Star One Smart Blog's

For me, blogging is an aside, a stress-relief pressure-valve that gives me a chance to express (and sometimes form or hone) my opinions, play with my Photochops, post some pictures that may or may not be worth seeing, and communicate with far-away friends and relatives, to a degree. For other bloggers, it's a social-networking tool (a grown-up MySpace) where comments can drive the discourse, and are actually read and responded to (here, I check for comments every couple weeks).

For others, blogging is a paid profession. Some of my favorites are syndicated bloggers (Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom comes immediately to mind).

Nashville's WKRN News Channel 2 has a couple of paid bloggers who try to keep track of every area blogger's output, aggregating the feeds, and making comments on posts they deem worthy or useable in their own blog posts. Well and good; for the social networking types, great. Me, I could care less, as I have little enough time to read my favorite blogs (see my blogroll) and comment on those, without having to actually interact with the (basically liberal) local bloggers.

Well, a couple days ago, Adam Kleinheider posted in Volunteer Voters an ill-timed remark about troops in general and American Soldiers in particular...from today's Nashville City Paper...

“Many, many soldiers, save those at the very top of the pyramid, are pawns. They are button men for our civilian leadership,” Kleinheider stated in his blog post. “Spouting the platitudes can be useful enough to build morale and boost recruiting but at some level we must [be] honest with ourselves [and] recognize what the military is and what it isn’t — myths and fairy tales aside.”

ACK (as Kleinheider was known, before Channel 2 hired him) picked a Gawdawful time to vent on soldiers...right after Memorial Day. Steve Gill picked up on it, did some radio blurb, and now ACK is wondering if his job will be int-ack when the dust settles.

He's true to his beliefs. This, from October 2006, in defense of (GASP) John Kerry's troop-bashing:

"The Right says he is belittling the troops and the left has had enough of being called Anti-American so they are silent as well.

Thing is though, the man ain’t lying."

and

"What John Kerry said today should not have been said. It was unfortunate for a person of his position to say something of that nature.

But one thing it wasn’t was untrue."

It is untrue, ACK. And, what you said. These guys aren't pawns. Knights, more appropriate, if you have to choose a chess-piece analogy. Then, who are the Bishops? The Rooks? The King? And, when the game is over, pawns are re-used. Soldiers die permanently, and deserve, especially on (or near) Memorial Day, some respect. Not crap from a desk-sitting blogger.

(And, from my extensive Chess knowledge, pawns can become Queens when they reach the 8th rank; most of these guys don't play that game. Check your blogroll if you're interested.)

Even if ACK is a paid blogger (who is too far left for my tastes, and sucks up to liberals and metrosexuals in Nashville's blogosphere), he doesn't deserve to get fired for his opinions. Maybe a little flame applied to his posterior, but that's what other bloggers do when agitated. Good enough.