Editing history to suit your purposes

I've received this message from five different people this week, so I guess it's worth addressing. It's the story of Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman, who heroically flew his Huey copter into the face of enemy fire, repeatedly, to evacuate wounded comrades during the Vietnam War. From the e-mail: "And, he kept coming back.... 13 more times..... And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out. Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise, ID ......May God rest his soul..... I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a whole bunch about some Hip-Hop Coward beating the crap out of his girlfriend. Shame on the American Media."

Ed Freeman actually died last August. Somebody made it more conveniently recent, I suppose, in order to make fun of the coverage of the Chris Brown-Rhianna story. That’s why it’s still a good idea to rely more heavily on the American media, for all its faults, than emails created by people you don’t know. Yes, Ed Freeman would have been a great obituary, but when he got the medal of honor in 2001 it got a lot of play in mainstream media, including CNN. This widely circulated e-mail makes fun of the hip hop star beating up his girlfriend, but that story has people talking about domestic violence like nothing I have seen for quite some time. But, yes, a big obituary for Ed Freeman would have been fitting and deserving.