JustASC

The Stamford Advocate reports on a bat mitzva gone wild in Norwalk:

Police had to clear an “out of control” bat mitzvah party Saturday night at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum.

Brian Fischer, rental coordinator for the museum, told police the younger guests at the Jewish ceremony, which celebrates a girl’s coming of age, tore out ceiling tiles and a light fixture in the 141-year-old, 62-room mansion. Fischer said he saw several boys and girls engaging in oral sex in the bathrooms, Officer Carleton Giles said.

 

Yikes. And we were upset after our daughter’s bat mitzva beecause we ran out of food.

In his blog, Rabbi Joshua Hammerman wants to know what made this front-page news:

I won’t raise the banner of anti-Semitism, but why focus on a party that happens to occur after a particular religious event as opposed to any other teen party where similar (or worse) things might happen?

News by its nature is defined as deviation from the norm, and the higher your professed norms, the more newsworthy becomes the deviation. When a frat party gets out of hand, it has to REALLY get out of hand to become front page news. If the police were called to a christening, however, and found allegations of vandalism and fellatio, I’m guessing it would make it into the papers as well.

(The fact that the alleged events in this case also took place at a historic site probably boosted its newsworthiness.)

In essence, religion reporting works on the principle of the soft bigotry of high expectations: The assumption is that religion stands for goodness and light, and when a religious figure doesn’t live up to those expectations, it’s a story.

Thus:

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.