Fun With Islamic Rage Boy

Remember Islamic Rage Boy?

We first saw him here, protesting the Pope:



Recently some sharp-eyed observers noticed that same mug showing up in several photo-ops of islamic rage, i.e. he's a "professional" protester and part of the islamic propaganda campaign, like Green Helmet Guy.

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing, contextual, fact-based (if occasionally speculative) media criticism I have always asked of my students. And the results have been devastating: news photos and video shown to be miscaptioned, radically altered, or staged (and worse, re-staged) for the camera. Surely “green helmet guy,” “double smoke,” “the missiles that were actually flares,” “the wedding mannequin from nowhere,” the “magical burning Koran,” the “little girl who actually fell off a swing” and “keep filming!” will now enter the pantheon of shame of photojournalism.

A few photo-illusions are probably due to the lust for the most sensational or striking-looking image—that is, more aesthetic bias than political prejudice. Also, many photographers know that war victims are money shots and some will break the rules of the profession to cash in. But true as well is that local stringers and visiting anchors alike seem to have succumbed either to lens-enabled Stockholm syndrome or accepted being the uncredited Hezbollah staff photographer so as to be able to file stories and images in militia-controlled areas.

So said a photojournalism professor last year. Add to the list, Islamic Rage Boy!

Evidence and full roundup of Islamic Rage Boy is here.

Even Christopher Hitchens wrote about the truth behind these enemy propaganda efforts, which are transmitted to us by gullible and/or willing wire services:

We may have to put up with the Rage Boys of the world, but we ought not to do their work for them, and we must not cry before we have been hurt.
...
Rage Boy keenly looks forward to anger, while we worriedly anticipate trouble, and fret about etiquette, and prepare the next retreat. If taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean living at the pleasure of Rage Boy, and that I am not prepared to do.

The appropriate response, of course, is mockery.

See the photoshop fun they're having with Islamic Rage Boy Parodies!



(above parody found at Pajamas Media)

Totten has more analysis on what MSM photos hide and distort about the Middle East as well:

The previous year Lebanon’s Syrian-installed President Emile Lahoud remarked that the March 14 rally against his patrons was tiny. March 14 responded by saying Zoom Out so the world could see how many people actually showed up to protest downtown.

Here’s the zoomed out picture.



That crowd was genuinely enormous. That’s Martyr’s Square, the area Hezbollah wasn’t allowed to even set foot in. Almost a third of the country’s population showed up that day.

When you zoom out the cameras on Hezbollah, Rage Boy, and the masked men of Fatah, they look pathetic and small by comparison. Zoom out on the liberals of Lebanon and you’ll see an ocean of people.

According to an old saying, cameras don’t lie. But sometimes they do. They conceal as well as reveal.

Reality is largely irrelevant in my profession, I'm sorry to say.