OT: Garrison Keillor on Memorial Day



May. 30, 2007 | Memorial Day is a lovely day in America, a day of
reunion in small towns, where people drive up to the cemetery on Monday
morning and file in, old-timers carrying lawn chairs, and even if you've
missed a few years, people will come over and shake your hand and thank
you for coming. You don't have to dress up or support the war in Iraq.
You just come, and afterward there's hot dogs and potato salad at the
Legion Club.

It's the last patriotic holiday that still means something, and it
persists year after year despite the wooden rituals and leaden speeches.
In Central Park on Monday, an admiral with a chestful of ribbons gripped
the lectern and read his lines, and the line of his that got quoted
was, "Their sacrifice has enabled us to enjoy the things that we, I
think in many cases, take for granted," which does not ring, does it?
No.

"Their sacrifice has enabled us to enjoy the things that many of us take
for granted" would have been better, but still it's nothing people will
take home with them and ponder. How about, "Their noble sacrifice has
enabled us to see the ignobility of the leadership that sent them to
their deaths"? How about "We have sacrificed enough of our young men and
women and it is time to bring them home to enjoy the things that the
rest of us take for granted"?

The Current Occupant drove over the bridge to Arlington and spoke at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a site of powerful reverence, and his
speechwriter, in a hurry to finish and enjoy his weekend, gave him "From
their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and
terrorists are frustrated and foiled -- where our nation is more secure
from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who
have never known it," a line cobbled together from scrap lumber. Shades
of "the last full measure of devotion" and "we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain" but made from different cloth.
The reputation of the Gettysburg Address remains secure.

Dishonesty makes for poor rhetoric and that's what has gutted this
beautiful holiday. The ideas it celebrates -- that our young men and
women did their duty and died in defense of their country -- are simply
not true. Vietnam was lost and it didn't matter to the security of the
United States. Saigon fell and life in the States went on without a
blink. And since the end of selective service, these honored dead are
somebody else's sons and daughters, not ours -- one good reason why
there is so little protest of this war: If the Army was conscripting our
children to go to Baghdad, the Occupant's approval rating would be in
the low teens.

Memorial Day survives on the faint memories of World War II, the Good
War. Those old Legion and VFW guys are the ones who keep it going. Some
come in fatigues, some ride in golf carts past the rows of tombstones
and the urns with fresh gardenias planted in them, and the Boy Scouts
line up, and the auxiliary ladies in blue hand out little American
flags. There is a distant HEE-YUP and the crowd shushes and the honor
guard marches in, left, right, left, right, left, right, and Old Glory
is raised on the flagpole, and we all recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The names of the dead are read and wreaths of poppies are placed and
maybe somebody recites "In Flanders Fields":

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Everyone is a little stiff and self-consciously reverent. And then comes
the speech. That's the problem. It is time for the truth to be told and
we cannot bring ourselves to tell it. Good men and women were sacrificed
to the vanity of politicians and generals. It is a miserable business to
tell lies over the graves of good soldiers, but we do, and then we all
sing "America the Beautiful," including the verse about heroes proved in
liberating strife, and the honor guard fires its rifle salute and
somebody presses Play on a boombox and we hear "Taps" and the guard
turns about-face and marches off and we walk away, thoughtfully, and
there is much to think about.

Telling lies over good soldiers' graves

By Garrison Keillor(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be
heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)



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