It is real, real hard to take anyone on the left seriously when we read things like this nearly everyday:
Catherine Baker Knoll, Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor, came uninvited to the funeral of Marine Staff Sergeant Joseph Goodrich and proceeded to hand out business cards and lobby against the war, according to the deceased’s family members.
Lt. gov. crashed Marine’s funeral, kin say (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying “our government” is against the war.
Rhonda Goodrich of Indiana, Pa., said yesterday that a funeral was held Tuesday at a church in Carnegie for her brother-in-law, Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, 32. She said he “died bravely and courageously in Iraq on July 10, serving his country.”
In a phone interview, Goodrich said the funeral service was packed with people “who wanted to tell his family how Joe had impacted their lives.” Then, suddenly, “one uninvited guest made an appearance, Catherine Baker Knoll.”
She sat down next to a Goodrich family member and, during the distribution of communion, said, “Who are you?” Then she handed the family member one of her business cards, which Goodrich said she still has. “Knoll felt this was an appropriate time to campaign and impose her will on us,” Goodrich said. “I am amazed and disgusted Knoll finds a Marine funeral a prime place to campaign.”and this:
The family of a soldier killed in Iraq and just buried less than 24 hours earlier awoke the next morning to a fire in their driveway, which totaled the car of the soldier’s sister-in-law. The arsonist(s) set the fire with 20 American flags that the family displayed yard, given to them by mourners at the soldier’s funeral:
American flags, lining the lawn of the mother- and father-in-law of fallen U.S. Army Pfc. Timothy Hines Jr., were heaped in a pile early Saturday and burned under a car parked in front of the home – less than 24 hours after Hines was buried in Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery. …
The flames totaled Sara Wessel’s car.
Sara is Hines’ sister-in-law and Jim Wessel’s oldest daughter. She had been staying at the house on Sando Drive since the family returned last week from Washington, D.C., where they were visiting Hines at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Hines, 21, was buried Friday after more than 400 people mourned his passing and celebrated his life at the Vineyard Community Church in Springdale. He was buried with full military honors, leaving behind a pregnant widow who expects to give birth in about two weeks and a 2-year-old daughter.Then when they lose the next election, the Democrats will claim it was voter fraud.
I’m just looking to see if there’s an ethical standard you folks are interested in proposing, or if you’re just cranking on an anti-war politician because it feels good to be anti-anti-war.
Thought experiments:
1) pretend for a moment that the family of this dead marine had not been offended, but instead had welcomed the Lt. Governor and found her comments about her office being against the war comforting. Would that change whether what she did was unethical in your view?
2) pretend instead that the Lt. Governor came with the opposite message, i.e. full-throated support for the war, and the family welcomed her and found that message comforting. (This is a scenario that happens all the time in the real world.) Would that change whether what she did was unethical?
3) pretend that the Lt. Governor came with the opposite message and the family had been offended by that. Would that make a difference?
There are a total of four possible scenarios here, when you include 4) the actual events that prompted this discussion. I’d like to know if you have found an ethical standard that allows you to condemn the act of politicking at the funerals of dead marines in all cases except the one where the politician is a full-throated war supporter and the family of the dead marine likes it that way.
It’s kinda difficult, don’t you think? It’s hard to issue a blanket condemnation of all politicking at funerals of dead marines, because then it kinda makes the sort of spectacle you see politicians mount every Memorial Day into something you have to condemn, don’t you? On the other hand, if you want to give an exception to politicians who politick at funerals where the family of the dead marine ends up welcoming the politicking, then well— you aren’t really concerned with respecting the memory of dead marines as much as you’re concerned with respecting the sensibilities of their families, are you? Alternatively, you could just opt to condemn anti-war politicians for being anti-war when they pay condolence calls to the funerals of dead marines, but then to be consistent you’d have to condemn them when they do it at funerals where they’re invited by the marine’s family expressly for that purpose.
So what is the ethical standard you wish to adopt?
1) Anti-war politicans shouldn’t be allowed to attend funerals of dead marines, whether their families are anti-war or not.
2) Politicians of any kind shouldn’t be allowed to attend funerals of dead marines, unless their families share the ideological alignment of the politician.
3) The only time politicians should be allowed to attend funerals of dead marines is when both the familes and the politicians are full-throated supporters of the war.
4) Politicians, including pro-war ones, shouldn’t be allowed to attend funerals of dead marines, whether their families want them there or not.
