MSNBC host said the word 'hero' is 'rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.' Blogs rip MSNBC's Hayes on 'heroes'

Conservatives in the blogosphere slammed MSNBC’s Chris Hayes for saying on his show Sunday that he feels “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers “heroes.” Hayes apologized for his remarks later Monday.

“Why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word ‘hero’?” Hayes said. “I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”


( See also: PHOTOS: Presidents in uniform)

Kurt Schlichter at Breitbart blasted Hayes for his comment, writing, “Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.”

“So, like so many other useless progressive fops who glide from cocktail party to panel discussion, Chris Hayes continues to push his progressive vision of collectivist serfdom from behind the unbreachable wall of American warriors,” Schlichter wrote. “He has not stood with them and, in fact, is unworthy of doing so. He is a parasite taking sustenance from the exertions of better men and women.”

( Also on POLITICO: Last month, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir for "eternal damnation" comments)

He also picked apart Hayes’ line, “rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.” The MSNBC host, Schlichter blogged, “sounds like one of my commie grad students trying to impress credulous freshman girls after a choom session in the quad.”

And Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelstein dubbed Hayes “the human embodiment” of the word “effete” and mocked him for what “almost seems a parody of the conflicted intellectual.”

“What does it say about the liberal chattering class, which Hayes epitomizes, that it chokes on calling America’s fallen what they rightly and surely are: heroes?” Finkelstein wrote.

On Wizbang, Warner Todd Huston blogged, “Happy Memorial Day, Chris Hayes. I’d like to remind you that many of those Neanderthals that you despise so much died for your right to hate them.”

A blogger at The Right Sphere, who noted he is a veteran, wrote that he “can’t quite bring myself to be angry about it.”

“I feel sorry for Chris Hayes because sadly, this is his worldview. It’s how he thinks. It’s his value system, and it’s sad. This is a man who over and over again has spoken with greater reverence about the ‘Occupy Movement’ than he did today about our fallen service members,” Tommy wrote.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter took to Twitter to give her assessment of the MSNBC host’s comment. “Chris Hayes ‘Uncomfortable’ Calling Fallen Military ‘Heroes’ — Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate,” she tweeted.

And Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit offered up a simple reply to Hayes’ statement that “it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”

“Yes. You would be wrong about that, Chris,” Hoft blogged.

Hayes on Monday expressed regret about his remarks in a blog post on his show’s website: “I don’t think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I’ve set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.”

He added: “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.”