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Thursday, July 8, 2010

Fiction Friday: “Don’t Go Near the Water” edition

In a recent post entitled, IDF battles should be scripted by... PR experts?, blogger Carl in Jerusalem discussed the inane suggestion of a certain newspaper opinion writer:

“[The writer] argues that Israel is losing the PR war because it's allowing the IDF to determine battle conditions. Instead, he claims, we should orchestrate IDF actions for the media.”

Carl correctly concluded:

“Sorry, but no. I'd rather win the military battle than the PR one given a choice between the two. The terror organizations can make PR [their] one priority because they are indifferent to loss of life - their own or others. We are not, not should we be. We must place military necessity first.”

Yet the logical fallacies and tactical and strategic absurdities inherent in the op-ed writer’s arguments aren’t the only problems with his claim.

You see, I’m no lawyer (nor do I play one in the J-Blogosphere), but I suspect that copyright issues may be involved in cases – such as this one - where life attempts to imitate art… ;-)

After all, the idea of forcing the military experts to defer to the PR guys is something straight out of one of my all-time favorite books: William Brinkley’s hysterical Don't Go Near the Water.

This wonderful, lighthearted, and hilariously funny novel focuses on a US naval PR unit based on Tulura (a fictional Pacific island) during World War II.

The unit’s commander earnestly believes that nothing is as important as PR and can’t understand why much – if not all – of the naval brass disagrees with him.

In other words, the aforementioned opinion writer has apparently run out of original ideas and has thus now resorted to out-of-print 1950’s bestsellers for inspiration…

smile_teeth

BTW, if you’ve never read Don't Go Near the Water, I suggest that you immediately head over to your local library or preferred online source and get yourself a copy of this highly-recommended romantic comedy. Escapist reading at its best, it’s my vision of the ideal book for a long summer Shabbat afternoon…

!שבת שלום ומבורך

6 comments:

  1. Book recommendation - OK! I'll put on the list.

    Shavua tov.

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  2. So many good books; so little time to read them all!

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  3. Batya - As I wrote in the post, it's one of my all-time favorites.

    Leora - Shavua tov and chodesh tov to you too!

    Ilana-Davita - Very true! B"H for Shabbat, because otherwise I'd have almost no time for offline reading... :-)

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  4. The same is too often true for me.

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  5. Ilana-Davita - I suspect that many people feel the same way...

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