The House That Zelmo Built

I'm getting pretty damned sick and tired of hearing about "Jessi". She's not a freakin' hero. She was a damsel in distress whose story was breastfed by the news media and the U.S. military, working hand-in-hand to feed a fairy tale story to the American public in order to hide the fact that Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company screwed up by not making the left turn at Albuquerque and sending rear echelon personnel marching smack dab into the center of an Iraqi hornet's nest near Nasiriyah.

I'm not knocking Jessica Lynch. Instead, I'm knocking the Great White Hype Machine surrounding this young hick broad from West Virginia, who is undoubtedly the unwitting victim of The Collective U.S. Media Aw-Shucks Story, the same load of crap that ruined the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals by showing us repeated close-up shots of Ray Bourque as the ABC sportscasters chanted Ray's name over and over again like the Michael Jordan Mantra that permeated the airwaves 10 years before.

Now this young girl from West Virginia will never again have a "normal" life. Fox News commentators are already discussing her "marketing strategy". Before long, we'll be subjected to the Jessica Lynch Bobblehead, the Jessi Babooshka, and the mandatory Playboy shoot (and why not? She's photogenic). The TV movie is inevitable. A Hollywood screenplay is unlikely unless Steven Spielberg or Oliver Stone decide to ante up the sob story by throwing in "Jessi's List" or "the Magic Humvee Accident theory", respectively.

I can see it all now, a Steven Spielberg movie about how "Jessi" inadvertently liberates an Iraqi, who comes to America, lands a high-paying job and a book deal, all before or if ever becoming a U.S. citizen, and saves him from almost certain...okay, highly probable....well, maybe a slim chance of death at the hands of Saddam's Republican Guard....okay fine, she saved him from a mediocre existence in post-Saddam Iraq. Hey, that counts! Spielberg can find a way to milk that story.

Or how about an Oliver Stone movie about Jessica Lynch showing us how her rag-doll body bounced "back and to the left....back and to the left....back and to the left" as her Humvee spinned and bounced wildly out of control while shots rang out repeatedly from behind the grassy knoll and the Nasiriyah Book Depository Building?

This country's news media whores, as well as the sheep that make up the general public, need to rethink their priorities as well as their definition of what constitutes a "hero". What happened to Jessica Lynch wasn't planned. She did not march bravely into the midst of enemy Iraqi forces; her unit stumbled upon an ambush by accident, and were subsequently annihilated. Her only achievement was survival and the luck of the gods, and her own ability to persevere. Does that make her a "hero" though?

In my eyes, no. And it shouldn't in yours, either. Jessica Lynch is a survivor, that much is plainly obvious. But the news media and the general public keep throwing around the word "hero" when referencing Jessica Lynch like she just marched up into a burning building, evacuating tens and hundreds of innocent people, all the while knowing full well that the building could collapse around her at any moment. Remember last year, when those miners in Pennsylvania were rescued? Those guys were called "heroes" too......why???

New York Police Department and New York Fire Department personnel running into the World Trade Center on 9/11 to help evacuate as many people as they can, now those guys were heroes. A guy donating one of his kidneys in a transplant to save the life of another, now that's a hero. Cops returning a kidnapped girl to her family, now those guys are heroes.

"Jessi" is nothing more than the poster child of the Iraqi Conflict. True, she deserved to be awarded the Purple Heart. And yeah, I can even agree with the Bronze Star, since her ordeal was rather exceptional and quite a story in itself, thus making it meritorious, the whole point behind the Bronze Star. And she most certainly deserved the POW medal.

But to be called a "hero"?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a hero as:

QUOTE

1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.

2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war.

3. A person noted for special achievement in a particular field: the heroes of medicine. See Synonyms at celebrity.*

4. The principal male character in novel, poem, or dramatic presentation. See Usage Note at heroine.**

* SYNONYMS: celebrity, hero, luminary, name, notable, peronage. The central meaning shared by these nouns is "a widely known person": social celebrities,; the heroes of science; a theatrical luminary; a big name in sports; a notable of the concert stage; a personage in the field of philosophy.

**The word hero should no longer be regarded as restricted to men in the sense "a person noted for courageous action," though heroine is always restricted to women. The distinction between hero and heroine is still useful, however, in referring to the principal character of a fictional work, inasmuch as the virtues and qualities that become a traditional literary heroine like Elizabeth Bennet or Isabel Archer are generally quite different from those that become a traditional literary hero like Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.



Perhaps in the technical sense, where Lynch was the "principal...character in novel, poem, or dramatic presentation", but what of the soldiers who fought and died alongside her? What of the other soldiers in her company that were rescued on a separate date? Who tells their story, and why aren't they as significant, as "heroic", as Jessi is?




(0) comments