32 years ago, I admiringly shook his hand...however today, I might be inclined to offer Ted Koppel a less flattering gesture!

Where are you now TED KOPPEL

There are many who believe you deserve to be haunted in the middle of many sleepless nights for the shameless program you and ABC staged in the name of a perverted political ideology on the night of April 30, 2004!

After 11 years of war --US military deaths in Afghanistan hit 2,000 

(but there is a Democratic President in office, so who really cares)!

    Some 32 years ago while employed as a news assignment editor at an ABC affiliated television station near Scranton, Pennsylvania (Shortly after Bill O'Reilly departed for greener grass and dollars) I had the pleasure of meeting someone I viewed as a giant in the industry of that era, Ted Koppel.  Mister Koppel was originating his hugely popular late night program, Nightline, from our local studios, and reported on a nearby deceased coal town which had become an underground blazing inferno.

     Fast forward to 2004--after changing careers many years earlier, I was now wrapping up a successful business profession in Pennsylvania and ripped my roots from coal remnants of that area and moved to what would be my permanent residence, retiring South of the border in sunny Florida.  Meantime, O'Reilly was puttering around with some radical conservative news network called FOX.  And as for Koppel, well...he was now in his 24th year of broadcasting from the same Nightline anchor desk.

     Unfortunately 2004 also was the beginning of the end for Koppel's long run on the program he originated.

     2004, as we all know was an important political year.  Americans would be going to the polls, electing a new President, or returning the 9-11 era Commander- in-Chief, George W. Bush.  Liberal media organizations happened to be just one arm of the many planned instruments utilized to deny Bush of a second term.

     Koppel and his producers apparently thought it would be a below-the-belt strike on the Bush re-election drive, to go for the jugular, by presenting a special 40-minute shock presentation, reading the names, with accompanying pictures of all 721 American soldiers killed to date in Iraq. Denying any accusations of injecting politics into such a sensitive topic, Koppel said, “Our goal tonight was to elevate the fallen above the politics and the daily journalism.”  Even the most ardent Bush critics waved off such a superficial claim by Koppel and the network.  

     Koppel explained,  "The program  was inspired by a June 1969 edition of Life magazine that carried the names and pictures of all the American soldiers killed in a single week in the Vietnam War."

     In June of 1969, another Republican was President.  Richard Nixon had assumed responsibility of overseeing the massive war machine Democrat Lyndon Johnson had escalated to heights even he could not control nor comprehend.  But despite which ever President actually owned that highly unpopular war was left for future scholars to debate, however it was quite obvious, Life magazine apparently waited until a Republican inherited the mess and then thought it would be an excellent opportunity to recognize those who had died in battle.

     There was a time,  media organizations attempted to hide political bias.  That all ended when spectacles by Life magazine and later Koppel, as they threw aside their masks and revealed themselves for who they actually were.  No longer gatherers of news stories and passing details along to American consumers, but rather now, they were the mechanisms which crafted and created the days future history lessons.

     So now, following 11 years of war in Afghanistan, and the 2000th body bag silently returned to another mourning American family, the days of recognition from politicians and their partners, the corrupted media, have seemingly lost their commanding voices and gone blind.

     This recurrent lack of media interest must lead us to one logical conclusion....obviously a Democratic President idling time away in the White House, and adding insult to injury, the man, Barack Hussein Obama, is expecting the American people to return him to that office for four more years. 

     And what has become of Koppel?  The man actually, I believe has become delusional....just recently "launching an apparent war on what he believes is "partisan ranting" masquerading as news coverage at Fox New, MSNBC and other partisan media."  

     Perhaps Mister Koppel,  you'd care to elaborate on what the hell that offensive show was you violated our intelligence with back in 2004, and then claiming it to be your patriotic contribution to honoring the war dead.  Any such recognition by a Liberal towards those who sacrifice their lives so others might be free, is usually accompanied by contemptuous words of disdain, and painting those heroes as blood thirsty war mongers.

     You should have quietly ended your illustrious career and departed with a bit of dignity Ted.  Instead you leave former admirers, such as myself, with the impression you are, and always have been just another curiosity oddball on today's media side-show midway.

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"....And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me."
– Lee Greenwood