I really want to understand
Chris, of Rude Cactus fame, has an excellent post today which I am linking and quoting verbatim because it's just that good and it's better than I can do right now, me being brain-dead and all.Without further adieu...
Ignorance is Bliss
For the last couple of days, we've been inundated with the story of Thomas Herrion, the San Francisco 49er backup lineman who died after a game on Saturday night. He was 23 years old. And while this story is tragic - and don't get me wrong since it really is tragic - I'm not exactly sure why I've seen so much of this story. It, in various forms, is repeated over and over again - on the local and national news, on cable news networks, in the papers and all over the Internet. But for some reason, I haven't seen anything about Sgt. Nathan K. Bouchard (age 24), Staff Sgt. Jeremy W. Doyle (age 24), Spc. Ray M. Fuhrmann, II (age 28), or Pfc. Timothy J. Seamans (age 20) who died when an improvised explosive device detonated in Samarra, Iraq on August 18th. Nor have I heard much about Army Sgt. Todd Partridge who was killed on his second tour of Iraq last week. And I've certainly heard absolutely nothing about Army Spc. 4th Class Brian Derks, a 20 year old from Michigan who was killed while patrolling Baghdad. Come to think of it, we really haven't heard a hell of a lot about any of the 1,812 fatalities to date in Iraq much less the 13,877 wounded in action. But we sure have heard about a football player on a team with a payroll in 2004 of $63,033,817 and a median salary of $562,000. With numbers like that, I guess we shouldn't expect to hear about folks who only make, on average, $33,927 a year. Despite the fact that there are more of them (around 1,398,833) and they're fighting (and dying) for our country.
All facts and figures are freely available from the NFL, ESPN and our fearless leaders at the Pentagon who, despite the fact that they seem to have the judgment of a 10 year old hopped up on Twinkies and Ritalin, keep damn fine records.
posted by Anita at
9:03 AM
1 comment(s):
hello? it's called "distraction news." much like the missing girl in Aruba and the Runaway Bride (both of whom got way more press than they probably should have), it's a "fantastic" article used to distract most people from the "real" news (or, really, the "bad" news).
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Anonymous, at
10:18 AM
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