Thoughts on Military Service
I was watching "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" one Sunday night. In this episode they helped out one SPC Lucas of Farmville, VA. SPC Lucas is a member of the Farmville unit of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division and is/was deployed to Iraq. Promoted as a lover of history and a patriot, this connection was played up in the construction of his home as a modern recreation of "Chatham house" on a portion of the old Watson farm. I sure the left-wing bigots are already burning up the lines to ABC to protest the 3rd National (Confederate States of America) flag that the crew put in his "collections room" (a separate brick outbuilding). I know I've some concerns but they have nothing to do with the Lucas family themselves but rather a more general approach to service as portrayed on this show and on TV.
Extreme Makeover has done several shows featuring new homes for service people. That those individuals get those homes is a good thing. Still some things bug me.
First, how were these individuals chosen? I think perhaps that there are concerns (rightfully) for the legal and production concerns. That is, it must be legal, permits must be obtained, there must be room for cameras and the schtick that the show does like bringing in the mob of volunteers and construction workers. I think that the site must also make the house look good when finished. I think they interview the participants as well. They must know that these folks will be demonstrably affected by the situation. Stoicism doesn't attract viewers, weeping does (apparently). And there's the rub for me.
While it shows America's finest as more than hard-bitten baby killers (which is the normal leftist view), it also shows us as a bunch of weeping wusses. Ok, so I don't know what happened before and after the scene of weeping shown on TV. It may very well be that they have a psychologist on staff who comes in and surreptitiously initiates a crying jag which is then conveniently filmed. Still, it bugs me. It bugs my wife. Yeah, she had to endure more than a few separations. She's been through the "everything breaks when he's gone" deal. She didn't/doesn't cry about it. Neither did the first Mrs. Hobie.
Ok, so you might be saying to yourself, "the crying isn't all that bad, is it?" Well, yeah. I think it paints the soldier as victim. The soldier is no victim. SPC Lucas did a pretty good job of putting that across in words but I think the words were too few to counter the images. He was right in saying that soldiers do what they do to continue what those soldiers of 147 or 232 years ago did and for the same reasons. They expect that war is what it is, dirty, hard, lonely for fighter and family. And today, as they often did in the past, they volunteer to do it. While others sit in their warm (or cool) homes, far from any danger, watching TV and eating as they please, completely unafraid, soldiers go into harms way but think nothing of it. It is how and what it is, nothing more and nothing less.
So it pains me, but not to the point of crying about it, that this show and others attempt to paint the US serviceperson as a pathetic victim of his government. I just don't think that such a portrayal of volunteers is accurate.
Labels: Culture
