Chris Hayes said essentially the same thing as David McCullough, Jr. did.
Just for reference, McCullough is the teacher who at a recent high school graduation told students "You're not special" and said,
"You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. ... We have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/high-school-graduation-speaker-tells-students-not-special-145709954.html
Now, for the record, he may have something of a point in saying this, although I question the timing of it at a high school graduation....there are some times when someone should feel special about one's self, and graduation is one of them. But my purpose here isn't to either laud or criticize what McCullough said.
Instead, it's to point out a double standard.
The response to McCullough's speech appears overwhelmingly positive, that it was "refreshingly true" or "needed to be said."
Yet, just a few weeks ago, Chris Hayes of MSNBC said something that was essentially the same thing McCullough said, except focused more narrowly on the military. He said that the word "hero" is sometimes overused in reference to soldiers killed in action. While nothing that Hayes said actually denegrated those who died in the line of service, he did state in essence that the word "hero" really only deserves to be applied in circumstances where one's death has come in a selfless moment of extreme valor to help their fellow service persons, and that by overusing the word "hero" to anyone who dies in battle we run the risk of over-sanitizing wars and the reasons behind them.
The vitriol launched at Hayes for his comments was extensive. But wasn't what he said "refreshingly honest" as well? Didn't it "need to be said"?
If everyone who serves in battle or dies in battle is a "hero," what does that make Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain? What does that make John Basilone? No one is denying the bravery and courage of the men and women in uniform, no one. But that alone doesn't make them all "heroes."
Yet isn't what he said
