I Was Gonna Fisk This Guy
Wunder Kraut had a post up the other day about an article that one James Carroll of the Boston Globe wrote on July 5th. Typical damp washcloth stuff, really, tying together how evul Bushy McChimphitler and crew are now with the sordid past of the US and showing how it’s really part of our national character:
But what about today? In assessing post-celebration realities of the national moment, it may help to recall that America has never been an innocent nation, which is seen in its having constantly sought to appear as one. Indeed, the planting of the flag in self-affirming virtue is how the hallowed standard comes most readily under fire. The most poignant honoring of the flag of which I know is the US Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, the magnificent bronze rendering of the famous Joe Rosenthal photograph of five weary leathernecks and a Navy medic raising the flag on Iwo Jima. That statue, not the Mussolini-like showcase of plinths, pillars, wreaths, and fountains that now despoils the Mall, should be the nation’s memorial to World War II.
Neat, huh? “We are all New Yorkers” becomes “We are all fascists.”
He also shows that he is quite the erudite fellow by casually tossing in phrases like “…how high-flown American ideals square with the quotidian reality of what the nation is becoming.” I know I want to sleep with him now.
But I just got too disgusted to really shred him the new one he deserves, and in the course of following the links on this story I came across a comment on Wizbang that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read:
My father fought in the pacific in WWII. He went to college in the fall of 1941. He was paying his own way through college, so happily signed up for a neat course that didn’t cost anything but gave him college credits. The course was to teach you to fly. On December 7, my father realized why the US government would be willing to pick up part of his college tuition.
He served 22 months in the pacific flaying off carriers and islands (e.g. Bouganville). After those 22 months, he returned as a lt. commander and taught new pilots at Pennsacola. He doesn’t talk much about his experience, but he did relate this story to me once.
He was flying over Raboul and no zeros were coming up to play. So while puttering around, he came across a scene of 3 Japanese soldiers herding some cows. Being a 20 year old kid from the country in a high performance fighter with a bunch of 0.50 caliber machine guns, he did the natural thing. He swooped down to shoot up the herd and the soldiers. The herd was coming up to a bridge, got a bit tangled up when they stampeded and apparently my Dad did a number on them.
When he started back, he remembered that he had gun cameras that took a picture when his guns fired. It was supposed to allow them to know after he returned if he had hit what he was shooting at. Since he had expended ammunition, they would routinely develop the film and see a picture of a bunch of cows looking back. That might not go over so well with his superiors.
So my Dad landed and filled out his after action report. He used phrases like “interdicted enemy supply lines” and “pressed the attack against ground fire” (the soldiers had fired their rifles at his plane traveling several hundred miles per hour over their head). It apparently all sounded very impressive. Then they took a look at the film. They could match what he had reported to the film, but the words took on a very different meaning when viewed in conjunction with the film.
The end of the story is he didn’t get into trouble with his bosses. But the next day when he went to get into his plane, he found his ground crew had painted twenty udders on his plane to indicate he had become an ‘ace’ against cows.
So Mr. Carroll left off the part about WWII pacific veterans not being treating animals ethically.
Posted by: yetanotherjohn at July 6, 2005 06:49 PM
Friends, that spirit is what our great land is all about, and as long as we have folks like yetanotherjohn’s pop and his ground crew this land of ours will maintain its virtue and be the beacon of hope for the world.
Fun, Media | Mr. Bingley | 
July 9, 2005 10:53 am
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LOL! James Carroll sounds like one of those cows stumbling around to cross the bridge.
Well, he just goes to show that we all carry the spark of the bovine in us, JeffS.
Those of us who grew up with the Boston Glob (misspelling intentional) know that James Carroll is an insufferably pretentious self-righteous asshole.
I think it goes with the name. John Carroll at the LATimes and Jon Carroll at the SFChron are also insufferable cretins. Oops. I mean Cretans.