So, I'm whiny??? riiiiiiggghhttt....

On another blog http://blogs.tampabay.com/standingby/, I have been told that I am being "whiny". Well, sweetie, if you tell me I'm whining, I'M JUST NOT YELLING LOUD ENOUGH!

What we were discussing, was the discrepancy between the avalanche of coverage of the horrors of VTech, and the total and complete lack of coverage of the deaths of local soldiers... None of us are trying to minimize what happened at V. Tech and how truly horrendous it was, or minimize the pain that those family members are going through, or the horrors that those poor witnesses lived through. BUT the topic was were the sacrifices of the military being treated with less respect.

At that point, it somehow segued into the suppositions of some of the commentors that we military families were whining, when we asked for recognition or discounts or acknowledgment. That we should "suck it up". That our soldiers had, after all volunteered, and that if we didn't want to live that life, that we should not have married them... They shouldn't have joined up for training, or National Guard tuition assistance, they should have gotten grants, or second jobs..... We are whining, after all it's not THAT bad! We are getting paid by the taxpayers... blah blah blah.

Well, folks, don't tell me I'm whining, tell me TURN IT UP! I just went to a reintegration seminar, and talked to a few other deployed military spouses. They agreed... We aren't whining, we are trying to remind the rest of you that we are here . My husband's relatives don't seem to remember that he is in the Sand. And the rest of the State seems to have forgotten us as well.

When you forget that they are there, when you treat the wounded with the callous disregard we saw at Walter Reed, I start yelling. When the rest of the country spends more time worrying about who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, than the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the families back here, I start yelling. When the media would rather show more and more clips and pictures of Cho, than make note of a soldier's funeral that day, I start yelling. When we are forced to send troops back to Iraq after less than a year at home, and no one cares, I start yelling. And as for those damned discounts... at least in this State, they are few and far between! If a business wants to use the military discount as an advertisement, which they do, then I'll ask for it. If that's whining... fine. Ya don't like it, don't read this, don't listen. and in the words of many great philosophers of my aquaintance... bite me!

LAW