Monday, December 7, 2009

Car Bombs and Expats

The Estonian daily Postimees reported yesterday that American author and journalist Anne Applebaum, driving in a Warsaw suburb, heard a strange noise in her car, pulled over, got out, and then her car exploded. Whether it was real Hollywood-caliber explosion which threw the journalist to the ground in dramatic fashion, or whether it was a more garden-variety explosion which starts with smoking and burning, the daily did not report. The LC has been unable to corroborate the story with any western news source.
Ironically, Applebaum recently published a story in the American magazine Slate where she compared London and Lebanese car bombs. Postimees readers immediately drew comparisons to Anna Politkovkaya in the comments section, though most remarked simply about the similarity of the two writers' first names.
Reached for comment, Polish auto mechanic Lech Kaczyński, was skeptical. "Who knows if it was really a bomb," Kaczyński said, reaching for a pouch of chewing tobacco. "Maybe she just forgot to put oil in and the thing overheated." For fast-breaking coverage of the incident, stay tuned to the automotive section of LC.

Update: Postimees, and others, victims of selves. Nope, her car did not blow up. Get the story from Applebaum herself here.

5 comments:

  1. I haven't seen this in any western media either. I'm guessing maybe Anne's radiator was broken. You guys got an auto section?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I guess you got the story from an eastern news soruce, such as Postimees

    ReplyDelete
  3. It isn't at all fair, but nobody is going to believe shit from Postimees as long as its published in Estonian. It's like you got to add an English-language version if you want any credibility at all. Unless you're French or German or Spanish of course. But really no other languages count in journalism. If it didn't happen in French, German, Spanish or English, it never really happened.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here it is (AFP). Is that a real news source?

    http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=24&art_id=nw20091206173154961C729656

    ReplyDelete
  5. Daily Koan:

    If a car bomb explodes in Poland and no English-language media is there to cover it, did it really explode?

    ReplyDelete