Sunday, January 4, 2009

Dumb newsreader question of the day (thanks to MSNBC)

Sadly, if you watch enough of the cable news channels, you get used to hearing dumb questions asked by the folks reading the news, but this one, courtesy of MSNBC's Alex Witt this morning, deserves some special recognition.

She was reading a story about the conflict in Gaza. Apparently an Israel soldier who was wounded in the fighting, also on the same day happened to have his house struck by a rocket fired by Hamas forces in Gaza. Now most people would find this pretty ironic, Alex thought to ask if Hamas had deliberately targeted the soldier's house.

The immediate problem with this question is that a Qassam rocket is basically it is a giant bottle rocket with a small bomb strapped to its nose, and if you have ever lit a bottle rocket, you know they’re impossible to aim. The best Hamas can do with a Qassam is to point it in the general direction they would like it to fly, light it and hope the thing doesn't blow up in their face (which one did last week, killing two Palestinians, half the total number of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets so far in this conflict). So there is no way Hamas could drop one of these things on a specific house.

I'm ok with thinking Alex didn't know this much about the Qassam, but how did she think some Hamas rocket crew would even know the address of a specific soldier? Did she think one Hamas guy turned to another and said: "hey, look over there, isn't that Pvt. Rabin? Quick, bring out your laptop and look up the Sderot phone book, and get Google Maps up too!"

Oh Alex...
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3 comments:

fanofgrendel said...

Alex half-Witt

Anonymous said...

I knew that under all that fake blond hair, there was really no brain.

Anonymous said...

choose another time to blast Witt, im sure you can find some. this ws not an instance of asking a dumb question at all. at the very least, it educates the audience. havent you ever seen a questioner ask a question they already knew the answer to? use your half-witt.