This is what's wrong with America: Two records could be broken this month. Only one seems to matter

[garybeck]

Two records could be broken this month. Which story is getting attention in the media?

As we approach the end of the month, more and more attention is going to Alex Rodriguez and his amazing 14 or 15 home runs (I forget the current number) and how he's about to break the record for the most home runs in April, not to mention he's leading the league in batting average and just about every other statistic. Wow!

but at the same time, as we near the end of the month, we are also approaching another record - the most soldiers killed in Iraq in one month, since the war started. reference: http://icasualties.org/oif/ (check the number of soldiers killed per day for this month... the highest since the month of invasion).

On May 1st will the headlines read "Most home runs ever" or "Bloodiest month ever"???

my bet is A-ROD will be on the front page of many newspapers, certainly the front of the sports section, with a long expose about A-Rod's life to boot. The war dead will hardly get mentioned.

What is wrong with this picture?

The other day I was listening to John Elliot on AAR and a caller called up with an idea - ****we should press our government officials to keep the flags at half mast until the war is over.**** Every day people are dying there - average of 3.8 "coalition" soldiers each and every day this month. Shouldn't we honor them by flying our flags at half mast? Why isn't this already happening?

I agree the flags should be at half mast for those killed in Virginia Tech. But are we doing the soldiers in Iraq any justice when we start raising them to full mast again after the VT mourning period is over? Do the soldiers' deaths mean any less than the VT student's deaths? Maybe this is one way we can get more people to be conscious of the fact that people are dying over there.

Just watch the news over the next few days and see which record gets more attention -- A-Rod's home run record or the looming war dead record. Both records could be broken this month. One of them doesn't seem to matter to many, at least in the media. Every time I see A-Rod's amazing month being glorified and no mention of the death surge in Iraq, I get sick to my stomach.

[nam78_two]

1. K&R.nt

[tblue]

2. Couldn't agree more. Ever since I saw the flags at half mast, I've been wonderng how come we value

some lives more than others. * (or his handlers) made that call. They should be ashamed. It must feel like a slap in the face to the loved ones of our fallen. Insult added to injury. We should each of us call for the flags to stay lowered. If * won't do it, then we'll have to.

[saracat]

3. Absolutely right on. And we can guess the headline!

We need to DEMAND the flags be lowered.NOW>

[frogcycle]

4. while I agree with your point

just to be accurate, 4/04 and 11/04 were higher than this month (they were both major offensives in Fallujah), as was the initial month. We are, though, on a pace to surpass this past December, which is currently the third-highest, and the six-month period from November through April is far worse than any previous 6-month period.


http://icasualties.org/oif_a/CasualtyTrends.htm

[garybeck]

5. you are correct, however the analogy still stands because

more home runs have been hit in other months besides April... I think you have to take those two months out of context, along with the first month of the war, because they were major offensive undertakings. the "surge" was supposed to fix problems, not make it worse.... in reality, it's ludicrous to try to compare baseball to war... I'm just really frustrated by the attention to sports and the lack of attention to the war and the casualties.

[frogcycle]

6. agree 100%

I tried to make clear I was not nitpicking. The analogy is valid. The war seems to have become "background noise" to vast portions of the population - or, rather, it always was.

I maintain my website of "faces" with photos and links to hometown newspaper articles, most of which I read in full. I get a handful of hits a day. I assume (or hope) the various other such sites - Washington Post, Boston Globe, CNN, all get many, many more. But in some respects I feel like those big news outlets maintain those sites just so they can say they provide the info, and then they don't have to talk about it.

Of course there is a privacy and respect issue; funerals should not be sensationalized. But the offhanded update of the totals we see every now and then is woefully inadequate.

There is usually plenty of local coverage - neighborhoods putting out flags, yellow ribbons, etc., etc. So the awareness is there for those whom it touches directly. But when you think about it, with "only" 3233 deaths, that's nowhere near one per US community. So plenty of communities, not just little ones, have yet to experience it first hand. One of the ones last week had a headline "localville's first Iraqi war death" or some such.