An Offender for a Word

I am offended that the source for truth so many rely upon (our public media) seems to be in the business of obscuring truth by the methods they use. In an interview with a media mogul that I listened to last evening on NPR the guest candidly admitted that “we emphasize conflict” and that they “pump up” issues that can cast the issue or political candidate in a certain light to fit their corporate bias. The media, of course, piously tout their ‘fact checkers’ but the significance of the assertions they choose to check is largely a sham. They shine the spotlight on one thing to take the focus off of something else.

Take, for example, the issue the media (and some candidates such as Newt Gingrich) made of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comment a week or so ago that he (Romney) wasn’t too worried about the “poor” in our society. If you listened to the rest of the sentence, Mr. Romney said he wasn’t too concerned, either, about the rich—that both classes had structures in place to deal with their concerns. What he was trying to emphasize was the plight of the unemployed middle class in America. Context was ignored by the media in favor of highlighting a hot-button word or phrase.

In my youth I had an English class that used as its text a book titled “Language in Thought and Action” with a chapter, as I recall, titled ‘Ideas in Context’ by professor and later U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa . Without remembering much about specifics of the book, the title made a great impression upon me. He said, “Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue.”

Who among the actors on the current political stage might fit that description?

We must keep ideas, statements, even behaviors in context and be slow to judge others without first considering the context or frame of reference of the actor. We must be careful of adopting these approaches ourselves.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah thundered “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord and their works are in the dark…surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay…for the terrible one [i.e., the critic shall be] brought to nought, and the scorner [will be] consumed and all that watch for iniquity [without just cause will be]cut off; that make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him…and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.” (Isaiah 29:15-16, 20-21).

Beware of ‘spin doctors.’