MSNBC host Chris Hayes apologized Monday evening after outraging veterans by saying it makes him “uncomfortable” to describe all fallen soldiers as heroes.
The TV presenter made the controversial comment on the eve of Memorial Day, while kicking off a panel discussion on his show “Up With Chris Hayes” — noting that it is “very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes.'”
Explaining why that makes him uneasy, he added, “I feel … uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.”
Former service members’ group Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), in addition to conservative bloggers and organizations, slammed Hayes for being so conflicted about the term, FOX News reported.
VFW called Monday for an “immediate and unequivocal apology,” branding his remarks “reprehensible and disgusting.”
Hayes — who during his Sunday show admitted his concerns might not be justified, while acknowledging there are definite individual examples of heroism — released a statement later Monday saying he is “deeply sorry” for the gaffe.
“As many have rightly pointed out, it’s very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation’s citizens as a whole,” he said.
“One of the points made during Sunday’s show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.
“But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don’t, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.”