5) There is no particular ethical injunction against politicking at the funerals of dead marines. All this kvetching about Lt. Governor Knoll is just bleating for anti-anti-war effect.
I think you’ll find that these five alternatives collectively exhaust the possibilities. Pick one. Let us know why you think it should be the one we all use from now on.
6) No person should show up at a funeral if they’re not paying respect to the deceased and to the deceased’s family. Especially if the person is uninvited and attends for alterior motives.
You haven’t gone to many funerals, from what I can tell of your demeanor.
One ethical standard: Be a compassionate human being.
End of story. I’m not addressing junior high debate class hypotheticals.
You don’t show up at funerals for people for whom you have no professional, social, or familial association. If there is doubt or you do not fit those categories, then you ask for permission in advance. Politicians should be particularly attuned to such etiquette given normal sensitivities and not be quite so boorish that they ask family members who they are and then mug for the camera. You’d think they’d be aware of decorum… but that’s asking too much of an ideologue. She was too busy trying to make a statement or soliciting support from disinterested mourners.
Fit that anywhere on your incomplete list that you like. Maybe somewhere near the top so you might comprehend its priority.
Of course, now I’m expecting some hypothetical of “well, what if it’s a funeral for the President of the United States, aka the CIC? Then should one seek permission since that cannot be pigeonholed as you described?”
Surprise me s9. Tell me you get it.
What I love so much about the VoCHA, (Victims of ChickenHawk Angst) is that they are so loving and supportive of vets, as long as the vet is one who is politically correct to kow tow to their cowardice in public.
It’s so funny watching folks preach all about the importance of respecting the dead, OUR DEAD, because of their political needs.
But hey, this so does not surprise most of us. If we served in the military, that is not Real Military Service, unless it is the politically correct enough type for the likes of AnnonymousDave and the rest.
Why not call up Karl Rove, I am more than sure that he would be willing to save you the cost of doing the FOIA.
Which brings us back to the unpleasant reality check. IF you will not respect Vets who are Alive, why do you care about what happens to the dead one?
What is the real moral standard here?
Or is it really just one more case that the anti-anti-war types like to dehumanize vets, so that they are no longer people, but merely idols for worship, so that they can steal our VALOR as they have none of their own.
After reading some of your blog and your posts here, drieux, I think I’ve figured out how you served in our armed forces.
Poor soul.
it is actually somewhat reassuring to hear that
the reading skills keep the players up to speed.
thought I would share from the panciky moments
of some kids in the military:
http://www.wetware.com/drieux/PPandE/TWAT/NITD.html
but it is actually reassuring to know that so many of the anti-anti-war crowd are so in favor of pissing on vets when it is politically expedient. Clearly an improvement on the old complaining that they use to do about spitting on veterans.
So clearly we are making some progress.
please don’t let me interrupt your dissing the veterans community with your desperate needs to make yourselves feel all warm and patriotically correct. Clearly you folks need to fill your lives with something while you wait for that ‘real attack’ on america that will actually get you motivated to be active…
I see Congressmen attending the funerals of fallen soldiers every week on television with 75% of them giving pro-war speeches over the grave. I think this is many times worse than a 74 year old woman who happens to be a Lt Gov showing up, offering condolences without the media present to one family member, then the family member turning the event into a media circus. I think the guy’s sister is the one at fault here, not the Lt Gov, but no one wants to mention that she was the one who involved the media and made this a circus — not a politician.
drieux wrote:
thought I would share from the panciky moments
of some kids in the military:
http://www.wetware.com/drieux/PPandE/TWAT/NITD.html
Where on that jumbled incoherence of a webpage are any “panicked moments?” Panicked moments of emailing someone who’s hit the bong too many times to use proper English syntax?
Or maybe you’re not American or something. Who knows. This guy is more comprehendable than you.
but it is actually reassuring to know that so many of the anti-anti-war crowd are so in favor of pissing on vets when it is politically expedient.
Not pissing on vets, pissing on you. Seriously, did you have a stroke or something?
please don’t let me interrupt your dissing the veterans community with your desperate needs to make yourselves feel all warm and patriotically correct.
You are not the veterans community.
Dissing you is not the same as dissing the veteran community.
Dissing you is dissing some strange man typing strange things that look like English but are more akin to moon babble.
All jokes aside, what meds are you on?
Edgar Cayce wrote:
I see Congressmen attending the funerals of fallen soldiers every week on television with 75% of them giving pro-war speeches over the grave.
