Feiler's Files
Church Of The Poisoned Mind
It’s a tough call. What do you do? You hear that a controversial group – a church outfit, no less – is coming to town, for a rally in front of three Jewish institutions. They want us all to repent, and they don’t mind getting nasty and bigoted in their condemnations and proclamations. They’re famous, most of all for holding protests in front of funerals for U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. (How vile and sacrilege can you get?)
They’re fundamentalists who believe that everyone else is going to hell and only they have the true answer, and that the rest of us better straighten up and soon. (Some people would say that really means they’re just a bunch of nutjobs.) And they obviously love attention and media coverage, almost as much as they love their so-called religion, not only because it gets their word out but it also pays for the butter on their bread. After all, they might be small in numbers but they obviously have deep pockets from external sources, to go around the nation and protest at soldiers’ funerals and other venues.
So what do you do if you’re a media outlet? Do you give them their much-cherished publicity? Or do you just ignore ‘em, like a nagging toothache?
That was our staff’s dilemma yesterday when those crazy folks from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kans., dropped by and held protests in front of the Park Heights Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Museum of Maryland and the headquarters of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.
Only three Westboro members actually showed up – Shirley Phelps-Roper, the hateful, acid-tongued daughter of the church’s longtime spiritual leader, and her two obviously brainwashed kids, Rebekah, 22, and Gabriel, 13. A fair-haired boy in t-shirt and shorts, Gabriel looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than where he was. He had that look on his face that many boys his age wear when they’re at their overly-affectionate aunt’s house for a family dinner. Simply put, he looked absolutely miserable.
The Westboro folks’ message for Jewish Baltimore? It’s time to atone – for killing Christ, for stealing the land of Israel, for murdering Palestinians, for condoning homosexuality, for being generally wicked. (There was no mention of deplorable driving habits on Reisterstown Road during rush hour.) They also seem to have beefs with Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson, both of whom they say are now dancing the tango in hell for their sinfulness (and whose funerals they plan to protest).
At times, their rallies here yesterday seemed rather lame and pathetic. Singing hateful songs against Jews and gays with insipid lyrics to a blasting iPod. Yelling at and arguing with motorists and passersby, until they’d resort to quoting specific biblical passages or singing loudly to avoid further discussion. And with only three of them here, it frankly just seemed a bit silly. Wearing a bunch of signs with provocative messages, they looked like clowns on a picket line.
Which goes back to the earlier stated question—is it really worth covering these guys, with such a small number of “protesters” and with their obvious craving for attention? One person even said to our executive editor, Phil Jacobs, that these guys wouldn’t even bother coming out of their holes and do this kind of stuff if those of us in the media would simply ignore them.
To be honest, I go back and forth on it. I don’t enjoy giving people like this a pedestal for their expressions of hatred. Why give them what they want?
But on the other hand, I think it’s important that we know who we’re dealing with. These folks are nationally-known, have been on virtually every major national news program and in every major publication, and not everyone out there thinks they’re nutjobs, even if they themselves wouldn’t personally go out on a street corner and scream that Jews are murderous reprobates heading for a fiery demise.
It’s important that we know who is lurking in America’s underbelly, even if we have to occasionally give them their 15 minutes of fame. And to come face to face with such unadulterated and perverse hatred is something to behold, even if it did get a little boring after a while.
At one point during one of the “rallies” yesterday, when arguing with a University of Baltimore law school student, Rebekah Phelps-Roper alluded to the victims of 9/11. In her defense of Westboro’s tactics, she said that those victims are now in hell because of America’s hedonism and wickedness, its failure to truly adhere to biblical law. A pause fell over us, and I looked at the U of B student next to me. It was as if both of us were telepathically saying to each other, “OK, do you want to hold her down while I knock her silly, or should I?” But then, we seemed to think better. We knew that’s what she and her ilk would have wanted.
So we let them have their say. And then we move on.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/01/09 at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
