In The Doldrums With The Fourth Estate

This started out as a post about how we've become a nation of biddies, the most sniffy and censorious and irony-impaired gaggle of yahoos ever to breathe air. It was prompted by a wire story citing "genuine outrage" by "some veterans and members of Congress" over a gimmick on the "Wedding Crashers" web site allowing people to download and print out phony paper Purple Hearts. (The titular characters are two oafs who use various means, including fake medals, to score chicks at wedding receptions.) This seemed like a perfect opportunity to fulminate against  the climate of creeping humorlessness in which we seem to live. And honestly, I was all set to tee off.  I mean, I had the ball in my sights and I was waggling my hips and checking my grip and squinting down-course to take range. I was already framing an argument, something along the lines of "Tell me specifically how this dumb joke materially denigrates the real contributions of American vets." I was also toying with the notion of wondering exactly how dopey you have to be to wear a paper military medal at all, let alone try to pass it off as real. And I was going to bring it home with a gratuitous screed about how thoroughly "Wedding Crashers" fell apart in its last three-fifths, and bastinado the filmmakers for trying to give the oafs some heart, of all things, which is as Kryptonite to true funny. I mean, I was ready to go. I was set to break for lunch. Then I read the story. Then I read it again.

And you know what? As best I can tell, the "some veterans" expressing "genuine outrage" over the thing seem to number in the low single digits, or approximately one: Hershel Gober, a former deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs and himself a Purple Heart winner. At that, his unsettlement seems to be fairly mild. "I have no problem with spoofs," Gober told Scripps Howard. "But we're trying to protect the medals." To which a reasonable person can only respond: Um, okay. Thinking I must have missed something, I combed the wires for other stories on the subject, turning up only an AP dispatch which cited an FBI agent who enforces federal laws against the illicit trafficking of Medals of Honor -- a guy who's conscientiously performing the duties for which he gets paid, in other words -- and a Vietnam vet who runs a web site devoted to medal recipients.

So here's a puzzler. Is it possible that somebody would be cynical enough to trade on the popularity of a hit movie, enlisting a couple of drowsy, hyperbolically-inclined wire reporters in the dog days of summer -- Aw hell, it's too hot to do any reporting today -- in the service of, let's say, a self-aggrandizing attempt to pad a resume and gather some column inches? Who would do such a thing? Bingo: A member of the United States Congress! In this case, it's Rep. John T. Salazar of Colorado, whose fingerprints are all over the wire stories. Salazar is, as it happens, the sponsor of legislation aimed at curtailing the illegal procurement or display of military medals. "With the recent release of the popular movie 'Wedding Crashers', Hollywood has stumbled upon the serious problem of phony medal recipients," Salazar's office said in a press release quoted in the Scripps story. To which a reasonable person can only respond: It has?

Look: Earning medals is no cakewalk. In some cases the price is tremendously high, and people who've paid it deserve respect and thanks, and people who haven't and claim they have, well, it doesn't take an act of Congress to know they should be pummeled with sticks. This isn't what's sticking in Mr. Irresponsible's craw today. It's the unending lazy-ass credulousness of some of my colleagues in the press. So let me address this to the low-level journodrones who got stuck in the office on a steamy Friday when that release from DC came in, and didn't have the sense or the nerve to push back when their aging, running-on-fumes editors got that crazy "I smell a trend" look in their bloodshot eyes: Fellas, I know it's hot. I know you're sleepy. We're all sleepy. But the next time you get an assignment to gin up a trend story from a press release, try to find more than three people -- that's three people total in two stories -- to bolster your theory that there's something widespread going on. (You might have to quit downloading porn and MP3s long enough to make some phone calls. It's a pretty basic technique, and if you're stuck I can show you how it works.) And when you're done -- ah ah ah, when you're done, mister -- then maybe we'll get to go outside and play hackey sack for a while. All right, run along now and file your stories. Mr. Irresponsible's late for lunch, and you wouldn't want him to get cranky.