It's Getting Ugly

It's Getting Ugly

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I ask myself every day why it is that people cannot simply work together. From the far right we hear phrases like "cheese eating surrender monkey," or, "unpatriotic" to disparage liberals everywhere. This really chapped my hide when the war started. But it's getting just as ugly on the left. Namely, the words Zionist or Neo-Con has now gone to lump together every person who ever fought for anything and thinks Israel has a right to exist. And even if these words sound clean, they are said with a venom and conspiracy paranoia I haven't seen since Nazism.

The question is, without being offensive to either side in some profoundly racist or theoretical way, can you make news that is worth reading? Absolutely.

The trick is to present facts in a balanced fashion. Recently, an article by Mona Ethaway in the Washington Post took painstaking care to outline the flaws of both Israel and the PA. The article didn't use words like Zionist or Terrorist to stoke emotion. Rather, the writer used her skill to craft a picture of two failing governments, equally responsible for the suffering of all parties. The generalized blame game was nowhere to be found. Instead, each individual responsible was called out from both sides.

One thing you learn in writing class is to, "kill your babies." These babies are the emotion evoking phrases we feel are so cute or powerful that they show our prowess as writers. But to the intelligent reader, you are simply coddling your words. By doing so, symbolic concepts arise that may cause you to put an entire people out of context, or an entire movement. Every time the word terrorist is used in relation to Arab nations, you can feel 22 countries cringe at the thought of being lumped with international gangsters. For Jewish people, the propagandist use of the word Zionist can make a relatively secular person or a devoutly orthodox person cringe at the thought of being lumped with right wing Jews who they don't agree with. Conspiracy nuts exacerbate the problem with the tendency to believe everything bad you hear about anyone. This includes nuts from either side of the spectrum. Silly theories like, "Jews run the media," or, "Arab families hate Americans," are not only far off base, but they run directly counter to what the lay Arab or Jew would liken himself to.

For instance, the building I write from is a microcosm of the Middle East. We have offices filled with Iranian Jews who fled the revolution long ago. We also have a makeshift Mosque where Muslims of all races, mostly African Americans, come every Friday to pray. While the Muslims pray, a Rabbi walks among the Jews and places tefillin on their heads. None of us are terrorists or Zionist conspirators. We are all fashion industry businessmen and women. We are all Americans who fought to get here to open businesses. We are all fathers, brothers, sisters, and cousins. Some of the Muslims are even related directly to the Jews in the building. On the wall, a picture of Jerusalem is painted in full color with an inscription in Hebrew and Arabic. "Through wisdom, a house is built, and through understanding, it is established."

We must count on our journalists to enlist their wisdom and understanding in the house of the press. The media is desperately in need of a voice of reason to humanize every side of a struggle. If we can have people of all colors and races work together in a building, we can have voices of understanding work together in the media. The one factor is blame. The journalists who love to pontificate about the Middle East must realize that we are human beings, and blaming code word groups is an artificial excercise. Only the media can create a sense of urgency to work together. In daily living, in the simple things of life, in business, and in school, and especially in America, we are all just people. Lumping us into a group is not only racist, but counterproductive.