Rabbi Patricia Karlin-NeumannUniversity Public Worship
Stanford University Memorial ChurchMarch 21, 2010
Gorging Ourselves in the Body Politic
(Deuteronomy 8:1-10; Amos 8:11; Psalms 126)
Since we’re in church this morning, I have a confession to make. I have an addiction. I am a news junkie. I go to sleep with the news on. I wake up to the news. The first apps I downloaded for my iPhone were the New York Times, National Public Radio and C-Span. I read blogs. I send links of news articles to the people I love. I read the newspaper while riding my stationary bike. When I was an undergraduate, every night at 6 o’clock, I would meet my best friend Sarah—who I’m pleased is visiting today from Canada—for our date with Walter Cronkite. Only after his sign off, “And that’s the way it is…” would we go to the dining hall for dinner—and for a discussion of the nightly news. Had the health care vote been scheduled for 10 a.m. this morning rather than this afternoon, I may well have called in sick.
But before you condemn me for my addiction, in my defense, let me tell you that I come by it honestly. My earliest memories of my maternal grandfather involve him sitting in rapt attention, taking in the Huntley-Brinkley Report, or concentrating intently on the radio newscasts. A house full of visiting grandchildren didn’t change his ritual. The events of the world were as real and as present for him as the five grandkids he was shushing in his living room. What I didn’t understand as a child was that the events of the world had indeed shaped him. During a trip to Shanghai for his business importing arts and linens, my grandfather was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp duringWorld War II. In recent years, I learned of the rampant starvation and despair in those camps, of the arbitrary luck and connections of the few who were expatriated or of the many who languished in the camps, but my grandfather never spoke of it. While, as a child, I knew of his constant watchfulness and attention to current events, I didn’t understand what I witnessed. I didn’t understand that one’s private life might be irretrievably altered by the decisions of a government far away. I didn’t understand that day after day, listening to constant propaganda in a camp with no way to learn the fate of the war raging outside the barbed wire would awaken an insatiable desire to pay vigilant attention to the news. I didn’t understand that in the Jewish community, at least, everyone of his generation was influenced, to greater or lesser degrees by the events taking place a world away. When I was a congregational rabbi, the people most aware of and engaged in public affairs were my oldest congregants. Holocaust survivors, veterans and war widows, they knew in their bones—and often etched on their arms—that we ignore the political world around us at our peril.
The responsibility to be a knowledgeable citizen, to be aware of current events and crises was conveyed to me with intensity and certainty. Al tifros min hatzibur—“Do not separate yourself from the community,” was instilled in me at home, in synagogue, in school. Being aware of the news was the way to keep tabs on that connection to the community. Just as the news was my grandfather’s lifeline, promising him of some control over his future, so too, has it become my lifeline.
But today, we have a problem. Back in the day, my grandfather, my elderly congregants and millions like them, trusted their news sources. With good reason. These days, only mine are trustworthy—yours are biased.
With so many suppliers of news—cable television, blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, more people than ever can speak their mind. But rather than this proliferation leading to a thousand flowers blooming, rather than encouraging an outbreak of national open mindedness fed by many waters, we now have innumerable “trusted sources” repeating and confirming our already existing biases—and denying everyone else’s. A study analyzing the connections between news sources called, “Divided They Blog” tells us that“liberals and conservatives linkprimarily within their separate communities, with far fewer cross-links exchanged between them.”[i]What was once news now flirts with being gossip—stories go viral about our opponents, adversaries or those with conflicting ideologies, and like an endless game of telephone, the seed of truth is smothered and its fruit atrophies. Or, as Thomas Friedman wrote, concerning another place we turn, to hear “Amen” to our beliefs, “The rise of cable TV has transformed politics in our country into just another spectator sport, like all-star wrestling. C-Span is just ESPN with only two teams. We watch it for entertainment, not solutions.”[ii]
About a decade ago, I picked up a book with the provocative title, How the News Makes us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society. C. John Sommerville offers a simple argument. We have ruined news by making it into a commodity rather than a public service. When you sell news on a daily basis, you have to make each day’s news seem important. News, by definition, is what happened since yesterday’s broadcast or deadline. It is ephemeral, by its very nature. Plus, in addition to proclaiming the razzle-dazzle of today’s news, you also have to convince consumers to come back tomorrow for the next latest and greatest. So by tomorrow, today’s news will be nothing more than material for lining a birdcage or for wrapping fish. News offered for its sizzle and sparkle, news as commodity, Sommerville argues, radically devalues the past[iii].
When Wall Street Journal reporter and Stanford graduate Daniel Pearl was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan, we organized a memorial here at Stanford. There was a great deal of interest in what we were doing, so print and television reporters flocked to Memorial Church. I was grateful for my colleagues in the Stanford News Service, who worked with the media to balance the propriety of the moment with the appetite for national coverage. “You have to feed the beast,” one of my friends in the News Service told me.
“Feed the beast.” If news is like food—ubiquitous, necessary, with the potential both to nourish, or to harm, then can we apply what we know about healthy eating to healthy news consumption? Can we, the body politic, stop gorging ourselves and learn to become healthy connoisseurs? Surely, the twenty-four hour news cycle, the myriad of sources stoking passions and often sporting half-truths, untruths or outright lies, the sound bites that go down without attention are like obsessively eating fast food without actually tasting it. We know the hazards of such a diet—obesity, heart disease, diabetes, often death. What about the hazards of such a diet in our news consumption? In addition to literally raising our blood pressure as the sound bites engender anger or vindication, the polarization causes us to focus on precisely the wrong things. We are distracted, even titillated by the battle between our side and our adversaries. It is easier to focus on the trivial, the tit-for-tat, the political skirmishes, the triumph or defeat of our champions. In the midst of this spectacle, haven’t we forgotten that we face sobering national issues—an economy struggling to recover from a near Depression, wars in which our young people are being asked to give their blood and we are all being asked to give our treasure, let alone a health care system whose perverse incentives doom it in much the same way as Sommerville argues the media is doomed?[iv] I can assure you that my grandfather was not looking for a knockout punch or for his opponent to be pinned to the mat when he was watching the news. He kept his eye on the essential.
