The Fallen

Ted Koppel and Nightline will repeat their special tribute to fallen soldiers:

One year since honoring the American service men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ted Koppel and ABC News "Nightline" will again pay tribute to the fallen by devoting an extended broadcast to reading the names and showing the photographs of more than 900 service members who have been killed in those countries over the last year.

Titled "The Fallen," the special "Nightline" broadcast will air Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, 2005, at 11:35 p.m. ET on the ABC Television Network. ABC News Radio will air excerpts of the program.

[…]

Said "Nightline" executive producer Tom Bettag, "Too often we simply report casualties in terms of numbers. 'The Fallen' is our way of reminding viewers, regardless of their feelings about the war, that the men and women who have given their lives in our behalf are individuals with names and faces."

I personally always thought this was a nice idea, and so straightforward that I couldn’t believe it would be objectionable to anyone. Of course, the Right can find something objectionable about everything, so, with a whole new level of wingnuttiness, surprising even those as normally as unflappable as myself when it comes to their antics, the Right took off on a direct flight to Cuckooland, immediately deciding that simply acknowledging people were actually dying was the same as aiding and abetting the enemy. It was a relentless insanathon from the “Support the Troops” crowd as they called for Koppel’s head and decided that anyone who thought that recognizing the soldiers who had laid down their lives for the war the Right so resoundingly supports was somehow celebrating their deaths.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we, to recall what the righteous rightwing reaction was to last year’s attempt to honor the dead...

Our favorite media company, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, denounced the tribute as a political anti-war statement and refused to air it. (Sinclair, in case you’ve miraculously managed to forget, is the same group that ordered its affiliates to air an anti-Kerry film just before the election.)

Koppel was accused of trivializing the deaths of American soldiers. (Because, in wingnut world, hiding their coffins from public view honors them, but reading their names and showing their faces on a news broadcast trivializes their deaths.)

President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell, the media’s continued reliance on whose dubious expertise recently prompted Crooks and Liars to start a campaign demanding media fairness (more here), cited the program as having a “partisan nature” and a singular goal of turning “public opinion against the war.”

The program was ridiculed as a ratings gimmick and accused of being anti-war propaganda.

And the Freepers had a few choice words about the Nightline special, too (as always, not responsible for spelling and grammatical errors):

I'm speechless. This is clearly designed to turn the country against the war. This SOBs have no shame!!

Ted: F*** you and the perverted news operation you rode in on!

A**HOLES!! WHAT is WITH those guys!? What makes them want our country to fail SO much? Man Alive! I've never, EVER seen anything like the snake-in-the-grass shenanigans that the media and left are going into.

Ted, Goebbels would be proud.

Nice propaganda for the anti-war idiots. Folks who have died in Iraq deserve all the respect we can muster. But to have their death shamelessly used by Koppel in order to pursuade the country to abandon the very caused they died for is horrible.

What the H*ll do these morons hope to achieve? How does this help anybody? What is their D*mn point!!?

Ted is a sick, Anti-American bastard.

Sure, we'll watch it and weep and salute, but the mods and the Left will use the blood of the dead to elect Kerry and to surrender to the terrorists. I don't want the fallen to have died in vain-- the Left wants that.

And that was just from the first page of comments.

(Most Telling Comment Award goes to Folks who have died in Iraq deserve all the respect we can muster. If it's anywhere in the neighborhood of all the logic, compassion, intelligence, and/or ethics they can muster, it's no wonder that bumper magnets are considered the height of their support-the-troopsitude.)

I wonder if there will be as much outrage this year…or has the urge to create a media shitstorm over the names and faces of fallen soldiers ebbed a bit now that their boy has won his reelection?