The Phelps family

Two things really bothered me about this story regarding the infamous Phelps family and their sick, pathetic antics at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

Over the past decade, the church, which consists almost entirely of 75 of Mr. Phelps's relatives, made its name by demonstrating outside businesses, disaster zones and the funerals of gay people. Late last year, though, it changed tactics and members began showing up at the funerals of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, has put it on its watch list.

Embracing a literal translation of the Bible, the church members believe that God strikes down the wicked, chief among them gay men and lesbians and people who fail to strongly condemn homosexuality. God is killing soldiers, they say, because of America's unwillingness to condemn gay people and their lifestyles.

Standing on the roadside outside Corporal Bass's funeral here under a strikingly blue sky, the six protesters, who had flown from Topeka, shook their placards as cars drove past or pulled into the funeral. The 80-year-old wife of Mr. Phelps, slightly stooped but spry and wearing her running shoes, carried a sign that read "Tennessee Taliban." She is often given the task of driving the pickup trucks that ferry church members, a stack of pillows propping her view over the dashboard.

Next to her stood a cluster of Mr. Phelps's great-grandnephews and great-grandnieces, smiling teenagers with sunglasses, digital cameras and cellphones dangling from their pockets and wrists. They carried their own signs, among them, "You're Going to Hell."

First, the article was accompanied by a photo in which the protesters' faces are almost artfully obscured. I, for one, would like to see the "smiling" faces of people who think and act like that. You never know when you'll be alone with one of them.

And then there's this bit of uncritical reporting.

Disturbed by the protests, a small group of motorcycle riders, some of them Vietnam War veterans, banded together in October to form the Patriot Guard Riders. They now have 22,000 members. Their aim is to form a human shield in front of the protesters so that mourners cannot see them, and when necessary, rev their engines to drown out the shouts of the Westboro group.

The Bass family, desiring a low-key funeral, asked the motorcycle group not to attend.

"It's kind of like, we didn't do it right in the '70s," said Kurt Mayer, the group's spokesman, referring to the treatment of Vietnam veterans. "This is something that America needs to do, step up and do the right thing."

Please. Will that idea never disappear? That, somehow -- and against all logic -- anti-war protesters' "treatment of Vietnam veterans" was somehow similar. It's the urban myth that will never go away. At least not as long as the paper of record keeps insisting on repeating it.