February 8, 2006
Religious Prejudice and The New York Times
By James
Piereson
The New
York Times has weighed in with an
editorial in Tuesday's edition on the cartoons in the Danish
newspaper that caused such an uproar in the Moslem world. The
editors make the perfectly sensible point that people are likely
to be offended if their religion is ridiculed and mocked, but
that it makes little sense to riot, burn buildings, and threaten
lives in retaliation, There are peaceful and more constructive
ways of registering disapproval with such depictions that offend
religious sensibilities.
The editors
then go on to say: "The New York Times and much
of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons
but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice
for news organizations usually refrain from gratuitous assaults
[sic] on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are
so easy to describe in words." Besides, one might add, the
cartoons are readily available on the internet for anyone with
an interest in seeing them.
The editors
were perhaps wise to include the qualification that news organizations
"usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols,"
for many readers will remember the paper's defense of Serrano's
"Piss Christ" depicting a crucifix suspended in a container
of urine, and the exhibition a few years ago at the Brooklyn Museum
of Art in which a portrait of the Virgin Mary was displayed festooned
with pornography and elephant dung. Mayor Giuliani, to his credit,
described the exhibition as "sick stuff" and sought
to withdraw public funds that supported it, though for this he
was blasted by the Times for promoting censorship and
hysteria. There have been many other such episodes over the years
in which Christian symbols or representatives have been mocked
or insulted with nary a peep of protest from the editors of The
New York Times.
It might
be said that the Times has a double standard when it
comes to gratuitous insults of Christian symbols. That would be
to put it mildly. Christians, however, perhaps in keeping with
their teaching and in contrast to many Moslems, do not react very
much in response to ridicule or mockery. It is hard to say whether
this response renders ridicule ineffective or simply invites more
of it.
Why, just
the other day, as if to make the point for us, the editors of
The New York Times Book Review ran a review of Kathryn
Davis's novel, The Thin Place, that contained precisely
such a gratuitous insult. The title of this novel, as we learn
from the first sentence of the review, derives from Celtic Christian
lore as a description of a place where the physical and spiritual
worlds meet. The reviewer -- Lucy Ellmann, another novelist --
cannot hold back her judgment on the general phenomenon of Christianity:
"I should declare immediately," she writes, "that
I resent and fear Christianity, not only for its sexism and incitement
of violence but for its deadening effect on the imagination."
That's quite a mouthful for the lady novelist, but one wonders
what her feelings about Christianity, deeply felt as they may
be, have to do with the novel under review. (Later, continuing
this theme, she remarks that spending time with the author's prose
"is like being holed up with some crazy old nun.") In
fact, her judgments on this subject are quite irrelevant since
(again, judging from the review) the novel itself has very little
to do with Christianity. The word "Christianity" appeared
before her and -- presto! -- out popped her feelings, which are
not merely ignorant, but here gratuitously so.
This is precisely
the kind of authorial excess that editors are expected to catch,
unless of course they see nothing strange or unusual in such gratuitous
observations. And perhaps that is the larger point. The editors
of the Times are tone deaf when it comes to insults of
Christians, but have the equivalent of rabbit ears when it comes
to slights against other groups.
At the same
time, the intellectual standards at the Book Reivew are
in something of a free fall owing in great part to increasingly
trashy fare the editors feel compelled to review. It must seem
counter-productive to impose intellectual standards on reviews
of sex manuals, the memoirs of porn stars, or the latest indulgent
novel by one of the growing number of Americans who wish to write
but have little to say. The Book Review, after all, is
to a great extent a creature of the publishing houses that purchase
advertising space to promote their products. From this perspective,
then, the tone deafness regarding Christianity is not so much
a function of bigotry or prejudice, but rather of simple ignorance
and eroding intellectual standards.
James
Piereson is an occasional contributor to The
New Criterion.
