Kristy Kruger is an award-winning singer-songwriter from Texas whose older brother, Lt. Col. Eric Kruger, was killed in Iraq a few months ago, on only his second day in the country. Kristy has since written a sad, sweet, deeply moving little song of farewell to her brother, and she’s now on a 50-state tour of the U.S. to pay tribute to Eric’s memory (she says she’d like to see what he died for, i.e., the whole of America). The tour has brought her here to Salt Lake, where she’ll be performing tonight at a venue called Kilby Court.

I saw Kristy this morning on my local Fox TV affiliate, plugging tonight’s appearance at Kilby and performing part of “Goodbye, Brother.” Now, for the record, I’m not a big fan of local TV news in general — it doesn’t matter which station I’m watching, they all irritate me by devoting way too much time to silly banter and live remotes from scrapbooking festivals and such instead of talking about, you know, the news — but I was absolutely appalled by the depths of sheer lameness that Fox-13 exhibited during Kristy’s appearance. For one thing, the producer chose to open and close her brief performance with a taped applause track that sounded more appropriate to a rowdy AC/DC show than a lone, mournful acoustic performer. But the real show-stopper was when the “news personality” conducting the interview asked her something about her “tour to support the military.”

I don’t believe the news guy was consciously trying to engage in any of the right-wing flag-waving his network is so often accused of. And I also don’t presume to speculate on Kristy’s politics or feelings about the war that claimed the life of her brother. But it looked pretty obvious to me that she was exerting a massive level of self-control to keep from rolling her eyes and verbally eviscerating the schmoe as she explained that her concerts are non-partisan and her tour is about working through her own personal grief. Which she had already said, more or less, if he’d been paying attention to what she was saying. But instead he was trying to be slick and cool, just like all the other local TV news personalities.

Maybe I just get protective when I see a young woman who’s obviously still hurting pretty badly about a loss, but I really think this is just another example of how these morning news shows are a complete waste of time. They always go for the glib response, rather than bothering to actually listen to what people are saying. If you want to hear an interview with Kristy that was dignified and sensitive of her feelings, and which actually let her explain what she’s doing with this tour (which I happen to think is a very humane, very American thing to do), have a listen to the interview she gave yesterday on my local NPR affiliate. And don’t forget to have a listen to her song, “Goodbye, Brother.” It’s a great one…