Danke
06-21-2010, 06:02 AM
When Helen Thomas was vilified and presumably forced into retirement following her remarks that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and return to "Poland, Germany, America... anywhere else," many commentators cheered, but a few expressed outrage:
"In another example of how one-sided the American media is in framing the issue of Israel," wrote Andrew Steele, "veteran journalist and opinion columnist Helen Thomas has been chased into retirement because of some remarks she gave when questioned on the street by a blogger."
"(T)he central issue," said Glenn Greenwald, "is not the perception that she's guilty of bigotry, but the wrong kind of bigotry. Anyone who doubts that should compare the cheap, easy and self-righteous outrage orgy against the powerless, 89-year-old columnist to the total non-reaction in the face of the incessant and ongoing anti-Arab bigotry of The New Republic's Marty Peretz, or to the demands of then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey that the Palestinians leave the West Bank and go back to where they came from, and similar statements from Mike Huckabee..."
While it may well be that the attacks on Helen Thomas do reflect the media’s pro-Israel bias, they are more fundamentally a product of a much deeper hypocrisy, one in which the vast majority of us are complicit. Thomas is not the first to have suffered for having committed the offense of offending. Whatever the specifics of the offending speech, or the specifics of which group was offended, each of these incidents has one thing in common: They each make perfect sense within the framework of our culture’s beliefs, and are in fact a necessary part of sustaining those beliefs.
To understand why this is so, compare the fate of Helen Thomas to that of Madeleine Albright. In 1996, when Albright was US Ambassador to the UN, she famously asserted that whatever benefits the US government derived from imposing an economic embargo on Iraq were "worth" the deaths of perhaps half a million Iraqi children. Far from being drummed out of the public sphere for her offensive remarks, Albright went on to become US Secretary of State and was awarded honorary degrees from five universities. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and reportedly brings in between $60,000 and $75,000 for speaking engagements.
Or take the current secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, who more recently threatened Iran with a pre-emptive strike – an act that once upon a time was considered to be a war crime. Or, for that matter, all of those government officials who did in fact participate in a war of aggression against Iraq. Indeed, there is nothing out of the ordinary about politicians calling for mass murder, torture, preemptive war and other acts of barbarism, while their careers remain intact. Meanwhile, a comment that can be construed as racist, or offensive to certain groups, can ruin a mere plebeian. We have elevated name-calling to a higher offense than advocating (state-sanctioned) mass murder and wars of aggression. That the hypocrisy of this is not evident to everyone is an indication of our collective blindness to acts of evil when they are committed by those in authority.
This blindness is not solely an American phenomenon. Most people across the globe accept that there is a different standard of morality for governments, particularly in times of war. Even Christian Just War theory acknowledges the special privilege of those in "authority" to make war, and allows for civilians to be killed under the right circumstances. "War is different" is the unanimous mantra, asserting that even if we try to put limits on war (which will inevitably be enforced after the fact and by the victors, if at all) they will never be the same limits on violence that are imposed upon ordinary people in ordinary times. It doesn’t take much to extend this principle to all acts of government, creating an entire class of people and agencies for whom the normal standards of morality simply do not apply.
Like abused children, prohibited from engaging in the same violence their parents routinely inflict upon them, most people have come to internalize the twisted logic of their abusive relationships with their governments. Why is this? Through some combination of cultural conditioning, tribal instincts, our innate fear of our own independence, and outright propaganda masquerading as education, the great majority of the world’s population – and in particular, those who reside in democratic societies – have come to identify themselves with the governments that rule over them.
Click here for the whole article (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/shaffer-br6.1.1.html)
.
"In another example of how one-sided the American media is in framing the issue of Israel," wrote Andrew Steele, "veteran journalist and opinion columnist Helen Thomas has been chased into retirement because of some remarks she gave when questioned on the street by a blogger."
"(T)he central issue," said Glenn Greenwald, "is not the perception that she's guilty of bigotry, but the wrong kind of bigotry. Anyone who doubts that should compare the cheap, easy and self-righteous outrage orgy against the powerless, 89-year-old columnist to the total non-reaction in the face of the incessant and ongoing anti-Arab bigotry of The New Republic's Marty Peretz, or to the demands of then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey that the Palestinians leave the West Bank and go back to where they came from, and similar statements from Mike Huckabee..."
While it may well be that the attacks on Helen Thomas do reflect the media’s pro-Israel bias, they are more fundamentally a product of a much deeper hypocrisy, one in which the vast majority of us are complicit. Thomas is not the first to have suffered for having committed the offense of offending. Whatever the specifics of the offending speech, or the specifics of which group was offended, each of these incidents has one thing in common: They each make perfect sense within the framework of our culture’s beliefs, and are in fact a necessary part of sustaining those beliefs.
To understand why this is so, compare the fate of Helen Thomas to that of Madeleine Albright. In 1996, when Albright was US Ambassador to the UN, she famously asserted that whatever benefits the US government derived from imposing an economic embargo on Iraq were "worth" the deaths of perhaps half a million Iraqi children. Far from being drummed out of the public sphere for her offensive remarks, Albright went on to become US Secretary of State and was awarded honorary degrees from five universities. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and reportedly brings in between $60,000 and $75,000 for speaking engagements.
Or take the current secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, who more recently threatened Iran with a pre-emptive strike – an act that once upon a time was considered to be a war crime. Or, for that matter, all of those government officials who did in fact participate in a war of aggression against Iraq. Indeed, there is nothing out of the ordinary about politicians calling for mass murder, torture, preemptive war and other acts of barbarism, while their careers remain intact. Meanwhile, a comment that can be construed as racist, or offensive to certain groups, can ruin a mere plebeian. We have elevated name-calling to a higher offense than advocating (state-sanctioned) mass murder and wars of aggression. That the hypocrisy of this is not evident to everyone is an indication of our collective blindness to acts of evil when they are committed by those in authority.
This blindness is not solely an American phenomenon. Most people across the globe accept that there is a different standard of morality for governments, particularly in times of war. Even Christian Just War theory acknowledges the special privilege of those in "authority" to make war, and allows for civilians to be killed under the right circumstances. "War is different" is the unanimous mantra, asserting that even if we try to put limits on war (which will inevitably be enforced after the fact and by the victors, if at all) they will never be the same limits on violence that are imposed upon ordinary people in ordinary times. It doesn’t take much to extend this principle to all acts of government, creating an entire class of people and agencies for whom the normal standards of morality simply do not apply.
Like abused children, prohibited from engaging in the same violence their parents routinely inflict upon them, most people have come to internalize the twisted logic of their abusive relationships with their governments. Why is this? Through some combination of cultural conditioning, tribal instincts, our innate fear of our own independence, and outright propaganda masquerading as education, the great majority of the world’s population – and in particular, those who reside in democratic societies – have come to identify themselves with the governments that rule over them.
Click here for the whole article (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/shaffer-br6.1.1.html)
.