… and Jacob Dylan destroyed David Bowie’s song “Heroes”
I don’t know what it is that is a Community Watchdog. Categories are a little funny that way. Should I start watch-dogging my community for the sake of getting my peg correct, or do I look over the list, see that none of them fit, and shrug it off?
Nay. I didn’t come here for that question. I came here because I noticed a blog-entry from an incoming link, which brings us to a ‘heroes’ list of sorts: In no particular order, and with varying levels of love and respect, here are our very favorite Veterans who didn’t let the abomination of war or the regimen of subjugation diminish their humanity or lessen their contribution to our troubled species.
Pat Tilman Paul Riekhoff John Kerry, circa 1971
Jimmy Carter, post 1980 Howard Zinn
Max Cleland Kurt Vonnegut
Ron Kovic Norman Mailer
Smedley Butler Wesley Clark Edward D. Wood Jr.
John McCain Elvis Presley Jackie Robinson
John F. Kennedy Dr. Mary Walker
Hm. Bounces around from the pacifist Howard Zinn (Dear Mr. Zinn: so, in the end, I can’t escape this question with your histories: is there any escape?) to the hawk John McCain (endorsed by the Weekly Standard, lest I remind you). I suppose John McCain’s hawkishness can be tempered with the appreciation that he knows you don’t torture the enemy. The caveats to Jimmy Carter and John Kerry “post 1980” and “circa 1971” are telling — what are the over-bearing influences that strike when a person, presumably motivated by the highest of ideals, actually attains high office? I continue to wonder whether Max Cleland’s high standing in the mind of the Liberal American Democrat isn’t a little… conflated.
I’ve mused over the story of Pat Tillman story before. He turned out to be a propaganda miscue for the Pentagon, a fabricated embellished story of his bravery on the field followed by the revelation that… he was a Noam Chomsky fan. Both Ted Rall and Ann Coulter had to do a mind-contortion when that was uncovered, Ann Coulter’s reaction being simply to deny the duality of such a concept. (It destroys not only the stereotype of the happy warrior, but of a professional jock, which is to say part of the propaganda effort had to do with a sort of conflation of the faux-warrior spirit of the NFL with the real war, and ther personality type that gravitates therein: “a real man” who “is the true American”.) Go figure.