In Today's News . . .

I turned on the TV this morning, and Perky Pat - the cheerful morning news lady - announced in a matter-of-fact way that two more American soldiers had been killed in Iraq overnight. She offered no further explanation, no commentary, just the fact that two more Americans were dead, slipped in between the death of Christopher Reeve and a shooting on the north side of Chicago. She didn't mention whether the two had loved ones who would be grieving over their loss; no photos of the dead were shown. Nothing. There was also no mention whatsoever of how many might have been wounded in the same violence that killed these two anonymous American soldiers; in fact, she didn't even mention how the two had died, leaving one to wonder if they had been killed in an accident, or by an illness, or simply in their sleep. Listening to her, one might think that the deaths of these two Americans had occurred in a vacuum, as though it was a common-place, yet inexplicable, occurrence for Americans to suddenly drop dead by twos in Iraq.

Juxtapose this story with the coverage of the crash of a tour bus schlepping retirees to a casino this weekend. Everytime you turn on the news, the image of the shattered tour bus lies scattered across median strip of a raining freeway, while a serious reporter intones about the tragedy and the certain investigation into how such a thing could have happened. Switch to shots of stunned witnesses, staring wide-eyed into the camera as they tell what they saw. Switch next to the grieving relatives sobbing for the loss of their loved ones. Switch next to the Friends and neighbors explaining what good people these were and how they will be missed by all who knew and loved them. And so it goes, ad infintum, ad nauseum. One wonders what will come next. The victims' co-workers? People who never met them? The homeless guy who lived in the refrigerator three blocks away? Their pets?

I'm not trying to minimize or denigrate the tragic loss of life in this accident, ro the impact it has on the lives of those left behind. But I am confused at why the media can pay so much attention to a handful of people who died in a bus crash while completely passing over the fact that Americans are dying every single day in Iraq and - to a lesser extent - Afghanistan. It says a great deal, not only about our news media, but also about our country as a whole, when we become complacent about the deaths of Americans in a foreign war. Perhaps we're experiencing a sort of sticker shock at the numbers coming out of Iraq. "That many!?! Wow!!" Perhaps we've become inured to the numbers. Perhaps we're just in denial. Whatever the case, it no longer outrages us that sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, are being killed and wounded every day. At least, not unless we knew the person killed.