Matt, Dear, Take a Context Pill
I can’t say that Drudge’s reaction to the Seattle Airport “Christmas deforestation” is any different than many other Christmas decoration jihadists who all think the observant Jews of the world are the Grinches out to steal Christmas. I believe his reaction is genuine rather than histrionic — most people consuming this layered news story really seem to ”understand” that a local rabbi pushed the airport to remove all Christmas decorations when, in fact, he neither expected nor wanted them to. It was the decision of the airport director to remove the trees already in place when they could not work out the logistics to erect the menorah the rabbi wanted. Guess who looks like the bad guy?
What fills me with consternation is Drudge’s ramblings last night that the rabbi was hurting Jewish-Christian relations and that someone “should sue him for threatening to sue the airport”. Bubbeleh, I think you are hurting interfaith relations when you report and comment on a ”December dilemma” story you don’t understand. Just because you flunked out of Hebrew school doesn’t mean you have to dumb down your limited knowledge for the rest of us. And another thing: understand your own damn religion and community before you tear down its esteem to all of middle America.
by RegoPark - 7:42 pm
December 12th, 2006 at 12:25 am
An unkind word for Drudge! I think I will go ice skating in hell now.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
We live in a world of constant double standards. If a devout Christan walked into a airport filled with Jewish decorations, and demanded a Christmas tree, they would be discriminating against the Jews, and God forbid if we threaten to sue, we would be down right rude!
December 12th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
“David” - As I’ve told you on the forum and as a perusal of this blog’s archives will evidence, I have many criticisms of Drudge and will continue to. (P.S. - unless you are the real David Brock of Media Matters, it’s not really ethical to post here with his e-mail.)
Laura - It would be just as wrong to fill a public airport with exclusively Jewish symbols. My point here, however, is not to criticize Matt Drudge’s opinions on the issue but his precipitous criticism of the rabbi in question BEFORE he really understood the story. Since his radio show is a secondary news source, he is unwittingly passing on misinformation — and compounding misunderstanding already present -to listeners out in middle America who don’t entirely understand the news they are consuming and think it’s a black-and-white issue rather than a social or philosophical one.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:40 am
Not that his listening audience would really tune in to hear objective analysis. I mean he does fill in for Limbaugh.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I’m afraid much of his audience assumes it’s “objective” because it reflects the politics they agree with. (Like Fox News: “Fair and balanced.”) That’s not entirely relevant, though. Unfortunately, radio hosts have influence regardless of the soundness of the opinions they express and the accuracy of the news they report. Since Drudge should know better on this one, it irritates me much more.
December 17th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I think the rabbi was being unreasonable in this case. From what I understand, the airport was’t decorated with Christian symbols or any recognizably religious symbols, such as a nativity scene for example. It was decorated with Christmas trees, a symbol that originated in pre-Christian Europe. Some Christians actually *refuse* to get Christmas trees because of their pagan origin. The rabbi, on the other hand, wanted the airport to erect a menorah–a recognizably religious symbol. Under those circumstances, I find his request unreasonable.
I also think he was needlessly pushy and demanding in the way he went about trying to get the change he wanted implemented. One article stated the rabbi “threatened to sue if the menorah wasn’t put up, and gave a two-day deadline to remove the trees.” That strikes me as very rude. What would have been so wrong about making his request and waiting until next year for them to implement it? Or why didn’t he make his request before the holiday season began, thus giving the airport plenty of time to work out the logistics.
There were so many more polite ways the rabbi could have approached this situation, and, given that he is a religious teacher/leader, people naturally expect a higher degree of maturity from him than they might from a layperson. I, personally, think it’s mostly his own fault he has come out of this situation looking so bad.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
This particular rabbi is affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch worldwide, whose representatives typically oversee public menorah projects like this one. Usually this is done without bloodshed or media train wrecks.
The legal issue of this particular case is erecting symbols of a religious holiday — even if the symbol is not religious in itself — in a publicly funded airport while declining to allow symbols of holidays of at least one other religion. Seattle is not legally obligated to accommodate an 8-foot menorah, but they do need to at least act in good faith to have SOMETHING there so that a single religion is not being endorsed.
If, for example, they only had Hanukkah dreidels (not religious per se) and declined to put up Christmas trees, Christian groups would and should have legal recourse.
In any case, the airport initiated the move to remove the trees — which seems a lot more time-and labor-intensive and consuming more tax-funded human resource hours — than allowing the menorah, even if the bulbs or other specific details were not accommodated. This was something the rabbi neither asked for, expected, nor wanted.
Because we aren’t privy to the actual dialogue between the rabbi and the airport authorities, we can only speculate on who was being ignoble, unreasonable, or immature. In any case, this sounds like a huge, unnecessary communication breakdown.
December 17th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
According to this news article “Airport managers believed that if they allowed the addition of an 8-foot-tall menorah to the display, as Seattle Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky had requested, they would also have to display symbols of other religions and cultures. Airport workers didn’t have time to do that during the busy travel season, Airport Director Mark Reis said.” Given our lawsuit-happy culture, I can understand their reasoning.
I also can understand the rabbi’s desire to have his faith noticeably represented in the airport’s holiday decorations. However, based on the newsstories I’ve read, I still think he approached the situation too aggressively and provoked a lot of the backlash himself.
Did Drudge somewhat overreact to this story? In my opinion, yes. But, I don’t think he took this story as much out of context as you seem to think he did.
The rabbi should not have threatened to sue–or at least not as quickly as he did. That was a *really* stupid move on his part, and it did make him look bad. Although, I seriously doubt it appreciably hurt Jewish-Christian relations.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Hold that thought…I see several issues within this issue that I want to address on a post this week.