Considering the mainstream media's penchant for highlighting negative aspects of our involvement in Iraq and for shining a positive light on anyone who protests the war in any way, how is it we didn't hear about this guy? (hat tip: Moonbattery)
Bill McDannell, 58, of Lakeside, California, quit his job and sold nearly all his possessions (including his home) in order to trek across the country on foot to protest Iraq. It took him about nine months.
Returning to normal life won't be easy, either. He's broke now. He's got no place to call his own. And he didn't garner the national attention he had hoped for.
Apparently when he arrived in Washington D.C., there were no reporters and no cameras. Perhaps his problem is that he didn't walk in the nude or on his hands or something similarly outrageous. Just walking? With today's 24-hour news cycle, you have to do something nutty in order to get the attention-span-challenged producer's eye. Just ask Code Pink.
Fortunately for McDannell, an admirer back home organized a welcoming committee for him at the airport. One attendee said he was an "inspiration" and a "hero." Yep, a hero for impoverishing himself -- not to benefit some charity or other selfless cause -- but to walk across the country with the hope of getting his name on all the news talk shows and maybe a magazine or two.
Michael Stetz, who wrote the story in the San Diego Union-Tribune seems puzzled with the public's lack of interest, saying "many Americans are angry with the war" and citing a recent CBS poll that says 70% of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling the war.
Interestingly, he doesn't mention that 53% polled also disapprove with Congress' handling of the war. While that's lower than the president's rating, it's still a majority, and therefore newsworthy. It's also newsworthy to note that only 22% polled paid "a lot" of attention to the testimony delivered to Congress by Gen. Petraeus, while 35% paid "some" attention, and a combined 41% paid either "not much" attention or "none." But again, none of this made it into Stetz's story.
One other interesting item to note in the CBS poll: there wasn't a question about whether respondents wanted America to win in Iraq. But since they don't approve with how the war is being handled, winning must not be important.
