The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an editorial excusing the UW Student Senate on the whole COL Boyington memorial flap. Bizarrely, they condescendingly and incorrectly claim that the memorial was shot down because it wasn't honorific enough of enough different veterans. But this is exactly the opposite of what the minutes of that meeting made clear was at issue. Sloppy journalism at best.
Hilariously, the paper also gives credit to these students for a more "inclusive" memorial that is now being supported, as if that would have happened without the entire nation shaming them into it.
Shameful. The statue was opposed not because the students wanted more, but because they wanted less. The P-I snidely looks down their nose at the bloggers while giving these students a pass for making overtly insulting comments to military members. Typically, they excuse the comments saying "asking a question is always fair."
This is as untrue as "There are no such thing as stupid questions." Because the P-I shares an ideology with the anti-memorial, anti-military students, they took the "senators" backpedaling explanations on pure faith without ANY skepticism or question.
The P-I does no favors to these students' civics education by implying that legitimate criticism for their public comments is somehow out of bounds, or by reinforcing their re-write of what was actually said at the meeting. They also do no favors to their own credibility.
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4 comments:
One thing I forgot to add that bugs the hell out of me. You don't "win" the Medal of Honor. It's not the friggin' lottery. You earn it, or are awarded it.
I don't think anyone was confusing the PI for serious journalism, especially the op ed's. The poeple that read the PI's op-ed's already agree with whatever the writers is willing ot write.
Don't mean to be niggling, but dictionary.com lists "to obtain or earn" as a definition of the transitive form of the verb "to win." Another formulation is "To receive as a . . . reward for performance." "Earn" is mentioned as a synonym of "win."
Slow news day . . .
You can use it that way, but words matter. "Win" doesn't accurately convey what's happening, and minimizes the award. When used by an extremely liberal newspaper editorial, I don't think it's a stretch to note it correctly as a misunderstanding of what these guys went through, a misunderstanding that comes through in their defense of indefensible statements.
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