Speaking of reading lists - Boots on the Ground Before Dusk

(actually posted Jan. 20, 2009)

The inspiration for this post stemmed from my curiosity over why Mary Tillman is allowed to question the Army over the death of her son but Cindy Sheehan isn't.  My curiosity quickly evolved into understanding, although it doesn't always work this way... neither my understanding, nor the right wing media's heeding of the facts.

What I discovered is that because Pat Tillman was famous, and his mother chose to write a book, Ann Coulter couldn't make up a story for them without challenging them. (I'll assume that Coulter called Tillman "a true original" and a hero before she learned that SPC Tillman wasn't a big fan of Bush or the war and by then it was too late to retract it.) She also couldn't retract it since most of America already saw Tillman as a hero for giving up an NFL contract to join his brother in the Army, Coulter et al couldn't really maintain their pseudo-patriot front and do anything but praise him.

The Sheehans on the other hand, in spite of being nearly identical families in the important areas - mothers grieving sons lost in a war that should never have been fought - were unknowns to the American public, so the conservative media were free to make up whatever the hell they wanted to about them. Every statement Cindy Sheehan made was an opportunity to pick it apart and find something wrong with it. Every photo taken, a chance to point out her flaws. After all, her son wasn't a "true original." All he did was die for his country. He didn't turn down an NFL contract to do so and somehow, in Coulter's eyes, that makes his death less patriotic and his mother's grief less worthy of sympathy. His mother's frustration over why this had to happen less worthy of an answer and her attempts to find that answer while grieving that loss by camping out in Crawford, TX while the president vacationed instead of paying her the courtesy of a reply was called a ridiculous, liberal agenda.

So Cindy Sheehan chose to express her grief on behalf of all mothers who feared the same thing. She chose to go macro and argue that this war wasn't worth the loss of another mother's son, that the lies had gone on long enough, and that someone at or near the top should be held accountable for the deaths of these sons. She chose to try to stop other mothers from going through the same thing she'd experienced. That's how her grief played itself out. I don't think anyone, not Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter or Sean Hannity has the right to question how a mother grieves in that situation.

Mary Tillman's grief took on a slightly different form. She went micro. Instead of asking why the war was worth her son's life, she just wanted the truth about how he died. Instead of questioning the lies that put us in the war, she only questioned the lies about the events on the day of her son's death. What's interesting about her different form of grieving is that the results coming from the White House were so similar... both moms got little more than the latest version of the story, not the truth. Coulter et al may also have been more careful about criticizing the Tillmans because Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother, was in the same platoon and was there the day Pat was killed. It's tough to make up a story condemning their version of it in order to suit your own agenda. Casey Sheehan wasn't as fortunate, so his mom gets criticized for questioning his death.

I've spent enough time on here explaining that troops don't get to pick the wars they fight, and that most of them are good people fulfilling a sense of duty and doing the best job they can, so don't even start on me on that. And don't start on me claiming that I'm favoring one mother's method of grieving over another's. I ain't sayin' anything like that. No one oustide of their shoes has any business judging how they grieve. From us, they should get nothing but sympathy and support. And both of these families have that from me.

What I am saying is that both mothers, regardless of the direction their grief points them, deserve the same from the media. Common courtesy says this should apply to the "liberal media" just as it applies to the actual media.

If Katie Couric gave the same time to Sheehan as she did to Tillman, Fox and AM radio would have been all over it. That's crap. The only thing that matters is these mothers lost their sons. Whether you agree with the war or not, whether you agree with the moms' politics or not, if you're not offering your support then just shut up and leave them alone.

Luth,

Out

Three Amigos, er candidates, remain

Here's two reasons to pick one of them:

One didn't vote for this war.

One still fosters the illusion of being an unjaded, outsider rookie.

I know that last reason is pure fantasy, but until it's proven otherwise, I'm living in it. The other two don't even joke about the fantasy anymore. I'll take what I can get. I encourage all of you to do the same.

As for the first reason, if past behavior is the best indicator of future performance, then history is proving this potential president to be the only candidate left who got it right. Funny, the current president keeps telling us history will validate him. Instead, it validates his opposition party candidate who opposed his war.

There's nothing more patriotic than erring on the side of caution when it comes to putting troops in harm's way. Especially when time proves it wasn't in err. He may not always put his hand in the right place when pictures are snapped before he says the Pledge of Allegience, but as far as protecting the troops, he's gone well beyond the sitting president and either of his own opponents with that one vote.

