ninme

This:

Applause in the Airport? Beyond the Beer Commercial … It Happens … It Really Happens, By Matt Friedeman, PhD

courtesy of Blackfive, is quite the tear-jerker. Before the good part, though, a snarky comment:

On the program that day we were discussing the report that some Europeans were disgusted with the Super Bowl commercial of American soldiers getting applause in an airport. The critics thought it too extreme in its patriotism and a possible incitement to further war.

Yeah, you know, we were sittin’ on the couch, fast forwardin’ through the football, watchin’ all the ads, and that one came on, and boy, Peter had to hold me down to keep me from gettin’ up, grabbin’ my AK, and stormin’ into another country to shoot me some natives. Hooo, boy, that was close.

Okay, that’s out of my system, on to the good part:

“Back to the story: there were seven other soldiers that came home with me that day. We flew into JFK, and we were talking on the way back: What’s going to happen? What will we be facing? Is it going to be like the Vietnam era, are there going to be people spitting at us?

“We didn’t know. We had that much trepidation about it.

“We get into JFK, we step out of the breezeway into the main terminal, and directly in front of us was an elderly gentleman carrying a bag. And he immediately stopped, set his bag down, and the first thing we all thought was, ‘Oh, Lord, here we go already.’ He just stopped and looked at us for a second, and then tears came to his eyes and he saluted us.

“And — I’m breaking up now [editor's note: with tears] — every one of us just started crying like babies. Everybody in the terminal — I kid you not, at least two to three hundred people — just started clapping, spontaneously. To me, it was so much worth what we were doing, to realize that people over here actually get what we were doing. We weren’t over there because it’s fun. We’re over there doing a job.

“When I saw the Super Bowl commercial, I just started bawling like a baby again because that was something totally unexpected. We had no idea that people actually appreciated what we’re doing, from what we see on the news.

(F***ing media)