PROTESTERS OBJECT, BUT USA JUST WANTS A GREAT PARADE

I continue to be astonished at the various protesters against victory parades for the Gulf War veterans, and against the victory they earned. In some circles, second-guessers abound. They wonder why we couldn't spend the money on the homeless, or on AIDS research or on (insert your trendy cause here), instead of on parades and fireworks. Americans have generally ignored them, and immense crowds turned out for parades in Washington (Saturday) and New York (Monday).

One could hardly expect Phil Donahue, Bryant Gumbel or Oprah Winfrey to grasp the point, but Americans just love these parades. Phil and Oprah, especially, have perfected that genre of TV talk show consisting of a steady diet of freakish wierdos, serial philanderers, transvestites, lesbian couples discussing alternative parenting, professional malcontents, man-haters and mothers-out-to-steal-their-daughters'-boyfriends. The rule seems well established: The more bizarre, the better. These TV hosts remain sufficiently removed from ordinary Americans to be astounded at the man-in-the-street response to the Gulf War and its aftermath.

This is not altogether new; most elite media opinion denounced Ronald Reagan's liberation of Grenada. Thus the elites spoke even as union halls, coffee shops and Elks Clubs rocked with overwhelming approval of a military action that succeeding in rescuing several hundred endangered Americans. Thirteen months later, the man who ordered it won 49 states in his second national landslide in four years. Big Media, it would appear, doesn't influence opinion quite the way it used to.

18 months after Operation Just Cause in Panama, and true to his Blame-America-First principles, Phil Donahue still foams at the mouth at the slightest opportunity to denounce the American action President Bush ordered there. Alas, the Donahue ratings are sickly. And a TV talk show the Rev. Jesse Jackson has offered America since September resembles nothing so much as a stillbirth.

It's important to examine this phenomena; it helps to explain why ordinary Americans feel so alienated from Big Media, in this media-dominated age.

Recall that it wasn't long ago that most messages we saw in the mass media were overwhelmingly anti-military. Examples abound, but "MASH", perhaps the most popular TV comedy of the 1970s, captured the form perfectly.

Brilliantly written, wonderfully funny, full of marvelous characterizations, MASH had a remarkable run that continues even now on late-night syndication. Rare indeed was the MASH episode that didn't run down the military as an institution; or authority, as a concept; or generals and other ranking officers, for good measure. Be Cool, we were told: Question Authority; Let It All Hang Out; Do Your Own Thing. This is the show that made us laugh at what the "oxymoron" (a phrase containing two contradictory words) of "military intelligence."

The message was artfully focused and without let-up: Commanding officers are pompous windbags and unfeeling boobs; the authority they wield is utterly arbitrary; they are fit only to be laughed at and lampooned, thwarted and disobeyed. War is always an absurdity, a grotesque farce ordered up by old men to sell weapons; it is never, ever justified; it is always meaningless carnage, the stuff of unredeemable horror, enlivened and ennobled only by the brilliance and selflessness of wise-cracking, nurse-chasing surgeons.

While MASH was winning Emmies, its writers were congratulating each other for their cleverness, and a "sensitive" Alan Alda was offering himself as a role model, something remarkable was quietly happening. Main Street America was sending its sons and daughters off to our volunteer military forces. All branches were filling up with bright people, capable people, selfless people the best-educated in our history. They were brilliantly led, by officers who had eschewed the rewards of private industry for the age-old call of the soldier: The same Duty, Honor and Country that a generation of hip Hollywood types told America was a cruel joke. And always, the troops were training, training, training.

And when the time came for them to be tested under fire, they were ready, and they made us proud.

The Wall Street Journal commented on the incredible outpouring of Americans at the welcome-home-the-troops-parades:

"The thank-you signs were the most ubiquitous of the placards held up under the eyes of the troops marching by. But even without the signs and the shouts spelling it all out, it would have been clear that the chief emotion of the Americans lining this parade route, and the millions elsewhere they were standing in for, was deep gratitude for their restored pride in their military."

Yes, that gets it right just exactly right: Deep gratitude for our restored pride in our military.

Let's read on:

"The feelings aired on this day have their roots in events going back long before the Gulf War back, to be exact, to the reigning atmosphere that intimidated popular opinion from the mid-1960s through the '80s. Denigration of the American military saturated every aspect of the popular culture the movies, drama, music, books, campus life. It was not so long ago that displays of regard for the military and the kind of historic accomplishments that Americans came to celebrate in New York and Washington were virtually unthinkable.

"It should not be altogether surprising that Americans want to drape themselves in flags and cheer their lungs raw now in admiration for and pride in the men and women wearing the nation's uniform. Natural impulses long bottled up have a peculiarly enduring force when they are finally liberated, which is precisely what began to happen to the patriotic feelings of the American people early in the last decade.

"Some of the parade watchers, of course, are fortunate enough to have been born into a time when, as it used to be before the fabled days of the '60s and flag burnings, it was the most natural thing in the world to cheer the flag and honor the military along a parade route on Broadway, or on Main Street."

And so, this healthy attitude this pride, this patriotism is once again "the most natural thing in the world."

On the Fourth of July, we'll have our own joint Cape County celebration in Jackson for the veterans of Desert Storm, and for all veterans. Let's do this one up right.