What Makes a Fitting Tribute?

Posted originally on September 11 of 2008, and appropriate today both because of the Ft. Hood tragedy, and because of what I am reading about our President's narrowly focused soliloquy on the subject. He does seem so Shakespearean, sometimes, beseeching the audience to witness the folly all around him, while standing apart under his own spotlight.

I hope that I do not wind up having to switch the words "make" and "keep" from the last sentence of this:




It's a banner day for the blowhards and halfwits who traipse around frantically every day like a hunting dog with too many scents to track, trying to find the next great way to display their compassion, understanding and gravitas to the widest possible audience. Across the board, the television news people don the same heavy, emotionally burdened face and tone of someone who really "gets" the significance of this day in history. On or off camera, they will surely find a way to work in a few lines about the person they know who has died in Iraq or Afghanistan or on 9/11 itself. The worst of them will blame America for that. But only the highest paid and least respected will do that part on TV.

I know I don't want to sully the honor of our warriors past and present by spending a bunch of time berating the people who can't seem to respect them. Most of us want the same thing for that class of asshole, and that is to wake up one day and find them all disrobed and despised the way they deserve to be. Alone but for each other's company, which is to say...alone.

I also know that one of the worst ways to express the significance of an event is to pontificate tirelessly about the significance of the event. That's another one for the media types, and the others who feel you have to talk, talk, talk about yourself in order to make other people matter.

Instead, today a simple thank you goes out to everyone still out there who hasn't lost sight of America, service members and civilians alike. You are the ones remaining who have the maturity and wisdom to know that we are not operating under some vague need to make things right in this country, but a specific need to keep them that way.