A Tale of Two Papers
A while back, the Washington Post published an inserted advertisement from an anti-gay religious group. (See it here.) Needless to say, people were pissed off. Washington Post readers, including gay community in D.C., made their displeasure known. The Post defended its decision to distibute the advertisement. No apology was issued to the gay community, though it was pointed out that the paper would never have run an advertisement slandering African Americans or the Jewish community.
Now we get the same story, with just a few of the details changed. It seems last month the Washington Times, D.C.’s conservative paper, ran an ad that impressed many as being anti-semitic because it referred to Jewish people as “folk of the anti-Christ” and the war in Iraq as “Israel’s war paid for by the death of Americans.” The ad ran on January 20th; inauguration day. The Jewish community in D.C. fared better with the Times than the gay community fared with the Post. They got an actualy apology from a Times representative.
Granted, the Times has yet to run a written apology in the paper itself, but it’s a damn site more than we got from the Post. The lesson here? Well, that you can slander gays and not have to apologize for it. But slander religious or ethnic groups and you’re going to have trouble. Bottom line, it’s still acceptable to stay things about gays & lesbians that are unacceptable when said about other minority groups. But should it come as a surprise when the president put the “bully” in “bully pulpit” by using it to advocate conferring second class status upon a whole group of Americans?
February 4th, 2005 at 11:32 am
The reason why the Washington Post gladly accepted and published the anti-homosexual ad is that for some reason it is “cool” to bash gays. The reason why the Washington Times apologized is that they only wish it was “cool” to bash Jews.