How Buffy Saved a Baghdad Reporter

Watching cult classic kept NPR correspondent calm in war zone
By Elizabeth Wolff,  Newser Staff
Posted May 21, 2008 10:55 AM CDT
How Buffy Saved a Baghdad Reporter
Buffy the Vampire Slayer   (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

NPR correspondent Jamie Tarabay says that watching DVDs of the cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer series saved her life—psychologically—while reporting from Baghdad. “It can be a very lonesome gig,” Tarabay recalls, and watching the series’ vampire-fighting star “deal with her private war zone helped me deal with mine.”

“Buffy always reminded me that she was just a girl, like me … she lived on the hell mouth, I lived in Baghdad; she fought vampires with wooden stakes and, well, I always thought most media spokesmen were real blood-suckers.” (More Buffy the Vampire Slayer stories.)

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