It's time to cut the crap. He's not now nor was he ever a Muslim. His so-called inexperience is a crock as well. We're talking about a guy here who managed to graduate at the top of his class at Harvard after being the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. This means he graduated as the most sought after law student in the nation. Yet this so-called elitist rejected the offers that accompany such an accolade to return to his hometown and work civil rights cases for a Chicago firm. Prior to that, as a fresh Columbia University grad, he did community action work there as well - what an elitist! His political experience falls just one year shy of Hillary's, but given that all important vote that started me on this rant, it's the quality, not the quantity anyway.

I don't care if you don't vote for the guy for some ideological reason, or even because you just don't like him, but promise you won't vote against him because of his skin color or his middle name or some other BS reason that simply doesn't stand up to even the most cursory glance beyond the Fox headline.

Luth's Endorsement
Out

Coming Soon:
Tillman vs. Sheehan
Why is the mom of an NFL player allowed to be upset about her son's death but the other mom isn't?

We ARE Marshall

...or at least reactionary boneheads who cry foul just because it's cool to cry foul.

So Marshall University accepted a million bucks in order to establish its BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism. They accepted the money from Branch Banking & Trust under the condition that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged be "required reading" in a course on "the fundamentals of capitalism" (according to a Bloomberg.com article by Matthew Keenan available here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=as6BR0QV4KE8&refer=home)

The CEO of BB&T says the book is the best defense of American Capitalism he's ever read and he just wants to make sure it remains part of academic discussion.

Funny, though I love Rand's books, when I first read them, I never knew there was any controversy about them. I didn't see them as philosophical or economical or political or about any "isms". They were just cool stories about cool heroes with both admirable and not so admirable qualities. As far as I was concerned back in high school, all this crap about her morals or her politics didn't exist. She was a writer of fun books to read.

I still believe that.

And while I think it's pretty trashy of Coca-Cola or other corporate sponsors to all but own public schools in exchange for a pittance of a return of the the tiniest percentage of their profits on products that are as addicting as most illegal narcotics, asking that a book be one part of a larger curriculum doesn't sound like like much of a concession to me.

For one thing, BB&T doesn't stipulate what anyone says about the book, only that it be read. Basically all they're asking is that one additional perspective be added to a much larger discussion. Students and professors can take from and contribute to that discussion as they wish. I really don't understand the controversy. Well, OK, I do get the notion that a donation with strings is more like a bribe, but so what. Have you seen tuition increases lately? The schools who joined Marshall in taking advantage of the BB&T offer could say no, but given the relative innocuity of the condition, it seems amazingly illogical for them to do so simply on the grounds of some artificially derived moral.

Ironically (to me anyway) logic (as a moral) is one of the evil philosophies Rand takes fire for espousing. How bat-shit illogical is it that capitalists would criticize taking cash simply because it is given on the condition of having to read a book? I can see insanely stereotypical academic types complaining. That's their job, but why would anyone else? If you're a student, go to some other school without a big new business department. If you're a local employer looking for new MBAs, hire from some other school where the discussions in B school prohibit inclusion of certain ideas. That always leads to more well rounded graduates. And hey, if you want some viewpoint that you feel contradicts Rand's to be included as well, offer up your own million.

BB&T didn't ask that other books NOT be taught, just that one book be included. The English teacher in me tells me that's more like a good suggestion than a condition or attached string. It's a freaking BOOK, not some plug and play port into a student's (or anyone else's) hypothalamus. I think the best comment I heard about it is that you can't propagandize students. Granted, the guy who said that is likely to become the head of the new department at Marshall, but it's true. The country may buy propaganda for several years, but the microcosm of the nation that is a student body is a lot quicker to realize they've been duped and a lot more vocal about it once it's discovered. They tend to be a lot more skeptical of crap fed to them from authority figures as well. That same department head went on to say that they only accepted the money and the condition because the condition didn't stipulate what they discussed about the book, only that it be read. Had there been some hidden agenda, the project would have been doomed from the start by both the officials to whom it had been proposed as well as by the students on whom such a hidden agenda would have been perpetrated.

What really gets me though, is the whole notion that Rand or anyone else's ideas, written on a page, represent any kind of threat to anyone. If the concerns about this kind of threat were ever accompanied by a balanced thought from the other perspective, they'd almost certainly result in real intelligence. Unfortunately, they always stop well short of that.

Luthy