So all nine miners have been rescued and I'm amazed and relieved, but why does MSNBC have to go for the "hero" angle at the first given opportunity? Why can't the miners just be "really lucky sons of bitches who hung in there like champs"? Don't mean to be excessively cynical here, but I do hope they don't have their own "We can't follow what YOU did" benefit concert, turning another clannish, misunderstood, fashionably blue-collar workforce into a patriotic Amurrican icon. While I was following some of the news coverage tonight (particularly that sleazoid jackass Geraldo Rivera on FOX News), I kept thinking of The Simpsons' riotously disingenuous Live Aid-stylee celebfest "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well."

This is not to say that I don't stand in awe of the hard work cops, firemen, and coalminers do, and the way their jobs require them to enter into hazardous situations. They're professionals; mostly they ain't fucking around. But it unsettles me that the starched-shirt sensationalist media has to leech every blood cell of credibility from The Humble Working-Class Ethic to enhance its own image as a hardline, true-grit News Source. When I hear the word "hero" from such a source, I immediately see it spelled out not with letters, but with dollar signs.