David Sirota: Promoting Militarism While Hiding Bloodshed

In a breathless story somehow presented as a groundbreaking revelation, The New York Times recently reported that the Pentagon is using all sorts of media channels to market itself to the nation's children. Though the Times presents this as a brand-new development, it is nothing of the sort. The armed forces have spent the last three decades carefully constructing a child-focused Military-Entertainment Complex, which has long had the Pentagon subsidizing everything from video games to movies, most of which glorify militarism to kids. That said, the Times piece did include one important (if buried) piece of genuine news. It concerns a subtle-yet-insidious shift in martial propaganda - one that opens up the military to charges of rank hypocrisy. You may recall that in recent years the Military-Entertainment Complex has been selling kids on the idea that military service is a gloriously "fun" adventure. In one famous ad, the Marines pretended that being a soldier is the equivalent of being a "Lord of the Rings" hero, who slays fiery monsters. In another series of ads, aired as previews in movie theaters, the Air Force portrayed dangerous front-line missions as exciting video games, telling kids: "It's not science fiction - its what we do every day." Deceptive as these spots were, they at least held out the (unstated) possibility that military service can be dangerous, and that joining the Army doesn't give an enlistee death-defying superpowers!