[lbo-talk] How's It Feel

[maria.gilmore]

Horrible to watch, yet very encouraged by the number of strong voices saying
no; so loudly that they are seeping into mainstream America media whether
the people running the show like it or not.
Now that the play-by-play is just about over I'm watching Peter Jennings for
the first time in ages (does anyone else find themselves so repulsed by
commercial TV news they find it painful to watch?  ABC really tipped their
hand as to what it's all really about last week, when they slid into a spot
break with, I could not make this up, the fullscreen-sized logo for VIAGRA
superinposed over video of tanks and troops, along with the cheery
voiceover:  "ABC News Tonight with Peter Jennings is brought to you by
PFIZER!"   Sex and violence and drugs!!!).
But then there are things that make me cry, and feel alienated on top of
that grief:  not only the horrors visited on the innocent and the helpless
in Iraq, but the solemn joy thousands of Americans seem to be taking in
burying their 18-year-olds, their children home via body bag and they're
GLAD!   It makes them happy, it makes them proud, something I find so
profoundly tragic and wasteful it brings tears to my eyes.   It brings home
the point, I suppose, that most Americans really do believe this is a good,
just war, worth expending their kids for.  I have none to offer, and if I
did, they could all go to hell before they'd have my kid's life.  I only
hope some of these patriotic parents actually wear their pride as a  mask,
like a woman I worked with...her son was in the process of being inducted on
9/11, and a day or so later when the recruiter left a message on the
answering machine that she got first, her reaction was to disconnect it and
erase the message, accomplished by ripping the thing out of the wall.  Oops,
sorry, hon, the machine's broken, no I haven't gotten any messages for
you...