Mamamontezz's Mental Rumpus Room

Your Fifteen Minutes are up, Rene Gonzales

Rene Gonzales, the UMass grad student who's scathing attack on a U.S.Army soldier killed in action in Afghanistan drew national attention, has issued an apology to the family of the deceased.

In his opinion piece from the Daily Collegian, Gonzales stated that the dead Ranger was "not a hero" and had gotten "what he asked for" by enlisting to serve in the military. He went on to call him a Rambo, a G.I. Joe, an idiot, and a "Pendejo", Spanish for idiot.

A link to the article was placed on the website Lucianne Dot Com during the evening on Wednesday, prompting a frenzy among conservative bloggers and bringing it to the attention of media outlets in the U.S. and abroad. Thursday the president of UMass responded, chastising Gonzales and calling the piece "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack."

In today's apology, Gonzales called his article "insensitive."

Interesting, isn't it? I would dearly love to see what this "disgusting, arrogant, and intellectually immature" grad student had to say to a grieving family that could in any way absolve him of what he did.

But what of his apology to this young man's brothers and sisters in BDU who passed before him? Or his apology to the families of the rest of the fallen? For surely, by his denigration of this one dead man, this Hero, he spits on the graves of all of the fallen of this war and of all the wars before it.

Rene Gonzales is an extremely privileged young man to live in a place where a person can say the vile and extreme kinds of things he did with no more repercussions than he has suffered. There is no jail cell waiting for him, no chains or hooks or electrical wires to be attached to various parts of his body, no rubber hoses or leather truncheons.

No man with a badge will show up at his door with or without a warrant to arrest him or hustle him into the back of an unmarked van. No law enforcement person will burst through his door to punitively ransack his home in the guise of a search. There will be no action against him by agents of the government for his words.

The private sector however, filled with men and women who have served, their families, their survivors, their friends, may be quite another matter. We all may be only Chicken-hawks, Rambo's, G.I. Joes, and Pendejos to him, but any of these trumps a Chicken-shit.

Perhaps it is a good thing for Rene Gonzales that no member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that has "blogged him to filth" will stand in judgement of him right now, particularly this woman. I have but one punishment that I would mete: that he would "enlist," train, and attempt to qualify for the same unit as the man who's life he attacked, who's honor he smeared, and who's death he ridiculed.

No, not some quickie, week-long, total immersion fantasy boot-camp for wealthy, type-A, Soldier of Fortune wannabe's. Not the remake of that Boot Camp reality television show. I mean weeks of PT and fear and humiliation and sleep deprivation, followed by months of Ranger Training with a whole new round of PT and fear and humiliation and sleep deprivation in even worse locales with less food and considerably more pain.

Make a man of him? Doubt it.

Posted by Mamamontezz at April 30, 2004 12:55 PM