What’s missing from this Memorial Day editorial in The News & Observer? The word “thanks.” Instead, it urges us to think, pray, ponder and wonder about the war dead, but not to actually thank them for their sacrifice:

So let us all, even as we take this day off if we are able, even as we perhaps reunite with family to celebrate the traditional onset of summertime…let us not forget that this day is about that ultimate sacrifice that so many thousands have made over so many decades. It is about those who died in noble service to their country. Giving one day, to think and pray and ponder and wonder about them, doesn’t seem like too much for the rest of us to do.

The media love Memorial Day because it allows them to wallow in the “human cost” of war while ignoring the benefits of freedom and security, two words that also do not appear in the N&O‘s editorial. Veterans Day, likewise is taken by many in the media as an excuse to “honor” veterans by doing features on homeless vets, deranged vets, killer vets, alcoholic vets, drug-addicted vets, and wife-abusing vets.

UPDATE: Case in point.