Jeff Koopersmith

Richard Blow: Our Own Worst Enemy
Sometimes liberals and progressives go too far
by Jeff Koopersmith

April 10, 2003 -- WASHINGTON (apj.us) -- A colleague, and a former high-level Clinton White House appointee, reminded me yesterday that sometimes those of us writing from left of center go too far.

His remarks were in reference to my piece on Michael Moore defending Moore's right to attack the Bush Administration for its Iraq policies at the Academy Awards ceremony a couple weeks ago.

He had a point, although I will stick to my guns with regard Mr. Moore -- the man may be his own worst enemy, but that is his choice, and he is certainly not my enemy, nor is he an adversary of truth. There are few thinking Americans who have done a better job of bringing public attention to the atrocities perpetrated by international corporations with no allegiance to any nation -- let alone the United States.

As fate would have it, I received a copy of a piece by Richard Blow -- published recently in TomPaine.com, a liberal webzine of some repute tied to PBS through Bill Moyers and family. Mr. Blow is the former executive editor of George magazine and the author of "American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr."

For some mystifying reason, Blow decided to use Jessica Lynch, the recently captured and then heroically rescued PFC who will be flown to Walter Reed Hospital in the next day from Germany where she is recovering from multiple surgeries endured because she decided to enlist in the US armed forces.

His opinion: "Jessica Lynch is a distraction, a palliative, a substitute narrative that allows us to feel sentimental about something that is decidedly not so."

Of course, Mr. Blow did not seek to undermine his thesis: that the Pentagon uses stories like Private Lynch's to educe compassion and pro-military sentiment. Yet, he succeeded not only in discouraging me from his premise and in confusing his intent, but also in inflaming the outrage of people he might have convinced otherwise -- including me.

The title of Mr. Blow's op-ed is "An Unlikely Hero" -- yet who could be more of a hero than young Jessica Lynch, who put her life on the line and faced unimaginable terror at the service of you and me, comfortable in our homes, warm with our families, viewing the Iraq war on our 32-inch televisions by the fire.

Mr. Blow owes an apology and an act of contrition to Private Lynch and her family -- and without delay.

He also owes an apology to his liberal audience, who must rely on him to deliver thoughtful and well-researched opinion about American foreign and domestic policy, the use of media for crafty purpose, and the acts of violence perpetrated on true American values for which the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party, and our President, are guilty.

In the end, Mr. Blow may be correct that the public relations officers at the Pentagon are using Private Lynch to further their own mission, but the tone of his piece was deplorably snide, regrettably aloof, and blatantly snotty -- so much so that I couldn't refuse this attempt at slapping him awake.

Blow begins by offhandedly attacking Private Lynch's brother Greg as "remarkably TV-ready" -- implying that he had been coached to tell the world, through CNN, "She doesn't think that she's a hero, but she is."

Mr. Blow claims that "the Jessica Lynch rescue" is covered "endlessly" and that Jessica has "become the biggest media star of Gulf War II." He then asks "why."

Why, indeed? The simple truth is that the struggle and rescue of Jessica Lynch is a great story -- the quintessential American romance, and whether the Pentagon or network television has blown this tale to mammoth proportion is not the issue at all.

People love stories like this one, and thank God. If we cannot celebrate the heroism of a young woman from West Virginia, what hope do we have?

Mr. Blow proceeds to ask, "What actually happened to Private Lynch?" so as to inject, parenthetically, that befuddled stories may have been "manufactured". He calls the accounts that Ms. Lynch was wounded "in a valiant attempt to fight to the death rather than be captured ... murky."

What is his point? He only succeeds in a futile and underhanded attempt to humiliate Private Lynch when the fact is that she has not uttered a word to the press regarding the situation leading to her capture. She has not claimed to be a hero. We have acclaimed her as one.

Blow piles one spiteful sentence upon another. He writes that all her comrades are dead -- so we will never know "the truth" because we have to rely on "her" account alone. He claims that her memories may be unreliable and that the Pentagon will tell her what to say. He even asks, "Can we be sure that we'll ever hear her version?"

Mr. Blow, obviously blinded by his disgust for the military propaganda machine, seems unable to see that 99% of Americans simply do not care. Whether Private Lynch was simply captured because she got lost or fired three machine guns simultaneously, killing 1,000 Iraqi soldiers in the process, does not matter. No matter how you look at it, she is a hero.

Moreover, Mr. Blow is guilty of the very crime he accuses.

He adds insult to injury writing that Private Lynch is "Rosie the Riveter, 60 years later" and hints that her story "could be completely bogus"

Her story?

He continues with an insinuation: "It's certainly possible, much as we might not like to think so, that Lynch was terrified, incapable of fighting back, and survived because she surrendered. We have no idea."

And what if she was terrified and incapable to fight back? Is she less of a hero, Mr. Blow?

Blow seems to think that because the Pentagon cooperates with filmmakers that it probably filmed Private Lynch's rescue merely to use it as propaganda.

