Tonight ABC World News did a piece from Kentucky, I think by Dan Harris, that essentially mocked Baptists for accepting Sarah Palin as a possible vice president of the U.S. even as they bar women from the pulpit. There were the usual interviews with some religious guy who justified the discrimination on the basis of this biblical passage or another and with the good woman pastor who is trying to change Baptist practices. The tone of the piece was very judgmental with a gee-whiz patina.
I share that judgment, let’s be clear. Pure hokum. But why don’t we ever get to hear about the religious hokum that justifies Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and occupation of the West Bank? Let alone the religious hokum behind the Zionist movement: that we ruled there 2000 years ago. As one observer has noted, maybe Tanya Reinhart, the Canaanites had a long run; when do they get to move in and push the remaining Palestinians out of their villages?
The point re ABC is that it’s absolutely conventional for privileged east coast media to mock poor southerners and other citizens of the great interior when they display ignorant religious-based ideas, but no media outlet likes to take on crazy religious beliefs in the privileged waters in which they swim. And yet 58 percent of American Jews are for an undivided Jerusalem out of faith-borne ideology, and about the same number of American Jews have never even seen the place. These strange religious notions are surely one reason that McCain invoked Israel and Iran three or four times in the debate, and they have basically nullified all American motions at fairness in the Holy Land for 60s years, Suez and a few other exceptions notwithstanding. Where’s the journalism about those boobs?
