August 24, 2006 Issue                                       

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

Is no news good news?

Got a call last week from a woman who was fed up with unpleasant things in the paper. She didn’t like reading about blight, didn’t like reading about Mt. Airy in the Chestnut Hill paper (even though she said she lived in Mt. Airy) and didn’t like reading the comments of our columnist Jim Foster. “What gives him the right to say anything he wants?” she demanded. “You paper is indicative of the kind of decline we’re experiencing in the country as a whole.”

Who am I to argue? When you’re in the business of putting out a paper, you expect these calls. They’re as regular as tides and as sure as taxes.

Still it always gets me scratching my head… What on Earth does such a person expect in the paper? And how can he or she expect the paper to do what so desperately needs to be done in Northwest Philadelphia: inform people as best we can about what’s going on here?

Good news is, despite the fact that we have unpleasant things to report, we do have our fair share of things to feel pleasant about.

First is the annual Kids’ Edition. The Kids’ Edition is the one time a year kids in our readership area (and, yup, that includes Mt. Airy) get to submit their work for publication. And we get to read it, review it and print it.

This year we received poems, stories, crayon and pencil sketches, paintings and photos. The response was so good and we got so much material that we filled four pages of this paper with kids’ submissions and plan on running another section of kids work in the next issue. Included with what will run next week is a lengthy thriller by 7-year-old Marley Napier-Smith titled House Murder. It has suspense, thrills, a house full of monsters and even a trip to the prom, which for most of us old enough to have been to a prom, is scarier than a house full of monsters any day.

So, turn to page 8 and enjoy the hard work of our kids.

The second thing we have to feel positive about is the recent start here of Walter Fox as the Local’s articles editor.

Walter Fox wrote the book on reporting. Literally. His book on the subject, Writing the News: A Guide for Print Journalists is now in its third edition and has been translated into many languages, including Indian, Bulgarian and Chinese.

He has been teaching journalism since 1968, getting his start at Chestnut Hill College and then Temple University he went on to help develop the journalism program at West Chester University in 1983. He currently lectures on journalism at the University of Pennsylvania.

Walter is already having an impact on the paper after just two weeks. He’s working with our writers and helping them shape their copy into sound stories. We’re pleased to have him here.

So that’s the story this week. We have the pleasant and the unpleasant — the tale of two local men who interrupted the assault of a Chestnut Hill man and the second of two parts on one community’s battle with a local nuisance establishment that attracts day-long corner drinkers. It’s going to be the story every week. We hope that shedding a little light on the unpleasant will help make this area a little more pleasant in the future.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Accepting the unacceptable
by JIM FOSTER

Iran’s legal system convicted another woman, Malak Ghorbany, of the most heinous of crimes one could image in that culture. She was found guilty of an adulterous relationship. Doing the right thing, her brother killed her lover and was sentenced to six years in jail.

Her punishment however, is a different matter. She has been convicted and will be buried tightly in dirt up to her breasts and then stoned to death by the country’s Revolutionary Guards. Article 104 of the Iranian Penal Code says so.

I want an explanation for where all those very committed liberals I grew up with in the 1960’s and early 70’s are now. Where are those who identified and challenged human rights abuses, protested, sat in for gender equality, petitioned for fairness under the law for all citizens of all nations, backed reform policies for third world governments through the United Nations, etc. etc?

Actually, I know where they are — they are leading the charge to recognize Hezbollah and want to do anything they can to appease the leaders who would continue to impose 8th century fundamentalist living standards on all of their citizens using the most brutal methods one could imagine.

Iran is stoning women to death under very specific guidelines including the size of the stones and the best the American human rights groups can manage is a limp individual bill from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Give me a break!

Where are those wild-eyed dedicated throngs screaming with signs in front of the Iranian Consulate at the UN, closing down universities with Islamic Studies Programs, marching in concert with oppressed women forced to wear burkas and live restricted life-styles?

They have wimped out. Rather we sit back and “adjust” to alternate cultural lifestyles that enforce dress codes, mutilate women, teach suicide bombing from the first grade and build an entire linked empire whose primary goal is to kill every living person who does not adapt.

There are more folks clamoring about a bible on display in a court house, a state seal with a cross in it, a prayer at a football game, than protesting women being stoned to death for non-violent crime in a process that is documented in the law of that land, and the law they would bring to every country in the world given the chance. A significant percentage of the Islamic citizens born and living in Britain have stated they would rather convert British law to Sharia law at the earliest possible moment.

And the so-called liberal thinking world does not think we have a problem. Instead of headlined in the New York Times or the Inquirer, I had to find this on a very conservative web site. Half the country now wants to let this very same Iranian government run most of the Middle East with the world’s petrodollars. Mike Wallace does a gentleman’s interview with the Hitler-like leader of that country and asks him what he does for recreation. News of organized terrorist bombing plots in several countries reaches the surface just this last week. What am I missing here?