Attention Entertainment Industry: Stop Portraying Us

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Dear Decision Makers in the Entertainment Industry,

For years you have been portraying the American service member incorrectly in all that you do. I don't know why you continue to do so and have actors/actresses portraying military when there are tons of veteran, reserve, guard and active duty actors/actresses who would add authenticity to these roles and would prevent them from being portrayed incorrectly. There is just no possible way that someone can understand what it's like to be in the military without them ACTUALLY being in the military. It just can't be done. I don't care if you send your actor to nine weeks of boot camp or embed yourself with a unit for months at a time. A person changes when they sign their life away on that famous dotted line...an evolution happens inside a person...and you can never know what that evolution is like unless you've personally experienced it yourself.

Something happens to you when you sign up and decide to serve your country...when you take that step to serve a cause higher than your own. You know full well that there is a chance you are going to war...that you could die...but instead of giving in to that human desire for self-preservation and survival, you deliberately go against that instinct and sign up to potentially sacrifice your life for ANY cause the American people deem worthy of sending you, and others like you, to die for no matter your personal belief.

This is a profound event in a person's life and the only thing I could compare it to is being a woman, being disabled, or being any other ethnicity or race other than my own. There is no possible way for me to know what it's like to be a woman or black or a Native American or to be paralyzed from the waist down and that is what it is like for a service member. It might sound silly, but casting a woman AS a woman is a necessity because it adds authenticity to that role. Casting Native Americans as Native Americans adds authenticity to that role. Casting a person with disabilities in a person with disabilities role adds authenticity to that role. And finally, casting a military veteran or service member in a military role will authenticate that role because ONLY THEY KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE.

This goes the same for music. Unless you've been there, don't put out a song about war or the service members. It is much too complicated. You either miss the entire point or make it seem like a movie. We never want to go to war and we fight purely out of an instinct to protect the men and women we serve with. The overwhelming emotions are not what they are commonly portrayed as and NOT every service member that goes over to Iraq and Afghanistan is a hero! A hero is someone who jumps on a grenade or pulls his buddies from a sure death or jumps out and saves innocent civilians from being killed. That is a hero. I am not a hero. I went to Iraq with my unit, went out and interacted with Iraqis every single day and did what I thought was right. Period. It is enough to say that I am a war veteran and even then I am not so sure I am, because I was never actually engaged in a firefight. These are all the complicated issues and thoughts in every single service member's mind and course through our veins. These types of emotions and feelings do however come out, expressed in our music or in our movies or in everyday life and conversation...but we are never asked about them or asked to share them with the public.

Instead we are portrayed on screens and on radios across the country by people who have no clue who or what we are. This is unfortunate because the talent does exist. I represent over 1,200 military musicians who, given the proper studio and backing, could blow the doors off the garbage that's on the radio today. It's just sad that some people would think that everyday Americans would rather hear from an actor PLAYING a soldier about the war, than the actual soldier fighting it. I hear Ryan Phillipe talk about the Stop Loss/Stop Movement Program and the effects it has on service members and I cringe. It's also sad that there is not ONE song from an actual service member that is playing on the radio today...not ONE. Not one song about him missing his family, his friend that was killed, being in a foreign land, being scared, his anxiety, fear, exhilaration, hope, feelings, or emotions...sadly...not one. Of course there are a lot of songs being made "dedicated" to the service members that talk about them being heroes and patriotism, because that's the current fad.

Ladies and gentlemen, we do exist. Please stop portraying us.