So now we learn America’s Sweetheart (Millennial version), 20-year-old Jessica Lynch, was supposedly captured by a camera cavorting topless at the appropriately named Fort Bliss with two soldier boys before she was sent to Iraq, and naturally the Big Bad Wolf, sleazoid publisher Larry Flynt, snagged the pix though he claims no plans to publish them in Hustler.
Enough already!
If you can’t see the pathological dynamic at work here, let me spell it out for you: We pedestalize a person, then we delight in knocking them down.
This is high sport the world over. Look at – you should pardon the expression – Prince Charles, bedeviled anew by rumor and innuendo, currently writhing on a scandal-skewer like bad barbecue over a synthetic gas flame.
They smash icons – and reputations – don’t they? Iconoclasm’s ignorant cousin, Gossip, is the real “death by inches” – column inches.
Larry Flynt, you should be ashamed of yourself, merchandising this crap. You’re disgusting.
What celebrity in this country hasn’t been caught nude, semi-nude, or in a compromising situation by a Polaroid camera? Maybe neither Dr. Ruth nor Richard Simmons – so far. But wait for their nasty bootleg mutual sexercise video.
Even our ultimate deities aren’t safe from this insidious supermarket tabloid-type speculation – which seems to spread through our entire society like a virus: What about Jesus’ missing years? Wasn’t Jesus actually married to Mary Magdalene and didn’t they raise a family? What about Jesus’ other brother?
Should we care?
Poor Jessica. First she went to war. Like some latter-day “Our Gal Sunday,” she was just some simple girl from a small West Virginia town who wanted to be a kindergarten teacher someday after she completed her soldiering. Then she was captured. And purportedly tortured. Then miraculously rescued and saved, unlike her best friend, the late Laurie Piestewa, who wasn’t as fortunate, becoming the first female American soldier killed in Iraq.
Although initially the Pentagon insisted Jessica Lynch had amnesia, that was a claim her family either did or did not dispute, in conflicting and confusing reports. Nevertheless, Jessica Lynch’s myriad injuries were her own Red Badge of Courage.
To the myth-making machinery, Jessica Lynch became, albeit temporarily, a shining heroine of what passes for war these days.
But, as in every fairytale, what should have been enough, wasn’t. After fabulous tale-meister Rick Bragg got hold of her life story and began spinning the base metal of reality into the fool’s gold of a David Lynch phantasmagoria, there’s the sudden revelation, alas, she was anally raped, brutally, by her captors, during her “three missing hours” of no memory. They had to play the Brutal Anal card, didn’t they.
Spare us!
Next, truly piling insult onto alleged injury, “Saving Jessica Lynch” – her made-for-television movie – was roundly trounced in a ratings battle by “The Elizabeth Smart Story.”
Mormon perversity trumps Iraqi evil!
Incredibly enough, Jessica Lynch just had her picture taken in a publicity shot with Britney Spears (!) at some Women of the Year award ceremony sponsored by socially conscious Glamour Magazine: “Lynch walked up the red carpet on crutches …,” according to the New York Daily News. “She wore a black gown embroidered with red roses, and sneakers – the only shoes she can wear because of a brace on her left leg.”
Kleenex, anyone?
Listen, by now Jessica Lynch and her parents should know you can’t control the Media Monster: This is an insatiable beast, more rapacious than Siegfried and Roy’s errant tiger, for sure.
Whatever Jessica Lynch’s journey, she’s suffered enough. Yes, the proverbial “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” A young girl goes to war, and returns, forever changed. Whatever actually transpired, this alone is a tragedy of truly Shakespearean proportions.
Please let her live the rest of her life in peace.
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Wayne Allyn Root