An Angry Father or Not All as It Seems

Over the weekend I saw the sad story of the first Marine casualties in our war. My heart aches for them. One of the disturbing videos on CNN was of a distraught father mad at the President for, paraphrasing, "taking my son away from me." The clip had no setup other than "heeeeeere's the distraught father" type summary.

The father was Mr. Waters-Bey. I do not recall his first name -- my apologies to the gentleman.

The name ending in Bey reminded me of a pro-bono case that I worked on as a law clerk where a federal prisoner was complaining of cruel and unusual punishment violations. I couldn't remember much about the name other than the supervising lawyer told me that it is a religion common in prison. I could remember nothing else.

I decided to do some cursory research. I found a website that described the religion. According to this website the religion is related to the Moorish Science Temple of 1913 and its progeny the Nation of Islam.

I do not know much about this religion, and one website's research does not make doctoral research. Nevertheless, based on impressions alone, I wonder about the motivations and the emotional source of this rightfully distraught father's anger. Why this analysis? Simple, once again the press (especially CNN, here) puts a person on camera with no analysis of the basis for a person's statements. This failure to fully disclose readily ascertainable information concerns me.

This father is entitled to his mourning, his outrage, and his religion. The press is not entitled to a free pass when it provides no context for the press conference. The American people deserve reporters who question seemingly out of place from the expected.