As promised, Elaine and I walked past the Buffalo Rose last night where Al-Jazeera interviewed some Golden residents re: the election. There were plenty of people in the bar, but the spectacle was out front where folks were holding signs that said things like: “God forgives, we don’t” and generally being rowdy.
As I looked on in quiet disappointment – denigrating Muslims for not eating pork and conflating Al-Jazeera with Al-Qaeda are not the ways to win friends in the Middle East – I noticed a reporter jotting notes. I almost walked up to him and said, “Don’t sensationalize this; it’s just a handful of ill-informed and possibly even well-meaning folks that want some attention.” But I didn’t.
Well it turned out that the guy was Dana Milbank from the Washington Post and he wrote about the incident in a pretty non-flattering tone in today’s paper. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703977.html?referrer=emailarticle
And, in a particularly ironic twist, the only coverage of Golden I could find on the Al-Jazeera website was pretty positive.
“On this second day of the Democratic convention, it was off to the small city of Golden, 24km west of Denver. The city sits in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains – just 21 square kilometres nestled in a valley along Clear Creek. Small shops and offices line the streets, and people warmly say hello to each other. When they see our crew, some tell us they're glad to have a chance to tell the world what they think about this political season. The overwhelming message – people are hungry for a renewed sense of economic and psychological security – and they're very keen to see what both Barack Obama and John McCain have to offer them.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/08/200882516620749740.html
After we walked by the protest I fished in the creek for a while (I long-released a couple) and Elaine went to the library to knit with a group of needleworkers. When I stopped in to say hi, I noticed that one of the regulars, a girl who wears a headscarf – and is a member of the family who owns the Lebanese place that is probably the best restaurant in town – wasn’t in attendance. If she stayed home because she didn’t feel like it was safe to be out among the protesters, then shame on Golden, and shame on me for not doing more about it.
1 comment:
Sigh.
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