THAT EXPLAINS THAT
By Cori Dauber
In this week's column from the Times' public editor, he writes about the need for the paper to go to greater effort to explain itself and its decisions more often. And in that context he links to a number of earlier articles he uses as examples.
One is an article that I had missed on the first go-round, a piece about the decision made by the son of the Mayor of Chicago to enlist in the Army. In that article, the reporter lets slip something we all could have guessed about the Times as an institution.
"Whether or not he gets there, he has already scored a victory against elitism. He has given his famous father and distraught mother a visceral connection to the war shared by virtually no one in Congress or the Bush administration - or the editorial board of The Times, for that matter."
Well, hasn't that been my argument all along, that the world of journalism is in too many ways divorced from the world of the military?
But what he has to say about the military only proves how little he knows about it.
"Which it doesn't. While the Army is integrated and diverse, its enlisted ranks are filled not by the very rich or poor, but by the sons and daughters of the working class, particularly black and Hispanic Americans.
These are people who often lack options, for whom the military has long offered a choice: Serve your country in return for a job, for computer and technical skills, and a jolt of discipline, confidence and independence. The pay is low, the life regimented and exhausting. But serve your time and you will gain a future - if you aren't killed first. With young soldiers dying in Iraq every day, the choice is stark, and its consequences not at all theoretical."
That's first of all offensive. He's essentially arguing that these are people forced into the military because they have no other options, that their choice is: face no future or risk death. That's outrageous. It does a tremendous disservice to the men and women in the military to portray them as so pathetic, as little more than indentured servants, people with so little hope, that they're risking their lives for computer skills and a little discipline.
It completely denies the pride, the patriotism, and the sense of service that motivate so many young people, particularly now.
Take a look at the damn ads. None of the services have run an ad campaign based on "beef up your resume" since 9/11, and none of them are in trouble hitting their recruiting targets.
Second, the notion that the military is somehow taking advantage of minorities is particularly offensive. The opportunities given to minorities in the military is a source of pride for that institution, and that should not be turned on its head as something the institution should be beat up about. There's no other institution in the country where whites, especially white men, so routinely follow the orders of minorities of all kinds: minorities are in places overrepresented in the officer corps, and certainly the perception of women and minorities has been that the military environment is a good one for them despite particular problems which still need to be worked on. Which isn't all that surprising given the care with which research is conducted and policies enacted.
The truth, furthermore, is that it is a canard to say that it is the minorities doing most of the fighting and dying in this war -- just look at the faces. I say that meaning no disrespect to anyone, but because I'm tired of this line that the military is full of people who signed up only because they had no other choice, that it takes advantage of poor minorities who probably didn't know any better, that it's using them and risking their lives because their communities are particularly disadvantaged.
It's just ironic that even in a piece meant to honor someone's decision to serve, the Times still can't manage to avoid condenscending to the vast majority of those who have made the same decision.
Look at his assumption about young Mr. Daley's decision to serve:
"The mayor's son says he was motivated simply by a sense of duty, which was reinforced by 9/11. He was in Manhattan that day, working for Bear, Stearns & Company. He describes himself as a military history buff and a friend and admirer of many soldiers, both from West Point and from his old neighborhood. His rationale for becoming an enlisted man and not an officer, in fact, seems torn from a management handbook: If you can start at the bottom, he says, you'll learn the most on the way up."
But this does not sound like privilege talking. It sounds like Bridgeport, the old Daley family turf on the South Side, home to legions of the blue-collar dutiful: cops and firefighters, civil servants and servicemen, people who know all about respecting rank, paying dues and being a small part of something bigger than themselves.
Patrick Daley says he is agnostic about the wisdom of invading Iraq, but believes the country needs to make the best of it, which he wants to do on the front lines, in the infantry.
He takes the rich kid at his word, assumes that the choice is motivated by a simple desire to serve.
But the working class kids he will be serving alongside are not, apparently, entitled to the same courtesy. They'll be there simply for the computer skills. |
