Has CBS Lost Its Mind?

Something happened this past week which really surprised me.  It all began when the CBS reality series, "The Amazing Race" took its contestants to Hanoi.  The competitors all ended up at a monument in downtown Hanoi made up of the wreckage of a downed American B-52 from the Vietnam War.  At the site, the competitors sat through a chorus singing a song of praise to the Vietnamese Communist Party and how it guided the people to victory.  No one at the show thought it was even slightly inappropriate to use a monument to the killing of Americans and a song glorifying that and similar events on American TV.  After the show aired, CBS refused comment.  It just brushed off people like the head of the American Legion and the journalists from other broadcast media who asked about the thinking behind the show.

I can understand how the production staff at the so called amazing race could have missed the distasteful nature of the segment.  After all, maybe these folks really just do not know much about Vietnam.  What I find mystifying is that CBS has not stepped forward to apologize for the mistake.  There are millions of Americans who have family members who served in Vietnam; CBS insulted all of them.  More important, there were over 50,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.  The show basically celebrated their deaths.  If it was unintentional, all that would be necessary is an apology.  On the other hand, the ongoing silence from CBS indicates to me that nothing here was unintentional.