From today’s Editor & Publisher – [h/t Drudge]

Tribune Co. to Show Circ Losses; ‘L.A. Times’ Down More than 5.5%

By Jennifer Saba

Circulation at Tribune Co. papers will show declines in the next Fas-Fax report, with the most troubling plunge at the Los Angeles Times, Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith confirmed during a conference call with analysts this morning.

Though executives declined to break out individual paper’s Fas-Fax numbers, which are due out in May, Smith acknowledged the Times will drop more than 5.5%.

Smith said that for the entire group, home-delivered copies are down about 4% while the drop in single-copy sales is even greater.

I was going to actually write something positive about the LA Times today, so now I will just to make them feel a bit better, if they ever read me at all. In today’s Opinion section they ran this article, “DAVID GELERNTER — Soldiers Do Us the Honor”, with the byline of;

This is David Gelernter’s first regular column for The Times. He is a professor of computer science at Yale and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard.

WAIT JUST A GOLDARN MINUTE THERE PARDNER! A contributing editor to the Weekly Standard is going to have a REGULAR column in the LA Times? Can’t wait to read the letters to the editors on this one. Shoot, probably hundreds over here on the Westside had to use their in-home defibilators after reading that!

In the piece, Gelernter takes on the liberals for their sideways manner of honoring posthumous Medal of Honor winner Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, of the U.S. Army.

Even Iraq war opponents and Bush-haters say they honor Smith’s courage. But their “honor” is mostly a sham. Unless you understand what drives a man like Sgt. Smith to become a soldier, the honor you do him is honor with a footnote (he was a brave man, but obviously some kind of weirdo).

He analyzes the liberal hatred and mistrust of the military, and takes a look at his 17 year old son’s desire to serve his country, and offers rationale for both points of view, and a challenge to those who are always haters.

I think I understand what motivates many soldier-hating boomers. They never served in the military, and soldiers make them feel guilty. I never served either, and I have felt that way myself.

I didn’t wear the uniform — in 1970 my draft number came up #352. I felt like I lucked out! I was actually “lucky” that I was going to the fairly conservative Tulsa University, where the only ones actively demonstrating against the war were what we called the “freaks”, and they were so stoned or tripped out on acid that a lil ol’ country boy like me just couldn’t go there. If I had gone to school at Berkeley, LA or back east, who knows what would have happened. What I am trying to say here is that even though I never demonstrated against the war, never burned my draft card, and never, NEVER disrespected any of the Vietnam Vets that I came in contact with, I too had feelings of guilt, as the pressure of my generation and the constant brow beating of the military by the MSM had crept thoroughly into my psyche, caused great confusion and had messed up my sense of patriotism.

Once again, what saved me was reading. Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, P.T. Deuterman, James Huston, Stephen Coonts, Patrick Robinson, Stephen Hunter — fiction writers all, but in their words I discovered the soul, the substance, the gallantry, the heroism, and last but by all means not least, their works helped me to reconnect with my own heart-felt feelings of gratitude for the men and women that have and still do wear the uniforms of our great country’s military, including my father, “Duke”. Gelernter goes on to say it this way,

But fairness doesn’t require that you be defensive if you never wore your country’s uniform, only that you honor those who did. It’s amazing how spiritually cleansing a little gratitude can be.

So congratulations to the LA Times for adding Gelernter’s voice to their pages. More moves like this might just reverse the slide in subscriptions and readership, Lord knows they need that. To wrap this up, I would like to finish with a statement that Greyhawk has on the masthead of his blog, Mudville Gazette:

“Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

(db)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 15th, 2005 at 11:40 am and is filed under Media Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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