Is This How We "remember" Memorial Day?

Article first published as Does Anyone Remember Memorial Day

? on Blogcritics.

OK, I'm probably being too sensitive about this. But I just saw a commercial that offends me a little.

It's for a furniture retail store, and it has a bunch of people dancing to "Celebrate Memorial Day Savings."

Have we forgotten what this day is about?

I'm all in favor of the holiday. I'm all in favor of people going on picnics and watching parades (does anyone hold a Memorial Day Parade anymore)? But with two wars going on and young Americans being killed every day on foreign shores, I resent the image of a bunch of young people dancing to "celebrate" the "Memorial Day Savings" the deaths of other brave men and women have secured for them.

Yeah, I know. I'm just being an old curmudgeon here. But it just seems fundamentally wrong to "dance" in "celebration" of "furniture deals" on a day created to recall the ultimate sacrifice not of the furniture manufacturers selling their wares at "low, low, Memorial Day prices."

Car dealers are no better. Their commercials show the showrooms crowded with happy customers who honor the sacrifice of young Americans by purchasing gas-guzzling SUVs, making mockery of the fact that our troops are dying in part to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices. And the market is good!

Grocery stores are a bit more dignified as they sell their steaks and potato chips with waving American flags in their ads for their big "Memorial Day Cookout Blowout" sales. Will they donate some of the profits to the families of those dead soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who we're supposed to be honoring this coming Monday?

I'm not suggesting we all dress in black and mourn. I am suggesting that we enjoy the time with our families and reflect on the freedoms we enjoy because young Americans and immigrants to this country have put on the uniform, put themselves in harm's way all too many of whom have paid the ultimate price over the years to ensure that we have these fabulous, this weekend only, Memorial Day Mattress Extravaganzas so that we may ALL "Rest in Peace."

What next? Martin Luther King Jr. Day sales where a guy in "blackface" tells his TV customers, "I have a dream today... of saving you big money!"

There's something wrong with our priorities here, kids.

by: Bill Schmalfeldt

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