When I read that the latest American taken hostage in Iraq was from LaPorte, Indiana, I thought of all the people I grew up with. LaPorte was my neighbor, and then home, for my first 35 years. The quoted story (below the fold) saddened me even more.
From the LaPorte Herald-Argus
LAPORTE -- Over the next few days, dozens upon dozens of red, white and blue ribbons will be found wrapped around trees all over LaPorte County.
The ribbons, according to LaPorte Family YMCA senior program director Marci Cygan, are a reminder that the community has to keep Jeffrey Ake and his family in the forefront of their thoughts and prayers.
...
Gibbs said the prayer vigil goes beyond the Ake family, as the focus should also be about achieving peace and harmony among nations.
"It's not about just the Ake family. It's about the community as well as our nation as we are involved in Iraq," he said.
Gibbs said the community not only has embraced the family with prayers and thoughts, but in its collective distaste with how the media has blanketed the outside of the Ake home the past few days.
"It's such a shame they cannot deal with this difficult situation in their own way. We are upset that they can hardly come and go from their house."
Don't worry, guys. There will be a celebrity marriage in a week or so. They'll taper off the deathwatch coverage.
LaPorte itself is emblematic of the midwestern manufacturing town these days. Most of the heavy industry and union jobs are long gone, including my old employer, leaving thrift shops and buffets dotting the landscape. A quick look at the industry in the area, compared with Indiana as a whole, shows them lagging in wages.
I never knew Ake, and I think I'm glad. It would be too unnerving to have someone I knew in the circumstances in which he now finds himself. It did pull me back to LaPorte, though, and the climate of the sad little town. It's just a damned shame that it's the newest item in the media feeding frenzy/death watch. The man is a person, dammit. If he dies, he'll be one of many who died needlessly in this stupid war. The saddest part of all? Unless stories like this happen, we as a country have forgotten about the war. As long as there are grieving, anxious familes to harass:
we'll pay close attention. Otherwise, where's Judge Judy?
I'm rambling, I suppose, but I just think about that town, falling apart as it has for so many years, coping with one more trauma, this time in the full view of the nation. Maybe while they're there, our nation's finest reporters can tear themselves away from the front porch of the Ake home, and do a story on the rampant healh care crisis in the area caused by obesity, or the high school passing bad checks to its employees, or the lack of job opportunities for the kids there. Do a nice little story on the origin of the high school team's name, the Slicers. They were named after a hometown company that finally moved out a few years ago following a merger. A piece of the hometown, gone forever. Hell, if they want to really dig into a story worty of their investigative skills, they can report the dearth of mini-golf courses in the area.
Do a story on any of those things, and leave that poor family alone. Fucking vultures.