Hans van der Kamp

Yesterday I read an article signed by ‘a Hollywood reporter’ distribited by Reuters. It was a news item about Engel, a freelance journalist who found himself ‘virtually alone’ in Baghdad during the invasion, because ‘almost every other Western journalist had fled the country’. Is that so, Mr. Hollywood reporter, I asked myself. What about the French camera crews who gave some of the best coverage during the invasion?

The French do not seem to exist in the eyes of many Americans so I accept the idea that the poor schmuck felt like he was on his own carrying a large bag of syringes with anti-nerve gas that he hoped he would never have to use. At that point my eyes had started to water over all that misery and hardship of a freelance reporter being stuck without backup — if the Hollywood reporter hadn’t been in a rush to explain that this lost soul in Baghdad is currently NBC News’ chief Middle East correspondent.

Okay, so Engel’s idealism to cover this war was apparently based on the fact that he desperately wanted a desk job. Boy, do we live in a competitive world, or what?

Engel’s plan could have easily backfired, as the stories about the nerve gas would have been as true as the stories from the same source telling the world that the ‘liberation’ of Iraq wouldn’t take more than a week or two. He must have anticipated that fact because he had a plan B; he was carrying a video camera to cover the events. Not to air any of the material, mind you; just to keep a modest video diary.

Why do I never trust modest people?

So, here we are years later and there is a pile of boxes filled with cam tapes. NBC News senior vp (and now “Nightly News” executive producer) Alex Wallace began to dig through the tapes ‘with an eye to the hour-long documentary that will air in the coming week’.

Engel is quite an intellectual. His intriguing comment on the result: ‘I don’t think this documentary is pro-war; I don’t think it’s anti-war. It tries not to be judgmental.’ I could almost see Engel leaning over his desk with that all American attitude: ‘It is what it is, man.’

No of course one does not want to be judgmental in a documentary that is going to be aired in an America where 40% of the people still think that the invasion of Iraq was/is a good thing. On the other hand — Americans mostly do not like documentaries that are not judgmental either. So what’s left?

Yes, you guessed right; that is where the Hollywood reporter had to come in, boasting away about the graphic nature of the documentary. You can see a hand blown off!

All right, now we are talking money; we have the violence, we have the dumb-ass attitude, now all we need is some romance to finish it off.

Well, romance must have been hard to find during those bloody days and nights in Baghdad, so Engel’s divorce is running through the documentary instead. Of course he is not dwelling on it. Quote: ‘Engel said he was tempted not to mention it all but thought it was important because it mirrors what was happening to Iraqis and the American soldiers and their families back home’.

See, that is why I do not trust modest people. Modesty is the standard cover up of the megalomaniac. This is no documentary, this a film script. The documentary is just a pilot. In two or three years we will see Engel’s story turned into a box office success.

And yes, if we insist on being distasteful; a divorce is just the kind of metaphor we are currently looking for to describe the misery of the Iraqis.

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Today the Dutch government was celebrating the fact that it was 50 years ago that the foundation for a unified Europe was laid. I mean, it was an old idea that uncle Adolf had tried to impose on us earlier on without success, but for them it is all about future and there is no place for the past. Most Dutch citizens were not celebrating today because for them Europe is synonymous to the Euro, a currency they sincerely hate because it is their conviction that all goods doubled in price since its introduction.

So it was time for our politicians to remind us of all the good that will come from a strong EU. They even invited some school children who have no recollection of a beer costing 2 Dutch Guilders instead of 2 Euro (4.4 Guilders) to remind us older people of the joys and the happiness a strong European Union will bring.

Well, for me it was all water over the hill, because I already was all European at age 4, as you can see on the photograph above. Please do not think that somebody forced me to wear that silly German hat with a feather. At that age I was as clever as I was obnoxious, so I had insisted to live up to the German dress code before crossing the German border for our summer vacation — as a gesture of good will. I was deeply afraid that my mother would continuously remind them of the fact that she had lost her whole family in World War II. Just in case things went bad after all I wore dark shades so that I would not be recognized on later visits.

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I woke up and snow was falling over the roofs of Amsterdam, hopefully to mark the end of winter rather than the beginning of spring. I made a photograph, took a cup of coffee and had a look at my statistics program to see that my previous post had become more popular over the weekend than I would have anticipated. Also there was a nasty comment on that post by somebody who had only read the first half, so I deleted it. From a rational point of view I should not have posted about Oudkerk or the people around him, but I had to get it off my chest sooner or later and I obviously chose ‘later, much later’ on a harmless, personal weblog.

We all face situations in which we feel treated badly by people who would do better taking a good look in the mirror first before they judge others. Sometimes these degrading experiences can mark our lives and the memories can slowly grow into a mental tumor. For those of you who are afraid I will make a sequel based on that theme, do not worry.

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