Flit

Globe TV columnist on Cdn soldiers

John Doyle, in "Canada's national newspaper":

"There were profiles of soldiers who had been decorated for bravery, and interviews with some of them. A few were clearly giddy from the experience of combat. Their perspective on combat was raw and unfocused. Medals for valour they may have won, but logic and truth they have not."

Truth they have not? Does that mean the Globe's TV columnist considers decorated Canadian combat veterans to be liars?

You know, I do have friends whose parents, spouses, kids, are not going to see them this Christmas, because their country sent them overseas. If John Doyle et al now have trouble seeing that reality on television, it would seem there is a fairly simple answer: don't send them in future. But that doesn't help the hardship of those over there now, though, and their families.

Doyle claims to be concerned about the sentimentalization of the military family experience at Christmas time. Wasn't it great in the good old days when Christmas was about nothing but empty niceties and hollow commercialism? I liked those days, too. Of course, they're hard to remember, as I was aged six at the time.

In other news, this is the kind of useful information one wishes the Canadian media might actually report on. Afghans, it seems, actually wants Western help at the moment, still by an overwhelming margin after a violent year for them. Pity we don't have any time or season on our calendar where Canadians historically like to give charitably to those in need, cause it seems they could really use it about now.

PS: Doyle writes, "The debate about Canada's role in Afghanistan is one of considerable scope and complexity." Which is why it's obviously a bad time to have information on the teevee about those soldiers' or their families' experiences. Check. Much better to have the kind of alternative Christmassy fare Doyle lauds in the same column, featuring a drama about "a man's body found gutted, burned and hung up like a scarecrow on the roof." Me, I prefer red-and-blue coloured lights, but hey, chacun son gout.