Solitude and Hope: Y'all Come Visit!

Pete Blackwell, in a posting on Parenthetical Remarks, recently reported to his readers that:

[Andrew],Sullivan [wrote] about a disturbing video that has popped up on YouTube showing an American Marine "letting off steam" by singing a song about killing two little Iraqi girls to a group of cheering soldiers. One of Sullivan's readers, an American Muslim, responds by saying he understands "that this is gallows humor," but it doesn't reflect too well on our men in uniform (to put it mildly).

It's a magnanimous response, but he's got it wrong. It's not gallows humor when you're the executioner.

In an update today, Sullivan writes:

Several readers have said I misunderstod the lyrics of the song, for which the Marine has now apologized. Listening closely again, I think I did - thanks to a much better video recording of the performance....My mistake. But even [after hearing the better recording], this Marine's tale is of grabbing an innocent little girl as a human shield, and laughing maniacally as "blood sprayed between her eyes." And if you watch the video again, you'll see a broad smile flicker across the guy's face as he sings about the little girl's face being blown apart.

posted by D. Patrick Zimmerman, Psy.D.  # Thursday, June 15, 2006