Indeed, my grandfather’s experience reminds me that news matters. That being alert to the problems and possibilities of politics matters. Being a knowledgeable and responsible citizen matters. Indeed, I would argue, to do so is a religious act. Al tifros min ha tzibur. Do not separate yourself from the community. Our respective religious traditions teach us to take care of our neighbors, to love the stranger, to provide for the poor, the hungry and the homeless. It is in community, it is by taking action, it is by being communally engaged that we carry out these religious mandates. And to do so, we need to be informed. We need to recognize the power of politics and public policy.
I know that in the back and forth of scoring news points, the religious notion of social justice has gotten a bad rap in the cable circuit and the blogosphere of late. But once the battle of the day’s terms dies down, the question remains--how can we be ethical, religiously inspired consumers of news? How can we learn where the problems lie and where the solutions can be found? How can we, in the midst of what is going on in the world, be God’s hands or God’s hearts, to dispel some misery, to introduce some joy, to share our gifts?
Considering the parallel between food and news, here are a few suggestions:
1) Just as many religions have a tradition of fasting, so we can begin by embarking on periodic news fasts. If fasting allows us, when we resume, to appreciate the taste of the food we eat, to linger on the delicious aromas and to practice mindful eating, so a news fast can enable us to reflect thoughtfully on the words we hear, the ideas we take in and the soundness and durability of our daily news intake.
Deuteronomy teaches, “God subjected you to the hardship of hunger and thengave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the Eternal decrees.”
I once did a six-week diet consisting only of fruits, vegetables and nuts. At the end of those six weeks, I had lost my sweet tooth. For several years afterward, I didn’t eat sweets—and I didn’t miss them. If we eliminate the screaming, the partisan passion and the riled up righteousness from our daily news intake, who knows? Maybe we’ll lose our appetite for it as well. Maybe we’ll be able to maintain our perspective on that which can sustain us.
2) Pay attention to the source. Just as we in California pride ourselves on choosing fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, can’t we exercise the same discretion in the sources of our news? There are still some vestiges of Walter Cronkite in the cacophony of information calling to us for attention. Let’s listen carefully to those voices honestly attempting to minimize bias and foster understanding.
3) Savor what is healthy and ignore the siren’s call of the fast, the filling and the empty calories. Just as there is a growing movement for slow, quality food, so there are news sources, in magazines, in public broadcasting, in longer television programs, on radio, that try to explain and analyze rather than conclude and convince. Listen to the thoughtful, and turn the channel or click away from the expeditious and the certain. The rabbis teach that what distinguishes us from animals is that we can pause to appreciate, to savor, to express gratitude when we are sated. The Bible teaches, “You shall eat, and you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless the Eternal your God for the good land with God has given you.” As we take in news of what is essential, let us appreciate that we have access to a free, if not always wise, press, and let us reward those who carry out that responsibility with wisdom.
4) Don’t neglect the eternal spiritual and religious teachings in the transitory information of the day. I have introduced journalists as secular rabbis. I cite columnists in my teaching and preaching. I have great respect for those who try to inform and engage the public. But often their teachings speak to me because they provide a commentary, a new way of understanding or relating to eternal teachings. Don’t take my—or their—word for it. Return to those teachings. Read spiritual texts to gain insight into contemporary events. As Amos teaches, “Behold there will come a day when the Eternal will send a famine into the land. Not a hunger for food or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Eternal.” Listen for those words of the Eternal to understand how to make the world a better place today.
Many religions share the tradition of offering a short grace before a meal. In addition, Jews recite a longer blessing following the meal, in order to fulfill the biblical obligation, “when you eat and you are satisfied, you shall bless.” On the Sabbath and holidays, that blessing begins with the psalm I read earlier. It is a psalm of yearning, of dreaming, of memory and of promise. It evokes an ideal world that we hope to live in with joy and celebration. “They who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy. Though he goes along weeping, carrying the seed-bag, he shall come back with songs of joy, carrying his sheaves.” Having had the blessing of food, we conclude with the blessing of hope. Having planted a vision of an ideal world, we seek a harvest of joy. Let us no longer feed the beast, but rather, let us feed the better angels of our being. And if, by doing so, we can nourish our dreams as a nation, then we would indeed be making news worth sharing.
And that’s the way it is…Sunday, March 21st. Thank you and Good Morning.
[i] “The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 US Election: Divided They Blog” Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance,
[ii] Thomas Friedman, “The Fat Lady Has Sung”, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2010
[iii] C. John Sommerville, “Why the News Makes us Dumb”
[iv] In Adam Wolfson, “Red and Blue Nation? Causes, Consequences, and Correction of America’s Polarized Politics,” Brookings Institution Director of Governance Studies Pietro Nivola comments:
The great danger in today’s polarization is that it often concerns not the substantial but the trivial, that it is not always over the central concerns of the nation but distracting sectarian issues, and that it is making national unity difficult in a time of great international peril: All of which is to fiddle while Rome burns.