Sunday, December 4, 2011

On Aztec Sacrifices

Former Age sports journalist turned "senior writer" and local rah-rah man for Israel's 'Peace Team', Martin Flanagan, is not at all happy with the British (or Australian) media, citing Murdoch's blessedly defunct News of the World's disgraceful treatment of the parents of abducted British child, Madelaine McCann.

The occasion for his piece was a line from a (UK) Daily Telegraph article on Britain's Leveson inquiry on the media, which he praised as the single best line of 2011: "'Is there a journalist's byline on that article?' thundered Lord Justice Leveson, who is starting to wear the aghast look of a missionary observing his first Aztec sacrifice."

Concluded Flanagan:

"Nowadays, nobody thinks Aztec sacrifices were just something that happened between the Aztec priests and the victims whose hearts they cut out. Our idea of Aztec sacrifices extends to the crowds who stood and stared, who drank it up as a spectacle, who either believed they couldn't stop it or didn't care and are thus remembered as being part of the barbaric practice." (The sad truth about the morality of our media, The Age, 3/12/11)

Funny, but with Palestinian hearts being ripped, torn, stilled and broken on a daily basis by Israel's current crop of state-of-the-art 'obsidian knives', all Flanagan can find to say is, "Personally, I don't want to get involved in the politics of the Middle East." (Without politics, Peace Team is peaceful, The Age, 24/9/11).

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