Friday, July 10, 2009

Awwwwwwwkward.


Blogging Tory Mike McGuire goes full-metal panty yanking over the MSM's utter indifference to dead American soldiers. Fortunately, Mike is all over ongoing Canadian military casualties like stink on cheese.

You had to see that coming.

P.S. Mikey seems to consider NewsBusters a reliable source of information. Sane people beg to differ.

8 comments:

Robert McClelland said...

Hmmm, lets see what teh great gazoogle has to say about this.

In a crass display of political agenda, Nightline host Ted Koppel is set to read the names of all the soldiers killed in the war on Iraq during the Friday, April 30th broadcast.

Nightline's motives for this are two fold. First, this reading will attract a lot of viewers to Nightline for the ratings sweeps. Second, Koppel and company obviously think that by reading aloud the names of the dead they will undermine America's support for the war effort.


There's plenty more where that came from.

Infophile said...

You know, Robert, for starting a comment like that, I might have thought you'd link to a Google search which either proves CC wrong or backs up his point by being more thorough. Instead, you link to one of your own posts (I'm guessing). Smooth. Real smooth.

Well fine, let's go there. Personally, I've sometimes wondered what a truly empathetic leader would do when forced into a necessary war. One of the important things I've come up with was to make damn sure that the soldiers who died for this cause were properly honored. Say what you will about him, but Stalin was right when he said that one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. Every death of a soldier fighting for us deserves to evoke the same thanks for their sacrifice, and you just don't get that from hearing the numbers who've died.

So what to do then? Honor them individually. Read off their names, and maybe show a picture of them alongside as you do this. Of course, there's no way to prove I came up with this idea on my own before I heard of this story, but it does now look like I might not be the only one following that logic. If this is why Koppel's doing this, then all he's trying to do is to honor the sacrifices made in the name of freedom.

In short, he's trying to support the troops in his own way.

CC said...

Dear Infophile:

You have so stunningly missed the point here that you really should go back and read all the relevant information again. Seriously.

KEvron said...

"You have so stunningly missed the point"

yeah, i was gonna say....

mcguire and infophile both need to understand that american conservatives have decided that it's unamerican for the media to report on military deaths (unless, of course, it's some maudlin individual tribute on their own blogs).

KEvron

Infophile said...

Did you read the post Robert linked? First thing that stood out to me was that it was posted by a "Rob," which made it looked to me like he was linking is own post. Now, if you know this Robert isn't that Rob, then fair enough, but I don't. Second thing that stood out to me is that it's a post from 2004, and so is completely irrelevant to whether or not the MSM is reporting on ongoing casualties right now.

If he were trying to provide evidence that a show in the MSM was in fact doing the opposite and paying much attention to the troops, then fine, but that doesn't seem to be at all what this is.

Or maybe the point is the hypocrisy coming from the right? MSM is damned if they ignore the dead soldiers, damned if they honour them.

Or I could just be missing something here.

CC said...

"Or I could just be missing something here."

Yeah, that part.

Infophile said...

Then would you mind telling me what it is? I'd go with what KEvron said, except that point was made nowhere in your post or the links.

In any case, it's not just a case of MSM fearing an attack from conservatives if they report on deaths; the situation here is just another symptom of the perverse priorities of MSM. This was in fact pointed out quite handily on The Daily Show simply by reading off all the stories that merited a headline mention at the bottom of the screen but no real reporting or analysis. Why not report on Iran, or Honduras? Plenty of news there, and you won't be accused of bias for the simple fact of reporting. (Barring, as always, accusations from the utterly insane.)

KEvron said...

"and you won't be accused of bias for the simple fact of reporting.'

thanks for the best laugh i've had all week.

KEvron