Karl Zinsmeister reports from the front on his colleagues, other journalists. By and large, he finds them unsympathetic to the soldiers they’re traveling with, self-absorbed, self-centered, and biased against the war and its aims.
Alas, many of the journalists observable in this war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft. Most club together, passing far too much of their desert sojourn gossiping with fellow reporters, mocking military mores in snide jokes and wise-guy observations, chafing at the little disciplines required by the militaryd otherwise failing to take advantage of this unparalleled opportunity to enter deeply and perhaps sympathetically into the lives and minds of superlative fighting men.
I know that if I worked for a different publication and had been given the opportunity, I would have leapt at the chance to cover our heroic men and women in uniform. Isn’t it amazing when people live up (down?) to their own stereotypes?
