Arguably the best story on Jessica Lynch you’ll see.
This Buzzflash editorial talks about the way the war is being packaged vs the way it’s actually being fought, especially in relation to the inescapable Ms. Lynch. I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s well worth reading. It also contains a little piece of information not directly related to Lynch, but one that’s stunningly…well, it’s stunningly something.
A few years ago the great comedian George Carlin had a routine about the way that, too often, we use language not as it should be used–to communicate our ideas and feelings to one another clearly–but to distance ourselves from the reality of things, leeching and bleaching the humanity out of them as we go. He used as his example the way that “shellshock” became “post traumatic stress disorder.”
Quoting from the editorial, which quotes from the Toronto Star:
“The “Bush team doesn’t want people to see human cost of war,” the Toronto Star observed, “Even body bags are now sanitized as ‘transfer tubes.’”
