The Fourth Estate

We are a strange society - if you watch the news. We have A.D.D. and forget what happened last week and are obsessive about the tragedy of this week. If you watched MSNBC or CNN the only story you would be versed on is the Virgina Tech killings.

You wouldn't know about 200 people killed yesterday in Iraq.

You wouldn't know that the Supreme Court is taking down Rowe v Wade.

You wouldn't know what is happening with Paul Wolfowitz .

You wouldn't know that the FBI searched Congressman Doolittle's house yesterday in connection with the Jack Abramaff scandal.

I am not discounting the pain of what happened at Tech. It's horrible. But, how is it possible that the President managed to make it to the ceremony mourning the loss of those killed at Tech but has never attended a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. Unfortunately, he would have many more opportunities since his surge.

From October 2006 through last month, 532 American soldiers were killed, the most during any six-month period of the war. March also marked the first time that the U.S. military suffered four straight months of 80 or more fatalities. April, with 58 service members killed through Monday, is on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the conflict for American forces.

What about mourning our fallen soldiers? How is their loss any less devastating?

It's time to have more than a conversation about Iraq. It's time to have a strategy. It's time to have a conversation about gun control. It's time to have a conversation about impeachment. But like the Imus story when all you heard was that this would begin a conversation about race the talk was about the conversation we should have instead of having the conversation.

We need news that actually covers the news and not vultures who go from one tragedy to the next.