Chris Hayes belongs on MSNBC. He's a perfect fit.
Watch Hayes describe his discomfort with referring to fallen members of our military as "heroes":
Transcript, from NewsBusters:
CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that'll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke, who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, [Steve] Beck, sorry, um, I think it's interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words "heroes." Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word "hero"? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that.
Yeah, buddy, you are definitely "wrong about that." No maybes.
Hayes is uncomfortable with referring to our war dead as "heroes."
As Noel Shepphard points out, Hayes was very comfortable with referring to his parents as "heroic figures."
According to a June 2011 piece about him published by the far-left Alternet, Hayes has no problem saying his parents are "heroic figures":
Hayes hails from the Bronx, where his Italian-American mother grew up, the daughter of a delicatessen owner. His father found his way to New York from Chicago via the Jesuits, while studying for the priesthood. While in seminary, his Irish-American father, Roger Hayes, did his first community organizing "for people who had trained with Alinsky," Hayes says with a chuckle. When he was finishing up his degree at Fordham University, Roger Hayes moved into the apartment building where his mother, Geri, lived with her parents, beginning a courtship that prompted the young seminarian to leave the priesthood.
Today his parents both work for the City of New York: Geri, a former schoolteacher, works for the NYC Department of Education, and Roger, after many years of community organizing, does health advocacy work in East Harlem for the NYC Department of Health. His younger brother is the Nevada state director for Organizing For America, the grassroots group built from the lists of the 2008 Obama campaign.
"My parents are totally amazing, heroic figures," Hayes says.
Chris Hayes' father learned from people trained by Saul Alinsky. So he's a hero to Hayes, but a person who gave his or her life for our country doesn't deserve that status in Hayes' world.
Clearly, Hayes' parents trained their son well, to NOT be grateful for the ultimate sacrifice made by their fellow Americans as they defended freedom.
Our fallen don't necessarily qualify as heroes, according to Hayes. Dying isn't enough.
In response to the outrage over Hayes' remarks, on this Memorial Day weekend, he issued an apology.
On Sunday, in discussing the uses of the word "hero" to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don't think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I've set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.
As many have rightly pointed out, it's very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday's show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.
But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.
I'm glad Hayes apologized, but the apology is as out of touch as his original comments.
Hayes moves from the focus on his poorly chosen words, "I," and turns his warped liberal views into an apology from "we."
He makes generalizations that don't apply to us. Maybe they apply to his Leftist cohorts in the liberal bubble, but he has no right to psychobabble his way out of what he revealed about himself, by projecting his views and experiences on to others.
A sincere apology requires one to take personal responsibility for one's behavior rather than yapping about "the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole."
Many of us are very aware of the purpose of Memorial Day and observe it in a way that honors the fallen.
Hayes should have just said HE was wrong and HE is sorry.
He blew it - again.
WE did not.
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