“Anyone here been raped and speaks English?”
– Unnamed British TV reporter in the 1960s among a crowd of terrified Belgian colonials who were evacuating from the Congo.
From Jack Shafer’s smart piece (no surprise there) about why journalists need to constantly press ahead in emotionally turbulent times (such as the scene at Virginia Tech right now).
I highly recommend Chief of Station: Congo by Larry Devlin. It is a memoir of Devlin’s stint as CIA station chief in the Congo during that time period.