I spent the weekend away from the news, with family events keeping me comfortably in a bubble of ignorance–except for waking up on Sunday to the news that David Bloom had died of a pulmonary embolism somewhere outside Baghdad. My mother, who is visiting with us from up north, said she had feared for him from the first day of the war, and that she felt he didn't belong there (with a wife and three daughters at home).

Nobody belongs there. Nobody should be cast into this chaos.

Bloom's death was worn like a medal at NBC. Despite the obvious sorrow of some members of the “Today” show cast, Katie Couric's insistence that Bloom's death made the staff feel the way the families of those servicemen who have been killed thus far must feel rang hollow with me; the interviews she has done with the families of fallen soldiers were ambulance-chasing journalism at its most pandering level.

Anne Coulter's comparison of Couric to Goebbels in regard to her “liberal bias” may have been off-base, but the emotional manipulation game being played by her (and NBC, and the rest of the media) in regards to this war is utterly transparent.

I liked David Bloom. He was a likeable guy, an experienced reporter about my age who had clearly climbed the ladder quickly based on his relentlessness as a journalist as well as his camera-friendly looks. He obviously volunteered to be “embedded”; he had rushed down to the site of the Twin Towers soon after the attacks on 9/11/01, and was clearly willing to take risks to get a story (he once chased down a looter after Hurricane Andrew for an on-camera interview/confrontation).

But for NBC to use his death in the field as a badge of honor is disgusting. It is a disservice to his wife and children, and an insult to the families of the others who have died in Iraq.