Consider this diary to be a companion piece to mcjoan's front page post about
The Battle of the Mannings.
The Colts-Giants game provides one refuge from ABC's lies, albeit it a lighthearted one.
Sports Illustrated's current cover story about Pat Tillman -- Remember His Name -- provides an alternative refuge:
"This war is so f------ illegal."
- Pat Tillman, Baghdad, March 2003
Agree or disagree with Tillman's assessment about the legality of the Iraq war, there can be no doubt that the Sept. 11, 2006 issue of Sports Illustrated goes to extraordinary lengths to correct the record and to tell the truth about Tillman's life and the Administration's misuse of his death.
[W]e'll even take the guy who came right out and said that the myths are a load of crap and hoist him on our shoulders to make another myth.
The President did it, materializing on the massive video screen at an Arizona Cardinals game in a taped homage to Pat and the global war on terror seven weeks before he was up for reelection in 2004.
The Defense Department, with the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal breaking a week after Pat's death, did it as well.
Here's how Tillman's Mom puts it, in a statement that gets prominent blockquote treatment in the SI story:
"They attached themselves to [Pat's] virtue and then threw him under the bus," Mary says. "They had no regard for him as a person. He'd hate to be used for a lie."
And if only Tillman's motivations were more prevalent among Iraq hawks in their 20s and 30s:
Everybody who thought he'd enlisted purely out of patriotism, they missed reality by a half mile. Sure, he loved America and felt compelled to fight for it after more than 2,600 people at the World Trade Center were turned to dust.
But his decision sprang from soil so much richer than that. The foisting of all the dirty work onto people less fortunate than an NFL safety clawed at his ethics.
For those unfamiliar with the influence of Sports Illustrated, here's the lede from Wikipedia's entry about the magazine:
Sports Illustrated is an iconic weekly American sports magazine owned by media giant Time Warner. It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country.
This week, every Daily Kos reader should add to that number: read the Tillman article here.