Media at fault in Sen. Allen story

By Paul Haist

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Those who have attacked Sen. George Allen for his response to a reporter's inquiry about his Jewish heritage have gotten the issue backwards.
The Virginia Republican's Jewish roots have nothing to do with anything of consequence outside of his private life.
Allen's dismissal of Washington, D.C., television reporter Peggy Fox's inappropriate question about his Jewish mother was the right thing for him to do.
I find Fox's question and the media's subsequent slathering pontification on this matter prurient, unprofessional, unwholesome and uncalled for.
One commentator wrote about the senator's "previously undisclosed Jewish heritage." Although a technically neutral assertion, "previously undisclosed Jewish heritage" presupposes that the senator had some responsibility to disclose his heritage or at least that the commentator believed the senator had a responsibility to do so.

An individual's cultural or religious heritage is nobody's business but his or her own and, I suppose, their family's. They may disclose it or not, as they see fit and for whatever reason.
Suggesting that a public official's religious or cultural heritage should be disclosed implies that one's heritage influences one's qualification for public office or may color one's ability to make sound and reasonably objective decisions in the public interest.
While each individual's heritage and life experience and that of all his or her forebears necessarily colors his or her judgment (each of us being the sum of all that came before us plus all of our own experience), in our society we are obligated to give individuals the benefit of the doubt and trust them to rise above self-interest, until it is demonstrated that they are unworthy of that trust.
One who suggests otherwise is more likely the one who is tainted by a
prejudice.
What matters about the senator are his actions as a public official, how he executes the responsibilities of his office, how he votes in the Senate, and, in general terms, his conduct as a citizen who respects the law of the land. Whether his mother was Jewish is irrelevant.
When some reporters or pundits have written recently that Allen was casting aspersions on Jewish heritage when he dismissed the rude and unjustifiable question, they got it wrong.
It was the questioner, Peggy Fox, who was casting aspersions on Jewish heritage merely by asking the question. I suspect Allen understood that fact intuitively (as did others present at the time who booed the question) and that his swift reply was just what one would expect of most people in such a circumstance.
The media got it backwards.
The media's having made an issue of this—however stupefyingly inappropriate on their part—demonstrates how their inquiries occasionally cross the boundaries of sound professional judgment, good taste and prudent conduct, this time in an area where tensions can run high and a mistake can spark a conflagration.
In such instances they indulge an unseemly voyeurism and vitiate the profession of journalism in service of sloppy thinking or inexperience at best, or unvarnished bias at worst.
What motivated Peggy Fox's question to Sen. Allen may be known only to her, but it should be clear to all that the question should not have been asked, certainly not in a public forum, and that by asking the question she has diminished herself and called into question the soundness of her moral compass.
The fact that the media has ballyhooed this sloppy non-story and, in several cases, blamed the victim Allen rather than the perpetrator Fox, damages the credibility of all the media, or it should.
Fox's venomous question and the media's unseemly thirst for blood in the aftermath of the question promotes and wrongly validates a mindset that there is something about being Jewish that makes it a public issue, something about being Jewish that is worrisome for the rest of society, something about being Jewish that is dangerous.
What's worrisome and dangerous here is an irresponsible media that capriciously fans the flames of bias and hate.