Names and transcripts, please. Otherwise, you’re just making shit up.
RE: Edgar Cayce’s post (July 28, 2005 04:42 AM)
I see Congressmen attending the funerals of fallen soldiers every week on television…
If it is with permission of the family, then that is fine. The family would know what best represents the soldier’s or the family’s position. Was this family member not acting as the family’s spokesperson to criticise the Lt. Governor’s presence? Was she not entitled to publicly criticize, on her and her family’s behalf, irresposible behavior from an elected representative?
Edgar Cayce,
Just thought I’d provide a link to show who played the media card to initiate the imbroglio.
Knoll apologizes to Marine’s widow
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
By Tom Barnes and Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Note the Post-Gazette photo.
Michelle Malkin provides more context to the story.
Sue Dohnim writes: Poor soul.
I doubt this will make a dent in Drieux’s demeanor, but it really pisses me off.
I have a close family member who was one of those research subjects back in the late fifties. Those people suffered so that American military planners could know as much and as early as possible— during the height of the fscking Cold War— about the powerful psychological effects of a drug that is effective in microgram doses.
It turned out LSD doesn’t have any military applications, but in those days— they didn’t know that. How the fsck do you think they found out? Those research subjects made a very real sacrifice so that people like you could remain blissfully unaware of the war going on all around us. The least you could do is show some respect.
Why am I not surprised that people here think such sacrifice should be the subject of a joke? Do any of you people actually think about the business of low-intensity warfare? Or do you just like to pretend you know something about it from reading cheap, trashy potboilers and watching Hollywood movies?
Sue Dohnim writes: No person should show up at a funeral if they’re not paying respect to the deceased and to the deceased’s family. Especially if the person is uninvited and attends for alterior motives.
p1. Lt. Governor Knoll was paying respect to the dead marine. And the family. Too bad the family was apparently too dense to notice it.
p2. I’ve been to a lot of funerals that were announced in public with an invitation to anyone who wished to pay respect. I haven’t seen any reason to think this wasn’t one of them. If it were a private funeral that was not announced to the public, then how the fsck did the Lt. Governor find out about it?
p3. The word is ‘ulterior’… and it doesn’t apply here. The Lt. Governor’s purpose in attending the funeral was not hidden. It was perfectly obvious to everyone, including the family.
You haven’t gone to many funerals, from what I can tell of your demeanor.
I lost count of the number of military funerals I attended in the 1980’s when I was in a position where doing that was part of my normal routine. You don’t know jack about where I’ve been and what I’ve done.
Oh s9, you’ve attended so many military funerals as a routine and had relatives in questionable ultrasecret government programs. Did you happen to run guns to Cambodia with Kerry, too? Were you in Roswell when the aliens landed? Did you have relatives who talked to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster as well? How many of your aunties and uncles were “disappeared” by the Freemasons and Illuminati? Oh, I know, you thought your dad was one of their victims, but it turned out he was teleported to another dimension in the Philadelphia Experiment and is working for the Time Police.
You’re so funny.
Sue Dohnim writes: Oh, I know, you thought your dad was one of their victims
I didn’t say it was my father— I said a close relative, and I won’t say any more than that.
I certainly didn’t call him a victim. You were the one who turned the suffering and sacrifice of an honorably discharged veteran into a “victim” status. And no, I don’t subscribe to any of that other conspiracy bullshit, but I know what the Church Committee said about the LSD experiments, and what my relative told me in confidence about his experiences more than three years prior to the New York Times article that made the first public news about the project. Believe what you want— but you’re not impressing anybody who’s actually been there and done that.
I think Drieux may have tagged you with a bullseye. You have only contempt and derision for the suffering and sacrifice of those who served, and it’s all because you can’t get a grip on your own lack of valor— no, you have to deny it from the veterans, too.
Incorrect, sugar, I have contempt for everyone on the internet until they prove to my satisfaction that they’re not some 15 year old snotnose whacking it to hentai on their daddy’s computer. Or maybe some 40 year old basement-dwelling virgin whacking it to hentai on their mommy’s broadband connection. I haven’t seen anything from you to convince me otherwise.
If we’re going to just claim shit and have it accepted as the absolute truth, then I’m the Queen of Norway and I bathe in emeralds and $1000 bills twice a day while Antonio Banderas serves me bon-bons off of his naked belly.
Putz.
Sue, how did you find that TimeCube thingy? My eyes were rolling after I finished the third sentence.
