From a reader: “I’ve been fascinated by the media’s fascination with the

Jessica Lynch story. … it dawned on me what has been keeping the media

entranced: old-fashioned small-town America virtue. It’s not just Lynch

herself, so much as it is her family, that has mesmerized the media, which

is unaccustomed to encountering the kind of qualities the Lynch clan seems

to typify: simplicity, compassion, religious faith, inner strength,

humility, patriotism, love, courage, family unity, and above all the

complete incapacity to present oneself as anything other than exactly what

one is. The Lynch family is precisely the kind the people the media

sophisticates usually love to belittle as uneducated rubes, religions nuts,

trailer trash, etc. But the power of that family’s simple virtue–their

manifest goodness–has not only mesmerized the media, it has humbled them.

In the last couple of press appearances I’ve seen, the reporters were not

just seeking a “story” from the Lynches. They were seeking wisdom. From that

burly man whose grammar would otherwise make them cringe, from his plain

wife whose strength makes possible and protects her husband’s gentleness,

the urbane reporters were seeking nothing less than a lesson in how to live

virtuously. And they were getting it.”