Seattle PI: Keep those war photos out of my paper - for the kids!

[maxsolomon]

I don't know if i can put into words exactly why this letter annoys me so. Is it that i resent that newspapers, and all media for that matter, are supposed to be stripped of content that might scare a child, or worse, make that child think that 'war is not healthy for children & other living things'? how old of a child? 6? 15? Is it that this woman wants no depictions of the horrors that we inflict on iraq with our tax dollars & tacit support? Is it that the images she speaks of are, in fact, unbelievably mild in comparison to what newspapers showed during vietnam, or the burnt, exploded bodies that should be shown above the gatefold every day of every week until we leave iraq?

If this woman can't handle the war, maybe she should work to stop it. Or at least "beat her kids to the paper in the morning". They're not after page A14. They're after the comics section.

I'm up at 6:30 every morning. When does she get out of bed?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/220609_ltrs19.html


<Graphic depictions of war upsetting to children
Beginning in April 2004, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer began printing graphic photos of captured prisoners, abuse, blood, the dead. We feared we would have to cancel our subscription, which we did not wish to do, as we value receiving the paper and have received the P-I since 1991. But it was not our desire for our children to see the images, and it hard to beat them to the paper each morning.

The photos seemed to typify a new standard for the P-I. The graphic photos seemed to quit during the past few months, despite further news opportunities, and we were pleased that the P-I appeared to have decided to go back to previous guidelines.

The Thursday issue with the photo of a prisoner with hooded captors brings me to request that the P-I be kept suitable for all ages. There are other venues for viewing the photographs and the paper is of great benefit to families.

Axxxx Jxxxxxxxxx
Issaquah>

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Well this is amusing, don't show the war, please don't show the

war, my kids may raelize this is no X-BOX game with full respawn

[glitch]

2. Good Lord "a newspaper suitable for all ages" would be irrelevant

I am with you in your outrage. And pity. I was a child during Vietnam, and I well remember the images in the paper.
I bet she was a child during the 80s, and with no "Panama Deception" to distress her beautiful mind, either.

[acmavm]

3. It's a frigging NEWS PAPER. It's supposed to report the news, the real

news, the ugly unvarnished truth.

She must be missing a few vital screws. Or they're loose. Whatever her problem is I sure would be embarrassed to be related.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. There were lots of this type letter during the early stages of the war.

I, like you, just want to 'smack' these people. It's part of the reason so many RWers support our militarism. They have never seen nor experienced it. (Look how shocked Americans were on 9/11). It's just a 'game' to them and we, Americans, are so blessed by God, that nothing like war could ever befall us! We are so superior, like Barbara Bush, that we don't want to 'clutter our beautiful minds' with the ugliness of war.

[maxsolomon]

5. i think its the fact that she can't beat the kids to the paper

i don't know any kids like that, and we have a teenager with a NYT subscription.

maybe she doesn't like explaining the pictures because you can't lie to kids & feel good about it.

[unhappycamper]

6. War is bad juju. I see nothing wrong with seeing the fruits of your labor.

Or in this case, showing you the government you elected doing it's thing. Suppressing that news only allows it to continue. How many of our children must die because because war pictures are upsetting?

A group of Patriots in Eugene, OR walked outside the IRS office on April 15. This is the message we need people to see; it ain't pretty:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3502765

IMHO, this is exactly the message we need to get to the sheeple.

[EC]

7. Maybe, a concerted effort by the RNC in the area

told to write letters? Children should see what war is in the real sense instead of just in movies, where the good guy always survives...

[intheflow]

This could not have been a more timely post for me.

Am going to a church board meeting tonight, and the #1 topic of discussion will be pissed off parents who objected to an art exhibition in the church lobby depicting the consequences of war. And this is a Unitarian Universalist congregation--people you would think were enlightened beyond this kind of BS thinking. I know it's not wise for me to go in with guns blazing, but I'm sorely tempted.

Maybe, though, as part of the ministerial staff, I'll make up a prayer about it and make them all feel guilty about not living up to their responsibilities as citizens to prevent and/or stop this war--which will, of course, stop the war images.

Printing this off to take with me. Thank you for posting!

