Motes and beams

A New York Times editorial remarks in passing that Pat Buchanan "described Los Angeles's angry blacks as "the mob'" in his Convention speech.

There's only one thing wrong with that: Mr. Buchanan made no reference whatsoever to "blacks," angry or otherwise. The relevant passage in his speech ran as follows:

"[The soldiers] walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building, but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troops arrived... the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated."

It's revealing to learn that when someone criticizes a mob of rioters and looters, the editors of the New York Times simply assume that that mob must be composed of blacks. I trust that no one will take this to be evidence of racism on their part.

* But then the press and television depicted the entire Republican Convention as an orgy of "bigotry" and "gay bashing"--the only kind of orgy that these uptight zealots of the "Religious Right" would ever attend.

Of course, these words and phrases are liberal terms of art. They smuggle in a (generally hostile) opinion of the person or thing "described" under the guise of dispassionate reporting or "analysis" (itself a journalistic term of art for liberal opinion).

Whole volumes could be written on the use of the word "strident." But the classic version of ideological conjugation goes thus: "I am firm; thou art obstinate; he is pig-headed."

"Racism," as the Times demonstrates above, is the imputation by liberals that conservatives share their low opinion of other races. On the rare occasions when liberals recognize such feelings in themselves, they call it "soul-searching." On no account, however, mention that a pun is lurking here; that would be "racism" again.

"Gay bashing" used to mean what it says: namely, beating up people suspected of being homosexuals. It is a vile and vicious crime which rightly attracts severe penalties. One might imagine that liberals would not wish to dilute its seriousness by making it a metaphor for differences of opinion.

One would be wrong. The liberal media now employ it to describe argnments against equal social and moral status for homosexuality and heterosexuality, or criticism of homosexual acts as morally wrong.

But orthodox Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, takes just such a stern view of homosexuality. That view may be right or wrong; the case has to be argued either way. But to characterize the main moral tradition of American society as akin to assault and battery without any argument at all is quite a leap---a metaphor too far, so to speak.

If the media cannot quite grasp this, perhaps it is because journalists have imbibed a set of liberal moral principles amounting almost to a rival religion-the First Church of God the Humanist-without realizing the fact. They are instinctively hostile to Christian doctrines while accustomed to regarding Christian churches as estimable institutions.

Hence the usefulness of the "Religious Right," a phrase which nicely blurs the religious and the political, throws in a hint of extremism, and so allows the media to dismiss mainline Christian opinions as a fringe expression of "bigotry."

Ah, "bigotry." As employed in reports from Houston, that is now a synonym for conservative opinion and so the opposite of "analysis" (see above).

But the actual meaning of bigotry-- namely, hostility toward some group unsupported by, or contrary to, the evidence--is a perfect description of the media's attitude to Republicans.

Just a minor paradox that keeps me from despair on rainy days. --JOHN O'SULLIVAN

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