As I’m sure you’ve also noted, the only way the MSM (mainstream media) knows to cover the Iraq war is to focus on the deaths of our valiant young soldiers, with the not-very-subtle idea that they gave their lives for nothing.
It is meet and right that we honor every single man and woman who dies for our country. But the MSM uses the dead for propaganda purposes–much the same way homeless people are exploited as street theatre to score political points.
In an attempt to do the same thing the MSM routinely does, Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll showed up uninvited at the July 19 funeral of Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, who died serving his country in Iraq on July 10. She reportedly passed out business cards during communion, and informed a grief-stricken member of Sgt. Goodrich’s family, “I want you to know our government is against this war.”
Columnist John Bryant has some good comments on this shocking story:
“Reading the story carefully,” he notes, “what stands out to me is this: the Light Governor really thought she was saying something comforting.
“That’s more shockingly revealing, in a way, about how the liberals just don’t get it than supposing she was being a mean-spirited bitch of the Michael Moore genre. Moore, who as columnist Jack Kelly reminds us in a column on Knoll’s gaffe, disgracefully used footage from the funeral of an Air Force officer in Fahrenheit 9-11, doesn’t give a rat’s necktie who he offends and makes a (damned good) living off being a political shock jock.
“Knoll, on the other hand, is just a wimpy liberal sap. She may have outstanding academic credentials and must have come from something like a normal background, having been the wife of a postmaster (since deceased), but she’s been so sucked in by left-wing propaganda that she imagines any family which has lost a loved one in the Iraqi War would be comforted to know that ‘our government is against this war.'”
Unlike the Olympian MSM, Ms. Knoll can be hired or fired by the public. So can her boss. That is why Gov. Ed Rendell quickly apologized to Sgt. Goodrich’s family. Ms. Knoll has not been seen in public much sense her gaffe. Bryant notes:
“The Gazette and other newsies will be monitoring her actions like buzzards, and if she so much as drives off wearing a black dress, cameras will descend, upsetting the solemnity of the moment you may be sure.
“In his statement, Rendell says, ’It?s not the business of state government to support the war, but our state supports the men and women who are fighting this war.’ That’s technically right, of course, and probably the only thing the Governor can say. The Constitution gives the conduct of foreign policy to the Feds, and states, per se, have no business taking sides.
“But someone needs to tell these Democrats that you can’t be against the war and supportive of the troops at the same time. Because if you do, you are saying something like, ’Have a good fight — even though you’re not fighting for anything worthwhile.’
“That’s not an acceptable position, and particularly not in the presence of a grieving family that desperately needs reassurance their loved one’s life was given in a noble cause, as Sgt. Goodrich’s most certainly was.”
With the caveat that I think one can be against the war and for the troops, I’d like to say that I’m sick of the way the media and others use the deaths of our heroes to defame the cause in which they fell. Glad the unsubtle Ms. Knoll is in hot water for doing this.