Slate: D-Day OD

[Sticky]

Why World War II nostalgia has gone too far
Posted Friday, June 4, 2004, at 9:32 AM PT - This year's onslaught of D-Day hype—a continuous barrage of World War II nostalgia stretching from Memorial Day weekend through George Bush's trip to Europe these next few days—has already exhausted all but the most diehard buffs. Newsmagazines splash gritty old photos of GIs from the Good War and marked-up invasion maps across their glossy pages. Historians from Martin Gilbertto Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have published books exalting soldierly valor. In various speeches George Bush links the siege of Normandy to the siege of Baghdad in what he portrays as one seamless American mission. Building on the mythmaking efforts of past presidents, and with the ready help of the media, Bush has spun a simple tale of American bravery in defense of democracy—of a golden moment when ordinary Yankee sons began the liberation of foreign peoples solely because they believed in freedom.

-snip-
Under Ronald Reagan, however, the mood changed. It was Reagan who kicked off the D-Day mania when, in 1984, equipped with a backdrop chosen by Michael Deaver and a speech penned by Peggy Noonan, he lauded a band of aging U.S. Army Rangers in front of the very 130-foot rock face they had scaled with fire department grappling hooks and ladders 40 years before. Reagan spoke for a constituency that wanted to reclaim America's pride in its military strength. His farewell address in 1988 called for the revival of a feel-good history that would teach schoolchildren "who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those thirty seconds over Tokyo meant." If this rhetoric sounded fuzzy and nostalgic, it shouldn't have been surprising, since Reagan's vision of war came from Hollywood, where he had discharged his own service obligations as part of the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps. (At times Reagan even confused the real war with memories of films he acted in or watched, as when he "remembered" having liberated the Nazi camps.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5139637/

[teryang]

1. Good observations-wrong conclusion

<The romance with World War II grunts and their courage on the beaches of France reflects more than a due regard for the feats of a dying generation. It represents a change of heart among their baby-boom children, who since entering middle age have sought to atone for the stern rejection of militaristic values and the insufficient appreciation of their fathers' heroism that they displayed when coming of age during Vietnam.<snip>

This last part is pure bullshit.