Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3889

I guess that I am just a sentimental old duffer who is a sucker for a pretty face.

There was a a thread not too long ago in which someone (maybe me--short term memory is the first thing to go) suggested that Jessica Lynch should be awarded the Congressional Medal Of Honor. After all she had fought the enemy with gun blazing until she ran out of ammunition and then kicked the ragheads in the groin as they poured in upon her and ripped off her clothes before raping her . No she didn't say that but anyone could see that it probably happened that way. Well, now the story is coming out that Jessica didn't go down with blazing rifle but rather she had lost her rifle and had her ankle crushed up under the dash of the truck when it collided with the Iraqi pickup that the bad guys came in. Whether or not she was raped is a matter that won't be discussed because it would violate Jessica's privacy. Neither Jessica nor the Pentagon promoted the story I told above. It was low level military people and media types in Iraq that put that stuff out.

Well, so Jessica should not get the CMH. I hope that someone pays her way through college so that she can be an elementary school teacher like she wants to be.

Her case however reminds me just a bit of the matter of Captain Colin P. Kelly in WWII. Captain kelly was a pilot of a B-17 flying out of Clark Field in the Philippines when on Dec 10, 1941, just three days after Pearl Harbor he spotted a large Japanese ship and thumbed hastily through his pocket ship identifier and identified the ship as the Japanese battleship "Haruna". Well, Capt Kelly was a man of action and in almost no time he and his crew had sunk the "Haruna". In the process his waist gunner had been killed by anti-aircraft fire and as the B-17 turned for the not too distant shore they were intercepted by a large number of Japanese fighters. It was obvious that the B-17 was going down so Captain Kelly ordered his crew to bale out while he tried to maintain altitude. They did and were later picked up unharmed and returned to Clark Field. Capt Kelly went down with the B-17 and was killed.

The US needed a hero and FDR awarded Kelly the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously. I remember screaming loud and long three days into the war that Kelly should have got the CMH.

I suppose you think I am going to tell you that all that didn't happen about kelly. Well, I'm not. He richly deserved his DSC and they did sink a big ship. It was not until the war was over however that we learned that the ship Kelly sank that day was not the "Haruna" but the Japanese light cruiser "Ashagara". The "Haruna" was several hundred miles away off the coast of Malaya on that date.

Anyone know where I can get a correspondence course in Cynicism 101?

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oxsan


Don't kick until yer spurred.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13018

classy bit of news and media management was the Jessica Lynch rescue me thinks.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona... No no Cornville!!
Posts: 21334

You signed up for that course when you registered here, oxsan.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Oregon. America.
Posts: 2750

In the end it was just a story told to entertain, if taken that way. It was told to inspire us to be more than ourselves. To sacrifice and to arrive at ours or our societies end with a sense of purpose and meaning. Without these myths, heroes and legends we'd be lifeless as a culture and empty as a people.

It is important, in my mind, to let the myths inside ourselves as a skeptic, rather than too deny them as a cynic. Cynicism is pathetic, cerebral bullying. Instead, hear the myths with the same sort of inspired distance you might enjoy a story from a foreign culture. You are still inspired by these tales but can assimilate them on your own terms and from your own point of view.

That way you can always enjoy multiple perspectives, points of view and pieces of wisdom from around the world. It's always been my opinion that we should never settle as a people, but should always be moving along the peaks and valleys of ourselves and of our surrounding cultural world.

And this probably just sounds silly, but I really don't think that you need to lose faith, rather, spread it out a little.

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Registered: May 2002
Location: No. California
Posts: 4175

Damn, Feral. That is one of the best statements I've ever read here. Well put.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3889

It damn sure was--almost poetic.

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oxsan


Don't kick until yer spurred.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
Posts: 5613

I second, err third that

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