Seems that The New York Times’ “The War at Home” series really upset some veterans and military bloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.
I do find that kind of distressing. What’s more newsworthy about 121 vets out of 700,000? That the crimes happened, or that the percentage is actually kind of low? (If I’m doing my math correctly, and given my English major, I probably am not, it’s something on the order of 0.017% of Iraq war vets who have committed or have been accused of murder. )
There’s another wrinkle to this logic. The guy who was really upset wasn’t taking into account lesser crimes committed by recently returned soldiers–theft, embezzlement, pulling their pieces out on the lanes like some latter-day Walter Sobchek.
But I think the real issue here is, in fact, the lingering spectre of both John Rambo and Walter Sobcheck–the mentally unstable returned vet who can never quite recover from the war, who can never quite realize that not everything can be related back to or blamed on Vietnam.
By pointing out problems that some soldiers have upon returning, the public becomes able to subconsciously participate in this metonymy–conflating the part with the whole. As much as I love the New York Times, NPR, and news coverage in general (except maybe anything involving Chris Matthews), I think this is a problem with any coverage of the war and its effects.
I think that what the Times’ piece–and I haven’t read it yet, so could have this completely wrong, because my understanding is completely drawn from On the Media–has been trying to do is to separate the individual from the whole, to prove the metonymy false by placing these 121 murders and accused murderers in the context of their individual lives.
The effect is something similar to what happens when people try to humanize Hitler. One group believes that to do so diminishes the horror of what he did; another group–to which I belong–finds it more terrifying that a normal person could suddenly turn tyrant. Here, one group feels that the coverage of these murders plays into the stereotype; another group feels that the coverage of the accused and convicted individuals humanizes their situations and asks more questions about the causes of their crimes than it ever tries to answer.
I don’t really want to take sides here; I haven’t completed reading “The War at Home,” and so I feel completely inadequate to speak to the piece. I can only speak about the controversy as spoken of on On the Media. I think it’s fair only to say that it raises more questions for me than it answers.
January 27, 2008 • 9:50 pm
Because I’d said that one story asked more questions
(expanded from the 1/25 recap)
Seems that The New York Times’ “The War at Home” series really upset some veterans and military bloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.
I do find that kind of distressing. What’s more newsworthy about 121 vets out of 700,000? That the crimes happened, or that the percentage is actually kind of low? (If I’m doing my math correctly, and given my English major, I probably am not, it’s something on the order of 0.017% of Iraq war vets who have committed or have been accused of murder. )
There’s another wrinkle to this logic. The guy who was really upset wasn’t taking into account lesser crimes committed by recently returned soldiers–theft, embezzlement, pulling their pieces out on the lanes like some latter-day Walter Sobchek.
But I think the real issue here is, in fact, the lingering spectre of both John Rambo and Walter Sobcheck–the mentally unstable returned vet who can never quite recover from the war, who can never quite realize that not everything can be related back to or blamed on Vietnam.
By pointing out problems that some soldiers have upon returning, the public becomes able to subconsciously participate in this metonymy–conflating the part with the whole. As much as I love the New York Times, NPR, and news coverage in general (except maybe anything involving Chris Matthews), I think this is a problem with any coverage of the war and its effects.
I think that what the Times’ piece–and I haven’t read it yet, so could have this completely wrong, because my understanding is completely drawn from On the Media–has been trying to do is to separate the individual from the whole, to prove the metonymy false by placing these 121 murders and accused murderers in the context of their individual lives.
The effect is something similar to what happens when people try to humanize Hitler. One group believes that to do so diminishes the horror of what he did; another group–to which I belong–finds it more terrifying that a normal person could suddenly turn tyrant. Here, one group feels that the coverage of these murders plays into the stereotype; another group feels that the coverage of the accused and convicted individuals humanizes their situations and asks more questions about the causes of their crimes than it ever tries to answer.
I don’t really want to take sides here; I haven’t completed reading “The War at Home,” and so I feel completely inadequate to speak to the piece. I can only speak about the controversy as spoken of on On the Media. I think it’s fair only to say that it raises more questions for me than it answers.
Filed under: Commentary, On the Media, Real News