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At 16, a young senior at Santa Rosa High, my father had an opportunity to attend the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. Being 16, however, meant he needed both parents' permission - something my grandmother would not give.

My grandfather knew the appointment would keep his son out of a war we weren't in - yet. But for my grandmother, having her eldest son 2,000 miles away was unacceptable. The thought of him away from home at Christmas was almost unbearable.

Besides, she told my father, "That war'll be over long before you'll ever be in it."

He never went to the Coast Guard Academy. But shortly afterwards he did venture away from home. Not for one Christmas but five - four of them spent in Europe.

My grandmother spent those Christmases more than a little cheerless and her days wondering if her son would ever come home.

My father returned in 1945, and one imagines that Christmas was joyful.

Recalling that story started me thinking about the family of the American soldier whose killing by a terrorist sniper in Iraq was proudly broadcast by CNN's Anderson Cooper.

The video created controversy immediately. A lot of disgust was expressed; a lot of rationalizing in the name of journalistic freedom was offered. But the bravado and outrage died away almost as quickly as that murdered American boy.

Did CNN's decision to air it surprise anyone?

Probably not, given what passes for television news today. Yet it's almost impossible to imagine Ernie Pyle with a camera, befriending the enemy and sending home film of Nazi snipers killing Americans.

That's because among the myriad things the members of my generation have rationalized away is a sense of propriety.

By today's standards, CNN's broadcast of terrorists killing American soldiers is just another raised glass in honor of "cutting edge" journalism on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Or Nob Hill, I suppose.

Someone raised that young American boy. And now, because of a broadcast just three days before Christmas, the images of their son alive then instantly dead are playing over and over in the minds of his parents.

Picture that mother waking up this Christmas morning to the memory of him racing to the tree to see what Santa had brought, remembering the melancholy Christmas when he'd grown too old for Santa or recalling his last Christmas home before going to war.

Now add the mental video loop replaying his death - his body filled with life, his body snapping upright for a second as the bullet finds its mark, his body crumpling lifeless atop a Humvee.

Many of us will find loved one absent this Christmas. Mercifully few of us will have witnessed our loved one's death aired world wide, cheered by our enemies and praised by some countrymen in the name of press freedom.

That's CNN's gift to one American family that, mercilessly, will keep on giving.