Seriously. What the heck was that about? Surely it’s a very poor joke from the Onion to do some sort of polling of idiots. Or some automated regular expression script reassembling the same theme in multiple ways. Who would waste the money on such an idiotic assemblage of text, even if some sort of joke or web curiosity?
AD, believe it or not, that Timecube thing is not a joke. An old guy (I forget his name) actually typed and drew all of that up because of his motivation to educate future generations about the secrets of the universe. He even issued a $10,000 challenge for anyone who could prove his Timecube theory wrong, and some M.I.T. students took him up on it. There’s video of the meeting floating around on the internet somewhere, and it’s painfully funny.
I feel sort of sorry for the man, because I think about how must have no family members to keep him from publicly embarrassing himself.
Where I found Timecube: some old message boards I used to visit two or three years ago.
so how was Sue Dohnim going to prove that she was not just one more of her 15 year old snot nosed little boys in drag?
By her patriotic opposition to actual veterans who served in the armed forces of the united states of american while she sat safely with the rest of the little boys from wizbang whining that those who had served were not nice to them.
Here the whiners of the anti-anti-war movement want to make as much political hay out of the death of OUR TRIBE, while safely hiding in the REAR. They want us to make the really absurd choices. Think about it whiners.
Should I support a fellow member of the Intelligence Community or some Political Hack? But I guess we have grown accustom to all of the “clintonite wannabe’s” and their desperate hiding behind the ‘alledged allegations’ – even when Karl Rove Came Out and admitted that he had burned the CIA Asset. Good Lord, you folks don’t even believe Karl Rove! And yet you want to defend him….
While at the same time bending over backwards to make any political hay that you can about anything other than the cause of the deaths of our Troops.
But what was I really expecting from a bunch of civilian parasites who believe that their shiney hiney’s are so much more precious than Veterans.
RE: drieux just drieux’s post (July 29, 2005 09:55 AM)
Sometimes discretion is used when responding to posts. Even those with wicked tongues employ that discretion if only intermittently. Frankly, I could neither follow most of your postings nor your web content that might support your positions.
About that “chickenhawk” argument, which I was able to decipher – it’s a bit tiresome. I am grateful for your service (if you served) but that meme has been criticized regularly, even here at Wizbang. Revisiting it didn’t seem necessary.
driuex wrote:
(rambling)
YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS YOUR HIGHNESS OF NORWAY, PEASANT! BRING ME MY EMERALDS AND LEGAL TENDER! Oh, and tell Antonio he can have the night off, I’ll have a Klondike bar instead.
drieux wrote: so how was Sue Dohnim going to prove that she was not just one more of her 15 year old snot nosed little boys in drag?
Sue Dohnim exclaimed: YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS YOUR HIGHNESS OF NORWAY, PEASANT!
Nice. Proof by repetitive assertion.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too!“
“Am not!“
Sigh. You deserve to be terrorized.
No Howie no!
Oh no, I think I got my moonbats mixed up. Is it you or JmaR who’s the Deaniac? Pfffffft, like it matters, you’re all barking at the moon out of the same cave.
Yes, you’re confusing me with some other moonbat. I’m not even a Democrat, much less a Howard Dean supporter.
RE: Sue Dohnim’s post (July 29, 2005 09:53 PM)
That’s like a white-collar Ozzy Osbourne concert. Has PETA been notified? And did he run out of moonbats?
Sue Dohnim also wrote: “Names and transcripts, please. Otherwise, you’re just making shit up.”
Fairfield teens face charges in flag burning
By Michael D. Pitman
Cox News Service
FAIRFIELD | Two Fairfield juveniles are facing felony charges in an arson involving American flags at the home of a dead soldiers’ in-laws a day after his funeral.
Police said Thursday they arrested and charged the 15-year-old and 13-year-old boys who live near the Sando Drive home each with fourth-degree felonious arson.
The teens, who police said admitted their involvement in the Saturday morning arson, were released to their parents.
The arson at the home of the Wessel family came one day after the funeral of Army Pfc. Tim Hines Jr., who died July 14 from injuries suffered while serving in Iraq.
The family of Hines’ widow lives at the home.
The fire caused outrage throughout the community, with fire officials offering a reward in the case.
Yet Hines’ father-in-law, Jim Wessel, pleaded for the community to show restraint.
The 21-year-old Hines was mortally wounded on Father’s Day in Baghdad and died a month later in a Washington, D.C. hospital.
—-
Now who’s making shit up, Suebaby?