Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Particularly when it conflicts with their politics. Diana Muir writes at The American Thinker of the contrasting ways the Times reports the facts depending on whether they approve of the implications of the find or not. Very interesting. Everything's politics. Even archaeology, especially when the press allows themselves to be used for the purpose by crediting the uncreditable -- in this case Arafat's whole-cloth rantings, now folded into the Palestinian Arab national narrative, that the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is a myth.
In its reporting on the City of David and on Medina Azahara, the Times has fallen into the post-modernist error of valuing facts according to its degree of approval for the narrative position that will benefit from their revelation. Preserving Medina Azahara as an archaeological park benefits those who maintain that Al Andalus was a model of convivencia, of a European Islam that was tolerant, open-minded, and peaceful. The corollary is that a tolerant, peaceful, open-minded, European Islam is likely to develop today.
That the Times finds this narrative congenial is apparent in the story of an ancient city treated with a tone of uncritical admiration and emphasis on its cultural achievements. Preserving the City of David as an archaeological park
benefits those who maintain that since the Jewish people are indigenous to Judea, they are entitled to live in a modern nation state on that land. The derogatory tone of the Times' treatment of the story of the dig at the ancient capital of the Jews is persuasive evidence that the newspaper does not find this position congenial...
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