Bubba, BBQ, CBS, Memorial Day and Musing on the Media, dang 'em

Well, y’all, I’m settin here with Ms. Maggie, and rockin’ and thankin’ and my heart is heavy. It is, indeed. Today Is the day after Memorial Day, and I am carrying a bad taste in my mouth, and it ain’t all beer and barbecue.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I oncet went to college for a spell. Now I know that them speech and journalism majors ain’t by a long sight the brightest bunch of cherries on the tree, but they outdid theirselves yesterday, on Memorial Day.

Did any of y’all see that hoorah they put on over their buddies that got whacked over there at the front? On Memorial Day, now. Did they start off by saying something like, “We’re sorry to tell y’all that once again on this sad and wonderful Memorial Day, while we are honoring the many men and women who have given their lives and suffered for this country, once again brave men and women in uniform have fallen to enemy action overseas. As a result of a bombing incident, an unknown number of our brave troops have been injured and died, and oh, by the way, a couple of our reporters out there working also got killed and Ms. So and so got hurt pretty bad. We offer our condolences to the families and friends of our lost and injured military volunteers and to those of our employees.”

Nope. It was a full-scale honors to the media ONLY deal . Not one word about the military dead and wounded . Shoot, you’d thought them media people were - I don’t know – some kind of royalty or something – some kind of essential personnel, or Santa Claus or whatever. You could sure tell their idea of the relative importance of our boys and girls to THEIR boys and girls. I mean, it was sickening. And it’s still going on today. At least today, at the end of the bit, there was a sentence about how they didn’t know how many military were injured. Well gooollllleeee!

I want you media moguls to know: you’re giving us the works over your worker’s comp injuries - that’s a family matter, folks. A corporate event. They got hurt on the job. They are not over there protecting us; they are over there earning a living and trying for a Pulitzer or whatever. I got news for you. Everyday in the USA, essential people like policemen, firemen, and others more important to us get killed and hurt, and we don’t see you raising a sweat about it. Your slip is showing – your elitist slip. Your Freudian slip. Take it private and keep it there. A brief mention is all it warranted, especially on Memorial Day when military casualties were suffered in the same event. Which you failed to talk up, you jackalopes! Where were your heads?

Whoever is prioritizing the news is getting it WRONG. Just like when those boys got pulled out of that helicopter in Mogadishu. Big news that woulda been to most of us back here in the states. Yessir. We woulda been glad to hear of that right when it was happening. And the regular programming was interrupted that day, sure enough. But you remember what they interrupted it for? Some basketball player was retiring again. Yep. That was important enough, THEY THOUGHT, to interrupt national television’s regular programming, but the fact that some scumbags dragged some of our boys off a humanitarian mission, giving out food to the starving, and beat and drug ‘em to death, then flaunted their mutilated bodies all over the place, our media boys didn’t think was important enough to interrupt the soaps- or a basketball player’s press conference.

What the hell’s that all about, folks?

Who’s running the national news programs? Ain’t it about time they got some homefolks on some of them programs, to kinda keep them in touch with the real world?

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. . . Wilfred Owens wrote that in WWI. He got killed. Decorum means appropriate behavior, which there’s little of in the media business these days. This practice of building up the media as something special is a mug’s game. Especially the way they do it these days. Gossip, opinion, mostly theirs, and very little facts. Investigative reporting that starts out with a bone to pick and looks for anything they can find to back it up – and discards anything that disproves it. Leaks against the national security to get the big bucks. In the old days we called that yeller journalism. Nowadays, those of us who remember call it “yellow dog journalism.”

Well, I’ve said my piece, and I hope you’re all listening, and I hope you write these creeps and tell ‘em to get straight. They all have to comply with the law to keep their licenses, in television and radio, at least. Maybe if they know you know that, they might start doing it. Or maybe they won’t. 2/3 of them are already foreign owned.

I’m getting off Ms. Maggie’s porch and going on home. I got to lay down and try to get some sleep. I’m gonna pray for y’all. Do so unto me, also. Good night.