"Meaningless" deaths...

Good media-blogging from Cori, now guesting at Volokh:

....That is all MSNBC tells us this morning....."An American soldier has died." Doing what? In an offensive act? Being ambushed? Were bad guys caught, an arms cache found? Or did they all get away? Without any narrative context any possible hope for meaning for this death is stripped away -- there is no hope for seeing meaning here because no meaning is given. There may well be a debate to be had over whether American combat deaths in Iraq (or Afghanistan, I suppose) have meaning, but that debate is over before it has begun when the press presents those deaths with any meaning already stripped out.

Is it any wonder support for the mission erodes? When the casualties are presented this way, people will see these deaths as meaningless because, forget the larger purpose, the abstract, many of the individual deaths are, in fact, night after night, presented without any meaning whatsoever....

The context is a world-wide war. And MSNBC doesn't like that context one little bit. As long as the American people think we are at war, they won't give power to Democrats even if we are in "the worst economy since Herbert Hoover."

Posted by John Weidner at October 31, 2003 7:53 AM