I don’t blog much about politics anymore. People who used to come ’round here were always here with a chip on their shoulder or some talking point to be made, and frankly it was fun for a bit, but in the end it got tiresome, insignificant thoughts got somewhat stale, and I utterly lost interest in blogging. Truthfully, the back-biting bullshit was way too much for me to take, so I took about a month off from posting, and came back but this time focusing on free speech, very little politics, lots of geeky stuff, and a small mix of current news if the situation warrants or applies to the other two.

I have to say I’m enjoying doing this a lot more than I used to. No arguments, just some fun chats in the comments section about this that and the other. Today, I was reminded why I don’t do politics anymore. Oh sure, the whole thing didn’t happen today, but it kinda came to a head for me last night.

I was reading through my blogs in Bloglines, and I saw a post over on Stageleft. It was mostly an e-mail from a site claiming to be the “Angry Arab News Service” that contained a few pictures of children killed in the recent bombings of Lebanon by Israel. A tragedy on any level to any thinking person. Innocent people dying in a war is tragic, especially children.

So wrapped in that tragedy, what does the “Angry Arab News Service” have to enlighten us with?

A FEW MINUTES AGO , the Israeli asked the people of Al Bustan village in the south to evacuate their homes. I am afraid massacares will keep happening as long as Israeli actions are uncheked. Please help us if you can.

Of course the letter also claimed that the pictures would never be shown in the Western Media. Combine the two and you have an implication; that being that the Western media would ignore these pictures because they (suppress your laughter now) paint Israel in a bad light. After all, haven’t you seen the scores of dead body pictures out of Haifa and Safed, the two towns getting shelled by Hezbollah?

Stageleft, of course, posts this with the following:

I have no doubt that these pictures will not see press time - wouldn’t want to offend western society with images of collateral damage that used to be play with dolls in the back yard now would we?

Or with images from the other side, for that matter, huh?

As you saw from the post before this one, I was on Nightline on Friday. Despite my recent embargo on watching news on television in any form (frankly, my brain cells do a good job of dying on their own), I watched. The first segment was a 12 minute piece on the conflict between Hezbollah (and Lebanon, of course, who aren’t distancing themselves from them) and Israel. In it, we saw the following:

• Interviews with Lebanese men on the street
• Footage of missiles hitting a bridge outside of Beirut
• Lebanese news footage of an Israeli destroyer being blown up
• Pictures of demolished buildings in Beirut
• Crying mothers who lost their homes in Beirut
• The on-scene talking head telling us how hard it was to get by in Beirut
• A voiceover of that same talking head saying how devastating this was to Lebanon, which was finally a country returning to respectability

Thus ended the report.

That was the whole thing. That’s what passes for fair in the media these days.

I have no problems with the hard truths of war. It sucks. Innocent people die, and we should do as much as possible to prevent it from happening. Kids should never be playing in their backyard one minute and dead another. They should also never get blown up on a bus on their way to school, or shot at a Passover Seder.

The Middle East is a mess. Terrorists quite convincingly run Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Saudi Arabia shakes our hands and then makes terrorists who kill civilians rich.

On and on it goes and it probably isn’t going to end in my lifetime or my children’s lifetime.

Stageleft has obviously fallen for the “poor oppressed dark-skinned people” line. Of course, Stage claims it isn’t bias and he’d love to post both sides of the story in every newspaper around the world. I’d highly suggest he start with his own blog, but of course he’s powerless to post both sides there as evidenced by his utter refusal to do so. Instead, he posts something from the AANS and claims he’d love to post both sides.

Well dude, it ain’t that hard to try. That is, if you want to. Take a stab at it. Criticize someone shelling Israel without a but.

Stageleft and Nightline are two apples packed with the same worm, and that worm is the pretense of openmindedness and highminded righteous indignation. Somehow all that openmindedness manifests itself as sympathy for one side, and disdain for the other, and often in telling one side of the story.

My question to Stageleft, and any of the other mainstream media outlets constantly beating the “Israel massacre” drum is this…

Can you even bring yourself to be as fair as you claim you would be if you could?

My guess is no and I have plenty of evidence to back that up.

Here’s the challenge.

Just for once…

Prove me wrong.

Regular non-political posting resumes tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: stageleft, nightline, lebanon, israel, hezbollah