It looked like Armageddon for sure. There on MSNBC was a
declaration: “Breaking News!” which went on to say that Israel had
dropped a “23-ton bomb” on a Hezbollah bunker in south Beirut. The
breaking news item kept reappearing last night during the
Scarborough show. Let’s see, you wonder, 23 tons is 46-thousand
pounds, beyond the capacity of the F-16s being used for the normal
work. How did the Israelis deliver such a behemoth, and is there
anything left of the Eastern Mediterranean?
It was of course one of those miscommunications which is allowed
to perpetuate itself either because producers don’t know the
difference or aren’t watching their product.
The Israeli command had said it had dropped 23-tons of ordnance
on that south Beirut target, but not all in one bomb of course. The
23-ton bomb does not exist except in the imagination of a confused
television news production assistant. And, perhaps, in the minds of
some hapless viewers.
