Here we go again

Via Atrios, it looks like we’re in for another round of “Ted Koppel hates America.”

Because god forbid anyone should be reminded that these were real people, with families and lives. Much better to honor them as abstractions, without getting so unpleasantly specific.

A song cycled through on iTunes a little while ago, a song that is familiar in the way that you can only understand once you’ve got a catalogue of songs that you’ve been listening to for more than a quarter century — yet in the context of the year 2005, it was suddenly jarring:

Shelter me from the powder and the finger
Cover me with the thought that pulled the trigger
Just think of me as one you’d never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone
Remember me to my love,
I know I’ll miss her.