[unhappycamper]

11. print off some of the Eugene, OR pictures

[ken-in-seattle]

8. In case your not in Seattle, some background

The PI is the "liberal" paper according to the wingnuts and I consider the Seattle times the more rightwing of the two myself. Perhaps for different reasons than some. The Newspaper strike of 1997? ended with the Pi making a good faith offer and returning to work, while the Times (family owned) Gave a column to a scab and then refused to rehire the union activists. Those who it took back were tormented by being given offices in closets and basement storerooms and abused until they quit. Issequah is a far eastern suburb and a republican stronghold. White as snow and site of the evangelical megachurches and hundreds of Bush billboards. They are trying to seceed from King county.

The comment in that paper is a pretty tame wingnut comment compared to any day in the Times op-ed page.

[maxsolomon]

12. oh, i'm in seattle

and i'm a times subscriber, so i know of what you speak.

i work downtown with the rational people, but i do do business with east side builders.

this woman sounds like a stay at home mommy in some mcmansion on the sammamish plateau.

[izzie]

9. I think many people like to keep their child en in the dark.

It is like how they teach history. Lets play at life and this is how I think it is so it is how you will learn it. I wish I could say I knew the answer to this but I do not. I did try to let my own children see what was going on in the world. That is I would be sure they went to see their grandfather when he was dead but hardly when they were getting him ready after he had died. So we all do it to some point. But then look what they see in the movies and I seem down right back wards.Some kids seem to think that stuff is real. Half these people hunt and think nothing of killing animals so what does one say?

[Sanity Claws]

10. Because children in high school are being recruited for the military,

they have every right to know about war and its effect. Sounds like she just wants everyone to be as ignorant as she is.

[TorchTheWitch]

13. Oh, good grief!

When I was a kid the only thing I did with newspaper was line the birdcage and make paper hats. By the time a kid is old enough to be interested in the comics section and figure out the a newspaper isn't just for pet potties and arts & crafts, they're old enough to understand what war is... and they SHOULD be taught that war is a horrible thing but sometimes a regretable necessity. If people can buy their kids toy guns and let them play "bang, bang, you're dead" they NEED to know that it's anything but a game.

How much you bet this nutcase wrote this letter of complaint while her kids were cruising porn on the net, flirting dangerously with complete strangers though IM's and playing grossly violent video games she doesn't even know exist while the little ones are in the back yard blowing up their toy soldiers or killing each other with pop guns in a parody of "cowboys and Indians" without a thought about what her kids are up to.

There is really something screwed up with a culture that teaches kids at a frighteningly early age to "play" at shoot-em-up and blow-em-up games yet believe they should be shielded from what guns and bombs are really for and what they really do. I've never understood what's healthy about teaching kids to "play" at war looooooong before ever telling them what war IS... the first thing that kids learn about war is that's it's a game.

[sinkingfeeling]

14. What is with these people? We live in a 'real' world!! Kids should

be, by law, exposed to it. In 1991, when Bush started the first Iraq War, I was in a lounge with a bunch of Texas yahoo college guys and you would have thought it was a video game. They yelled and cheered at every rocket and bomb explosion. I sat there and cried because my country was destroying innocent peoples' lives a half world away.

I read the papers since I was in grade school (until last Nov. 4). I watched the Viet Nam footage every night on the news. I read Andersonville when I was 11 and had to have a dictionary beside me to look up all the sexual organ references. I was a real nut on the Civil War and read all the gruesome details.

If we shield everyone in America, we get these nuts that wave the flag and think the use of WMDs is just sooooo cooool!!

If I were a teacher (don't like kids, so it ain't going to happen), I would have these pictures on the bulletin board. People should be made to see what is done in their name and with their tax dollars!!

[gratuitous]

15. Everything should be pablum because babies can't eat steak

Yeah, the underlying sentiment isn't too hard to figure out: This woman is distressed by what her tax dollars are buying in Iraq, and rather than confront the corrupt administration, she'd prefer to just put the icky pictures out of her mind entirely.

After all, isn't this exactly what she voted for more of last year? Well, here it is!

[City Lights]

16. Hey Axxxx Jxxxxxx! How do you think the Iraqi children like the war?

They are living it day in and day out.

People like this really piss me off.