Hurrah For America's Paralympic Heroes! (Coverage Not Available)

The television networks aren’t offering coverage of the Paralympics and few if any of the major newspapers have much to say on the subject. To it’s credit, the Washington Post ran a very good human interest story on a former Naval officer competing in the swimming events, but that has been about it. Don't look for front page coverage in the major New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas or L.A.papers. It isn’t there. It is impossible to believe a people who so value courage and sacrifice as Americans do are not interested in supporting athletes like Gold medalists Joseph Berenyi or Mallory Weggeman. (I will let you do your own internet search to find out what they had to overcome to achieve their Paralympic dreams.) However, if you read their stories and aren’t inspired, you are probably dead and no one bothered to tell you. Other American athletes have not yet taken medals, but are in London competing after surviving motorcycle accidents, avalanches, comas and disease, and a host of other challenges. No, the problem cannot be that Americans aren’t interested in supporting these incredible people. Rather, it is an unwilling media, who have labeled these games as spectacle and not sport. Has some panel of executives and yes-men deemed the games as not glamorous or sexy enough, or that there isn’t enough marketing data to show Americans are interested? Such a shame that instead of giving America's young people a new generation of heroes, we have only another example of how an allegedly free press determines the news it chooses to report and not what we deserve to hear.