Bush in Utah, Sheehan ad, LTEs, AP

A short diary for letter-to-the-editor writers, in Utah and otherwise...

In this diary, Sheehan Ad nixed, Jon Jayman noted an AP story on a Salt Lake City TV station refusing to air the Cindy Sheehan ad while Bush is in town. Their excuse was that it "could very well be offensive to our community in Utah, which has contributed more than its fair share of fighting soldiers and suffered significant loss of life in the this Iraq war."

In the discussion in the diary, BruinKid looked at the numbers for casualties and state population. Here's the number of people in each state per casualties suffered, sorted from highest loss of life to lowest:

1    Vermont: 56,282
2    North Dakota: 70,426
3    Wyoming: 83,540
(...see comment in the original diary for the full list...)
48    North Carolina: 240,207
49    Hawaii: 251,522
50    Utah: 261,274

Yes, Utah, by this measure, has suffered the lowest burden of any state.  (Maybe it's because they're busy busting rave parties instead...) I don't want to minimize the 9 casualties from Utah, but people need to be called on this kind of thing. Especially when they are using such deceptions as cover for blatant partisanship -- i.e., to keep people from seeing the Sheehan ad while Bush is in town.

If you're the LTE-writing type: if you live in Utah, write to your local paper; if not, here are some contacts:

KTVX (which you should refer to as ABC4 -- a Clear Channel station by the way)
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Associated Press
[e-mail]
(Mention that you are writing regarding the AP story "Station won't air anti-war ad before Bush visit" of Aug/21/05.)