him to say.

If I am wrong, Johnston will no doubt lose no further time in publicly apologizing both to Israel and to Britain for what he said on camera to the Army of Islam video. But will such an apology ever be made?

As to the manner of his release, Johnston allowed himself (and he was clearly enjoying it) to be used as the centerpiece in what we have to recognize was a brilliant piece of Hamas propaganda, showing a humane face in order to mask its true terrorist identity.

Truth, honor and professionalism seem to me to have been sacrificed so that one man may go free. In this I personally see nothing whatever to celebrate, and that is why I am not joining in the celebrations.

When Johnston was freed last week, he did not take time to repudiate the words his abductors forced him to say and that, coupled with his father calling Alan a "friend of the Palestinians" has infuriated Israelis and Jews who rate the BBC and the UN to be pro-terrorist organizations because they criticise Israeli policy. Some of their ilk suggest that Johnston staged his own kidnap in order for Hamas to be seen as able negotiators.
The conspiratorial and hysterical tone of this article better suits a flamer on some wing-nut conservative blog and is unfit for a serious newspaper. This paper is published daily (except on the Sabbath) and much of the copy, particularly on the op-ed page, is such jingoistic dross that it gets dismissed by logical or inquiring Israelis. Columnist Caroline Glick's rants are particularly heavy-handed and lacking in nuance. The Post's former editor-in-chief was the preternaturally young Bret Stephens, now on the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal. Earlier, Stephens took the BBC to task for placing Johnston at jeopardy in Gaza and assuming they had won him political immunity through their pro-Fatah slant. Stephens neglected to see the irony for the newspaper of the beheaded hostage Daniel Pearl to blame a kidnap on the boss's complacence. It is about time that the immature tone of the Jerusalem Post gets more dignified. We can all drink to that!