Every day for the past month we have been inundated with stories about the retirement of Derek Jeter and Paul Konerko. Two great athletes who stuck with their respective teams and showed loyalty to their cities despite offers to go elsewhere for more money. Unusual today. I have no issue with those stories. I admire both men for their class and athletic records.
But, I do have issue with the absence of stories about true heroes. We have been at war for over a decade. We do see stories about our military men and women who come home and surprise their kids at a school. We see stories about a local reserve unit shipping out. We see Obama pinning a medal of honor on someone who should have gotten that medal 50 years ago. We see where a former governor sues and wins in court to get money from the widow of a navy Seal who was killed at a shooting range by a fellow veteran suffering from PTSD. Shame on you Jessie Ventura. The man did kick your old butt according to witnesses.
I was born a month after Pearl Harbor. When we were kids we played war games. Sticks as guns and rocks as hand grenades. We fought the same people our dads were fighting. Then we fought the Koreans when our neighbors went off to war again and some never came back.
Some of this was due to the way our country treated and presented the men who were protecting our country. Hollywood stars actually went off to war. Pick one now who would do that. Ted Williams was an ace in WWII and lost baseball time to shoot down enemy planes. Neither Jeter nor Konerko come close to Ted’s statistics despite his military service.
Isn’t it time we put our true heroes above those who play a kids game? Shouldn’t we be seeing stories of those who fought for our country in the past decade. We tend to cover up the real work of war unless an Obama, the worst commander-in-chief in my lifetime, wants a photo op.
We don’t trash them like we did my generation who fought in Viet Nam, the most embarrassing thing this country has ever done, but we don’t recognize them either. We have them at sporting events holding flags, but is that enough? Can’t we have both? Sports heroes like Derek and Paul, and military heroes with the latter taking priority over the former.
