No Truth Please, We’re Journalists

After my post on the Idaho Press Tribune, in which I took on the folly of the Bonner County GOP for raising the issue of the “Fiesta at the Fair theme,” I received an e-mail from the Bonner County Chairman, who is clearly beleaguered by the withering media assault.

I argued that the Bonner County GOP made a foolish mistake that had overtones that would appear offensive and anti-Hispanic. Others went further, as could be predicted such as Kevin Richert at the Idaho Statesman, writing, ” They plan to emblazon their fair booths with signs reading “celebrate,” and with Arizona state flags. Perhaps confederate flags weren’t available. Too bad. It’d fit. These people are judging another ethnic group solely on the basis of their differences. That’s racism, and it cannot be legitimized – despite the attempt to wrap it in the flag of the immigration debate.”

I already explained the absurdity of comparing Arizona’s immigration law to the Confederacy already. Now, we throw racism here with Richert concluding, “If they think that the fair’s theme ought to be in the king’s English, they hate all Hispanic people.” It seems to me that Richert is doing far more prejudging than the folks in Bonner County.

More to the point, declaring this “racist” continues to define racism down to a point of irrelevancy and triviality.  It’s also inaccurate to what happened, at least according to the chairman:

Our committee wanted to do something so we were going to ask the Governor of Arizona for license plates to decorate our booth with. Rewind back a few weeks to finding out that our local County Fair had decided to use “Fiesta” as the theme. We have a Yahoo forum for all of the members of the central committee and we had a spirited exchange about the theme. I encouraged everyone to slow down. Now fast forward to our June 22nd monthly meeting where the committee decided to send the letter. The anti-Fiesta bias crept in and the committee approved the short letter. I signed it and sent it at the behest of the committee. I never thought twice about the Fiesta  ”stuff” as it was a non-issue to me. Little did I know what a storm it would create. There is not one member of our committee that is racist or bigoted in any way. Maybe a little more animated about the Fair theme than was necessary but the 5 or 6 who didn’t like the theme said that now was not the time to use other than patriotic themes. Anyway, I have been called a racist in the local paper and I have even gotten hate mail! All we wanted to do was support Arizona. Hindsight indicates we could have chosen our words better but frankly the country is behind Arizona as the polls show. Every time the story gets grabbed up by another news outlet they add their own “helpful” information so now we are linked to stuff that we didn’t know existed. We didn’t talk about an Arizona flag at all for instance. We never even intimated that other words should be changed. We are fully in favor of LEGAL immigration. Indeed our booth will be one of celebrating Republican history including the support of Civil Rights and other meaningful past actions.

Don’t know whether Richert heard that they were going to put Arizona flags in from somewhere else or if the flags were a concoction of his imagination. (Comparing Arizona and Confederate license plates doesn’t quite have the same rhetorical power.)

While the media’s dishonest assault was predictable, that doesn’t make what the media does right. They foment hatred and destroy folks over small mistakes by assuming the worst, and turning a community against it each other for political gain. The Statesman spews less bile for convicted child abusers than it does for Bonner County Republicans.

The old radio show, “Big Town” told the story of a large metropolitian newspaper that  had a simple creed, “Freedom of the press is a flaming sword…Use it justly…hold it high…guard it well.” Instead, most of the 21st century press has become little more than politically-motivated sadists who ruin people’s lives for sport.