November 12, 2003 -- Most of the readers of this magazine are aware that on the recent Veteran’s Day, the New York Times, supposedly America’s newspaper of record, ran a front page photo of an Iraqi who had been shot by one of our soldiers.

That was an insult to every American soldier in the history of this nation.  It was, in fact, about as cowardly an act, considering the day it ran, as CBS creating a series to slime the Reagans while he is helpless and unable to defend himself and she is suffering enough for one woman, thank you. 

Tuesday night, PBS ran a program about Medal of Honor winners.  Naturally, this was an excellent opportunity to point out that some who won the CMOH were victims of racism.  During a celebration of the best we have to offer, PBS must not forget to remind us of the hypocrisy our values stand on -- as if those values aren't the reason those people are free, today.   On Wednesday (tonight), the role of the press in war was the PBS topic.  We learned that the reason we won WWII was Walter Cronkite.  You may recall from the film Patton that the WWII American press almost cost us that war by sidelining our best field commander for slapping a soldier. 

(Of course, in the film, his sidelining was portrayed as a good thing.  That was Holywood leftist spin.  The most notable example of that during the modern era  prior to Patton was the David Lean version of Dr. Zhivago, which was a complete thematic re-fabrication of the original story.  A total rape of the author's intent, which was so anti-communist that the manuscript had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union to be published. If you should rent the film, which is a beautiful job of cinematography, pay particular attention to the first and last scenes, then see if you can find them in the book.  When you can't, ask yourself why they were added.  What they represent from a political standpoint.)

In Korea, for a while, the program went on, there was no military censorship, so the reporters were able to report that we didn’t have a chance, there.  Oddly when censorship was initiated, we pushed the North Koreans, legions of Chinese Communists and Russian fighter jet pilots back to the 48th parallel where the whole shebang started in the first place.  Personally, I attribute the subsequent five decades of South Korean prosperity to military censorship of the American media.  Had they continued unhindered, Korea would have preceded Vietnam as the first place where our military left the field to the enemy.

In the Vietnam segment, we learned that Morley Safer and David Halberstam saved America from victory by reporting the truth as they saw it.  And, there, is the key.  As they saw it.  An old pal of mine was a war cameraman in Vietnam.  Many years later, he told me that one day he flew out to a hot zone in a chopper, filmed the action and brought it back to Saigon.  A network war correspondent used that footage in a segment for the national evening news.  My friend happened to see the piece in Saigon.  He said the report was totally false.  The network story attached to his footage had nothing to do with the fire fight he had witnessed and filmed.

If you were alive and old enough then, as you watched television coverage of Vietnam, did you get the impression that we won almost every battle, including Tet?  Or did you find that last one out watching the PBS program described here, where the scum finally mentioned it three decades later?.(And offered a lame excuse for the lack.)

But, as we all know, the American media won that war, its greatest symbol being not Morley Safer but Jane Fonda sitting on a North Vietnamese cannon. (Or was it a Viet Cong cannon?)

One little item this PBS piece left out about Vietnam big media coverage of that war, then and now, had to do with a game piece..  The argument for going in was called the “domino theory.”  It went like this.  If we let Vietnam fall to the communists, the rest of S.E. Asia would also fall to the communists.  The reason PBS, with a program full of some of the most famous war correspondents of that or any time, didn’t mention that little item is simple.  After we departed, the other nations of S.E. Asia fell to the communists.  One domino after another.

This resulted in the usual political  arrests and executions, slave labor camps, and all the rest.  Pol Pot and the killing fields.  Slaughter, torture and butchery of tens of millions of the inhabitants of that region.  Exactly what the big American media wanted to happen, and wants to happen  in Iraq.  Exactly why they hate G.W. Bush, because he won the war before they could stop him, and is winning the peace in spite of all the comfort they are giving the enemy.  Worst of all, his tax cut is reviving the American economy!  Next thing you know, the "jobless recovery" won't be jobless any more, and America will be stuck with good jobs, winning wars and saving people from slavery and torture for four more damned years!!

So, this program was an insult to every solder in American history, and to the uncounted resident corpses the press's Vietnam victory generated, as well. .PBS is great at this sort of thing.  But I have saved the best for last.  Try this on for size.

The program went on to complain how the first President Bush in the first Gulf War gave too little access to war correspondents, which caused an inaccurate picture of that conflict to be delivered to the American people.  Then, these “war correspondents” and the PBS narrator told us that in the second Gulf War, the second President Bush, allowed too much access for war correspondents, which caused an inaccurate picture of that conflict to be delivered to the American people.

You understand.  You're damned if you do and damned if you dont. 

We have in America a body of people who despise this nation, take pride in actively participating in the defeat of our armed forces, then use public funds to tell us why they are the most noble people on Earth for doing it.

We can’t do much about the networks other than turn them off.  We can’t do much about anti-American publications like the New York Times other than not buy it.  But we can do something about the one that charges us to destroy everything we hold dear.  We can make a note to find out if our political representatives at any level use our money to finance those public tv scuts.  If they do, we can cancel their prime time sweeps week series, too.  Public tv will collapse when the stinking politicians who vote to support it lose their seats.  Why not in the next election, when we return GW to the White House?  Let's find seven states with federal senators who are strong "supporters" (with your money) of public broadcasting and ...

Adieu, lePew politique.

(LL)

© 2003 Oregon Magazine