Here's something you don't see every day. In fact, President Ford's may well be the first flag-draped coffin you have seen on TV all year. President Bush (41, that is) banned cameras from Dover Air Force Base during the Iraq War (the first one, that is), and future presidents have upheld the ban at the facility where the military dead are brought in and laid out in ceremonial caskets.
This reminds me that I should salute Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour" for another year of remembering the fallen with pictures in silence at the end of many of his newscasts. Here's hoping, however wishfully, he's not still doing it a year from now.
Current TV is also showing the fallen, in "pods" under their "Current Remembers" banner. Although there is sound, the presentation's still effective, with the photo, name, age, hometown and cause of death shown next on a map of Iraq with the location of death marked out--the "pod" ends with a recent total number of dead.
Even though I'm out of the target demo, Current is still doing some interesting experimenting in television programming and deserves checking in every so often. (And when you do that, you'll probably get some of their crasser or stupider "pods," to which I apologize.)
Posted by: Mark Jeffries | January 02, 2007 at 01:10 PM