We Need Another Hero
The New York Times asks a question that only the New York Times can answer: Where are the U.S. war heroes in Iraq?
Oh, it knows the answer.
Let's see: their stories aren't being told because of the military's reticence? Now, you know the Times would be plenty willing to go under, over, around, or through military brass to get at another Gitmo story. They're not being told because of the White House's PR approach? But Ernie Pyle never waited for a telegram from Roosevelt before sitting down at his Corona typewriter and hammering out some account of a common soldier's bravery he'd just witnessed in the mountains of Italy.
Ye, Gods. The Times is all but saying it doesn't tell you about the American heroes in the Iraq war because the military never bothered to a press release about them up to 42nd Street.
"The culture at large?" What's that supposed to mean? A paragraph or two later the Times writes about "a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero," an even more curious statement. We celebrate victims, not heroes? Who's this "we?" The readers of the NYT? Or is it a case of the media core presuming its values, its tendencies to elevate victims and feel awkward in the presence of heroes, are the national ones.
Really, the 600-pound gorilla in the middle of the story is the Times itself, which never really addresses the role of the media in all this. As though there was direct and instantaneous communication between the triangle points of "war" "White House" and "public," with no media involvement.
No editors are interviewed in the story. No war correspondents or photographers. Instead, the writer goes into great detail about military culture, and the current U.S. leadership's concerns about riling up public opinion, and its emphasis on group effort, not individual heroics (what about "An Army of One?").
Yet all throughout, we're treated to this not-so-subtle suggestion that it's the readers, not the media, who can't handle hero stories any more and don't want to read them. Such as this oddly contorted quote:
No, I guess not. That's why so many tens of thousands of us read every Michael Yon post.
I didn't see it until after I had written this, but Shrinkwrapped makes essentially the same point.
Oh, it knows the answer.
ONE soldier fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops in a fierce defense of his outnumbered Army unit, saving dozens of American lives before he himself was killed. Another soldier helped lead a team that killed 27 insurgents who had ambushed her convoy. And then there was the marine who, after being shot, managed to tuck an enemy grenade under his stomach to save the men in his unit, dying in the process.
Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.
Let's see: their stories aren't being told because of the military's reticence? Now, you know the Times would be plenty willing to go under, over, around, or through military brass to get at another Gitmo story. They're not being told because of the White House's PR approach? But Ernie Pyle never waited for a telegram from Roosevelt before sitting down at his Corona typewriter and hammering out some account of a common soldier's bravery he'd just witnessed in the mountains of Italy.
Ye, Gods. The Times is all but saying it doesn't tell you about the American heroes in the Iraq war because the military never bothered to a press release about them up to 42nd Street.
"The culture at large?" What's that supposed to mean? A paragraph or two later the Times writes about "a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero," an even more curious statement. We celebrate victims, not heroes? Who's this "we?" The readers of the NYT? Or is it a case of the media core presuming its values, its tendencies to elevate victims and feel awkward in the presence of heroes, are the national ones.
Really, the 600-pound gorilla in the middle of the story is the Times itself, which never really addresses the role of the media in all this. As though there was direct and instantaneous communication between the triangle points of "war" "White House" and "public," with no media involvement.
No editors are interviewed in the story. No war correspondents or photographers. Instead, the writer goes into great detail about military culture, and the current U.S. leadership's concerns about riling up public opinion, and its emphasis on group effort, not individual heroics (what about "An Army of One?").
Yet all throughout, we're treated to this not-so-subtle suggestion that it's the readers, not the media, who can't handle hero stories any more and don't want to read them. Such as this oddly contorted quote:
"No one wants to call the attention of the public to bloodletting and heroism and the horrifying character of combat," said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. "What situation can be imagined that would promote the war and not remind people of its ambivalence?"
No, I guess not. That's why so many tens of thousands of us read every Michael Yon post.
I didn't see it until after I had written this, but Shrinkwrapped makes essentially the same point.
