HATRED & RAGE DO SELL NEWSPAPERS

If you live in the Los Angeles area, particularly, if you call the San Fernando Valley, home, you could not have helped learning about the fire - bombing of houses of worship recently.

Like most blue-blooded Iranian born immigrants, I have learned to hold my breath the moment I hear some crazy lunatic has engaged in an act of terror, lest it be a fellow Iranian.

I remember precisely where I was when the Oklahoma City bombing took place, I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Twin Towers in New York. I remember these because each and every time my heart skipped a beat because I thought "oh s….", let it not be an Iranian who had done this.

Well, my heart skipped another beat when I heard they had arrested a man in connection with the fire-bombings, but then when I read the L.A. Times story I felt, for a brief second, vindicated.

The madman was an Iranian, but a Jewish Iranian, so what do I care. I am a Moslem Iranian. But then thankfully years of education and a smidgen of logic kicked in.

Why do they tell us someone who has allegedly committed a crime is a Jewish Iranian, although the man immigrated to the U.S. decades ago? Why don't the newspapers tell us some murderer or burglar was a Mayan Mexican, or a Scotsman from Aberdeen, or a Bavarian German?

If ancestry figures into crime reporting why not divulge the national origin for all? I suspect newspapers do this because sensationalism sells. I do not think conspiring minds decide to use the race or nationality card to put a wedge among us, but that is exactly what they are doing, and that is a shame.

By the way, one of the writers of the news article in L.A. Times was an Armenian, so there.