Yay for death tolls!

I was flicking through channels the other day and I stopped on CNN (a rare pause on that channel) because I saw something that piqued my interest. While I was watching I of course multi-tasked and read the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen. After the ticker told me the date and how many days we have left in the year it reported the death toll in Iraq. I was stunned and upset.

Why report on such a thing continuously and of all places at the beginning of the ticker (signaling to me that it is most important)? I get really tired of the press counting deaths joyfully like the the Count on Sesame Street. I make a joke, but this is not funny. I understand reporting on these things every once in while, keeping a monthly count or something, but my gosh, then I ran across this article in the Washington Post and it makes me sick. These people are real, they are now dead and they are reporting on it like it's a score on a pinball machine. Maybe you and those like you understand that we're at war and our brave soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines have put their lives on the line for our country. And maybe you respect that.