Profile in Partisanship
I'm glad that I'm not the only history buff this thought occurred to.
Mike Zamzow, a friend and former colleague in the ELCA Maquis, was kind enough to send me a link to a National Review Online piece which points out that there is absolutely nothing courageous about Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) becoming his party's point man in a crusade against an unpopular war- and still less about his willingness to slander American servicemen in the field.
That Murtha is himself a war hero makes this no more praiseworthy, much less courageous. Why, then, has the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library bestowed its Profile in Courage Award upon him for his behavior?
"The Award," the Library's website explains, "was created in 1989 by members of President Kennedy's family to honor President John F. Kennedy and recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most." Whether or not JFK actually wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, it is clear that Murtha does not belong in the same category as Daniel Webster, Edmund G. Ross, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Hart Benton, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, Bob Taft, George Norris, Sam Houston, John Peter Altgeld, and the other American heroes both inside and outside the Senate commemorated in that book who literally put their political careers on the line- and sometimes ended those careers- in order to do things which were unpopular because they were also right.
Regrettably, it is also clear that the award has been debased to the point where it is nothing but a partisan public relations gimmick to give notoriety to people who take perfectly safe, if controversial, positions with which the custodians of the award happen to agree.
Mike Zamzow, a friend and former colleague in the ELCA Maquis, was kind enough to send me a link to a National Review Online piece which points out that there is absolutely nothing courageous about Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) becoming his party's point man in a crusade against an unpopular war- and still less about his willingness to slander American servicemen in the field.
That Murtha is himself a war hero makes this no more praiseworthy, much less courageous. Why, then, has the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library bestowed its Profile in Courage Award upon him for his behavior?
"The Award," the Library's website explains, "was created in 1989 by members of President Kennedy's family to honor President John F. Kennedy and recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most." Whether or not JFK actually wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, it is clear that Murtha does not belong in the same category as Daniel Webster, Edmund G. Ross, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Hart Benton, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, Bob Taft, George Norris, Sam Houston, John Peter Altgeld, and the other American heroes both inside and outside the Senate commemorated in that book who literally put their political careers on the line- and sometimes ended those careers- in order to do things which were unpopular because they were also right.
Regrettably, it is also clear that the award has been debased to the point where it is nothing but a partisan public relations gimmick to give notoriety to people who take perfectly safe, if controversial, positions with which the custodians of the award happen to agree.
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