You knew there was going to be some obvious hand-wringing over how the Pat Tillman story was covered, so it was somewhat surprising to see Salon's King Kaufman provide a slight counterpoint by looking at the psychology over how we react to such stories (especially when comparing Tillman's death to others who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't mean one life is more valuable than another in some measurable, abstract, objective way. I just mean it's a matter of perspective. Consider any one of those soldiers whose death we've heard about recently. Are his life and death more valuable and important to his family and friends than Pat Tillman's? Of course they are.

Pat Tillman's life and death tell us a compelling story, one that touches us. He hit a nerve in people not just because he put a face on the war effort, which he did, but also because his story had so many compelling elements, not the least of which was his refusal to do interviews, to participate in his own mythmaking. Giving up a glamorous, million-dollar career to join the Army during wartime is one thing, but shunning the spotlight? In 21st century America, that really made him stand out.

But as unusual as it was, as unusual as he was, Tillman's story was just so damn easy to identify with. Who among us, upon hearing about him leaving the NFL and joining up, didn't put ourselves in his shoes and think, Would I have done that? It's all the more compelling that in the vast majority of cases, the answer must have been "No." It certainly was for me.

We ascribe different levels of meaning and importance to all sorts of objectively similar things all the time because of the way they speak to us. There's nothing wrong with that. It might feel a little weird to shortchange the cop on the beat or the firefighter rushing into a burning building or even Tillman's comrades in arms, but it's not. For any one of us, no two lives -- and no two deaths -- are equal.

And in a related story, MSNBC.com pulled Ted Rall's cartoon questioning Tillman's hero credentials that sounds a lot like the editorial at UMass from last week.

I'm not sure I agree with the pulling of the cartoon or even the sometimes the overboard reaction to Gonzalez's editorial. For the most part, the positions on the war I've seen are:
a) You support the administration's position, or
b) You're against the current administration's position, but you still support the troops.

These two pieces show there's at least an option c) You're not only against the war, but also against the troops fighting it. So f--- them all.
(In a sick way, it's a lot like the Point/Counterpoint bit in Airplane! where one side says "...they bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say let them crash.")