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Contrary to what you’re thinking, I’m not actually an expert on Georgian politics.  But I did hear about this story last night on Q and I couldn’t believe it:

Over the weekend a fake—though, apparently real enough-loooking—news broadcast showed Russian forces invading Georgia and on their way to the capital of Tbilisi. They also said that Saakashvili, the president, was dead.  Mind you, this is the country that, in real life, just underwent a crisis with Russia. Anyway, the program, though only on one channel, created widespread panic across the country, everyone thinking that their country was falling apart… … … Ha ha ha! …Oh? What’s that?  That doesn’t sound funny or entertaing at all?  It sounds absolutely terrifying? Yeah, that’s probably right.

I should add that apparently the program started with a warning, saying that this was fake.  Anyway, you can read more about the story here or just do a little Google News research.  People suspect that the ruling party in Georgia was somehow behind this because of the way the opposition party was portrayed and because there’s a few important elections coming up and so on.  The idea is that, even though the population would now obviously gather that this was fake, a certain sense of fear of instability would remain and this would benefit the ruling party. In any case, I don’t know what I’m talking about and I won’t really go into all that because, again, I clearly do not know shit about this country and its internal politics.

But, how messed up is this story? Out of curiosity, I’d like to see the program. Apparently, they used footage of Obama and other international figures with fake voiceover condemning Russia in the “attack”.  It must’ve looked pretty damn real.  Which is nuts.  What entertainment value could this have? What point could this have been making?

In the news, they’re relating this story to Orson Welles and War of the Worlds, which, at the time, a lot of people were pretty upset about.  But that was about a fake Martian invasion of earth, which is decidedly different than a fake broadcast about Russians invading your country when it seems like that’s an actual possibility.

War of the Worlds on the radio was an innovative and creative use of its medium, telling a sci-fi story in a new way. (I think… Was that kind of thing done before?  Had others done a fake news broadcast like that? I guess at least not to that extent.)  But maybe it’s more cool in retrospect… I guess if you tuned into the show in the middle of the broadcast, and this kind of fictional, very real-sounding news broadcast hadn’t happened before, and you were nervous about the approach of WWII, and you were a little stupid, then you might think that that shit was real.  In any case, the broadcast retrospectively makes for a great story in itself, even if it at the time it may have been sensational and purposely deceptive in its realness.

But, this thing in Georgia?  Oh man. Russia is scarier than aliens.  And, again I haven’t seen this thing, but I doubt that the guy who made this thing is going to become some kind of Georgian Orson Welles.

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