It's an old news phenomenon by now, captured best in the made-for-TV movie Live From Baghdad, which was adapted from CNN producer Robert Wiener's memoir about the struggle for "access" during the first Gulf War. In the lead-up to the repulsion of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the 24-hour cable news channels were never without scenes of anti-American denunciations throughout Iraq — supposed "evidence" of the pro-Saddam furor into which the United States and its allies were foisting themselves. But as Wiener's celluloid chroncile made plain, once the cameras were switched off, the mobs disbursed and the "Bush Bosh" placards were returned to their easy-access state-owned cubby holes. What happened? Wasn't this is the country that would later re-elect President Saddam with 100% majority and no opposing candidates on the ballot? (Those who scoffed at the notion of Iraqis greeting U.S. servicemen as liberators with chocolates and flowers were usually the first to point to these broadcast rallies as proof of the widespread support the Baathist tyrant enjoyed among "his own people.")
Well, yesterday's Potemkin Saddamists are today's Rage Boys. Hitch sums up the case against the Zelig of Muslim disdain:
The acceptance of an honor by a distinguished ex-Muslim writer, who exercised his freedom to abandon his faith and thus courts a death sentence for apostasy in any case, came shortly after the remaining minarets of the Askariya shrine in Samarra were brought down in shards. You will recall that the dome itself was devastated by an explosion more than a year ago—an outrage described in one leading newspaper as the work of "Sunni insurgents," the soft name for al-Qaida. But what does "Rage Boy" have to say about this appalling desecration of a Muslim holy place? What resolutions were introduced into the "parliament" of Pakistan, denouncing such shameful profanity? You already know the answer to those questions.
You just know there's some competition in an Islamabad madrasa that states if you attend 20 apoplectic Islamist protests in a single year, you get to sample a few of the virgins in this life. Rage Boy's earned 'em.