The truth is that the Pentagon films almost every special operation -- just as police departments throughout the nation videotape traffic stops. The Pentagon's decision to release video and still photographs of Private Lynch might be questionable, but for Blow to pretend this was an invasion of Jessica Lynch's privacy and to claim that she is now a "media doll" is just nasty. Street nasty.

He does not stop -- asking what images may have been excluded by the military from publication. He seeks to enlist his reader's anger that we were not allowed to see Private Lynch lying in a pool of blood, legs broken or not, back broken or not, brutally raped or not.

As Mr. Blow attempts his own version of propaganda -- this time from the left -- he enlists the images of John Walker Lindh -- the man nicknamed by the broadcast media as the "American Taliban" -- and compares them to Lynch, writing, "Now it's Jessica Lynch's turn to be exploited. Only this time, we need a hero, not a villain."

Yes, we need heroes, Mr. Blow -- and Private Lynch is one.

Blow falls right into a right-wing trap, playing the race card. He writes, "The fact that she's a woman -- and better yet, a white, blonde woman -- makes her even more TV-friendly. ... She appeals to men's instincts to protect the fairer sex -- think of Lynch surrounded by her rescuers -- and to women's gender pride. I suspect that the Jessica Lynch story is pulling in female viewers for what is otherwise a male-dominated story. Lynch -- or 'Jessica,' as TV anchors consistently call her, in a way that they would never do for a male soldier -- is the beneficiary of media affirmative-action."

Could Mr. Blow be more malicious? I recall that the Pentagon released, days earlier, photos of a Black woman soldier who was also captured and is now presumed by many to be dead. Will Mr. Blow, to make a point, make a mockery of her as well?

Mr. Blow believes that Private Lynch's story makes the Iraq war "palatable." To my mind, her story makes war appalling and anyone with empathy might agree. What will happen to Jessica Lynch? Was she molested, tortured, maimed? Will she now be able to carry on a simple life, free of night terrors, pain and memories of the worst kinds of humiliation? I do not know - nonetheless, neither does Mr. Blow, making his wretched conclusions indictable.

Whether or not Jessica Lynch's story is made into a TV movie as Mr. Blow assures us, we will not be moving ahead from "Baby Jessica to Jessica Smart to Soldier Jessica." We will be celebrating, for 90 minutes, a tale of a woman who endured the worst.

Mr. Blow tells me that I am "eating it up" by being swollen with pride about Jessica Lynch, and that I have forgotten that we are fighting a country which never attacked us. Yet anyone who reads my columns knows this is not the case. I loathe this war -- and the underhanded intrigues and machinations of the Bush Administration that led to it.

But I also sometimes loathe men like Mr. Blow, who use even shoddier schemes to make their points -- especially when they purport to be on my side.

Jessica Lynch is anything, as Blow writes, but a "distraction, a palliative, a substitute narrative that allows us to feel sentimental about something that is decidedly not so."

She is simply a girl from moderate means who joined the military and went to war as ordered by men with private agendas. She did what she was told, she was brave beyond the call and expectation of duty, and that is all.

But Mr. Blow is still not finished with his diatribe. He goes on to present his sick "counter narrative" -- complete with every ninth-grade liar's tricks, writing:

"Jessica Lynch comes from what appears to be a lower-middle class family in West Virginia, one of our poorest states. She is 19, a military volunteer who, for whatever reason, could not or chose not to attend college. Her brother is also a soldier. It surely warms the Pentagon's heart to hear him say that he too is now ready to take up arms if his country needs him. That's why the military uses propaganda; it works. Thus we use the story of one woman to salve our consciences ... and boost a sagging, depleted national mythology. I have no idea if this is true, because the media haven't done any serious reporting on Lynch's background. I'm just suggesting that it could be true and we don't know. But Jessica Lynch is a small-town girl who appears to have joined the military because she thought it'd be the best way to get out of a dead-end town. Instead, it almost ended her life."

Mr. Blow is currently working a book about Harvard University. He is privileged, it appears. He was a senior editor of a now-defunct, cash-squandering magazine that read and looked more like Town & Country, InStyle, or a Neiman Marcus catalog than what one would imagine to be a serious political magazine.

He took advantage, more than once, of the Kennedy family, a much-admired clan of American elite. He dares now to intimate that Ms. Lynch may be just Poor White Trash.

What would he know?

It is frustrating and heartbreaking that Richard Blow could be perceived to represent all that are liberal or progressive in America.

He does not.

His pathetic and failing attempt to give Private Lynch what he sees as her due by writing she "may" just be a "brave and good soldier" is revealing. He must have been at least slightly revolted by his own thoughtless invective and mused he should add at least a perfunctory nod to Ms. Lynch -- to at least appear fair.

He failed.

Mr. Blow accomplished one thing: he date-raped Private Lynch's and America's potential reminiscence of her courage.

He should be incurably ashamed.