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Memorial Day

By Eric McErlain
The NEI offices in Washington, D.C. are closed today in observance of today's Holiday. From everyone at NEI, we'd like to urge you all to take a moment to think about the men and women who have fallen in service to our nation, and the families they left behind.

For more thoughts on today's observance, please read this piece by Ben Stein (Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer).

Comments

Anonymous said…
I took Mr. McErlain's suggestion and read the piece by Ben Stein. What I found was that Mr. Stein is so vulgar that he does not mind using a solemn remembrance of our fallen soldiers to try and score some cheap political points.

Mr. Stein used the last half of his speech to complain about the media. At one point he said: "The media like to criticize because they know--in their hearts--that they will never have the guts that the man and woman in uniform have."

Now as it turns out, over the same weekend that Mr. Stein was delivering his remarks, two journalists were killed in Iraq. I should say two MORE journalists were killed, because many journalists have been killed in Iraq. In fact, more journalists have been killed in Iraq than were killed in World War II. And, as I'm sure Mr. Stein and everyone else knows, lots more American soldiers--more than a hundred times more--were killed in World War II than in Iraq. This means, to use a crude comparison, that today's journalists are being killed at a rate MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED times that of their ancestors in World War II.

Since there have been many stories about journalists risking their lives in Iraq to report what is going on there, it cannot be that Ben Stein does not know that the media have undertaken a dangerous job. Perhaps, you might think, Ben Stein does not know about World War II or perhaps, simple as it is, this kind of comparison is too complicated for him. Well, no, that can't be the case because, you see, Ben Stein has a PhD. So when Ben Stein claims that the media has no guts, he is simply being dishonest.


And Instapundit, who linked to Ben's diatribe, and who obviously approves of it, and who is a law professor, and who also knows full well about World War II and the killing of journalists in Iraq--well, he is being dishonest too.

And when Eric McErlain links to both Ben Stein and Instapundit--well maybe he doesn't know anything about World War II or journalism.
May 30, 2006 at 1:45 PM
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