by Don Hall

“You should really avoid the el at night. It’s been overtaken.”

In a recent visit to Chicago, either my best or worst tendency came into play. If you tell me something you believe is definitive or even worse, tell me not to do something, I’m probably going to need to see it with my own eyes, to do the forbidden thing.

I rode the el at night. Three times. In the dark hours of midnight to 3am. Just to see if the curtains matched the rug, the hype rhymed with the reality.

There were definitively more of the homeless (or as the kids and the virtuous like to call ‘unhoused’ as if that improves their dignity in any way at all) but there have always been the homeless on the el at night even thirty years ago. I moved from car to car to check it out. Certainly a less than effective security or police presence from my limited angle. A lot more kids openly smoking weed. I didn’t see anything scary (unless the sight of people muttering to themselves like a moving version of the community room of the Ken Kesey novel freaks you out) and I wasn’t in any danger of being sexually assaulted so that wasn’t an issue but might be for someone else.

In the months before driving up there, I read from the relative safety of my studio apartment 700 miles away that Chicago had become a war zone. Violent crime, marauding hordes of children, a crisis for immigrants bussed from Texas. I read about the protests and, in true Chicago fashion, was expecting streets filled with pro-Hamas and pro-Israel protesters. So I looked while I was there. I walked for miles alone and rode the el and didn’t see any of those things. Sure, it was only five days and the limitations of the trip were evident but what I heard was not in any way what I encountered.

SPEAKING OF ISRAEL, just as I was heading to Illinois, the news broke that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza. Reported 500+ dead. Lots of anger and blame, lots of heated discourse. The New York Times squarely placed the fault on Israel—Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.—then backpedaled.

The bomb was not Israeli, but a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israel that misfired. The bomb didn’t hit the hospital, but the hospital parking lot. Hamas claimed that 500 people were killed, but a senior European intelligence source told AFP he thought the death toll was under 50; U.S. intelligence estimates that the number stands between 100 and 300. And it wasn’t Palestinians that said as much to the Times, but the Gaza Health Ministry—which is run by Hamas. 

“So, you’re a Zionist?”

“No. I’m also not a gullible idiot willing to belief things tinted with my personal belief system until I get some semblance of the facts.”

“It is a fact that Israeli forces bombed a Palestinian hospital. How can you be so thick?”

“Two things. And then I gotta go drink. First, it is not established fact because it was in the news. The news said the COVID was from bat soup, then from a lab. The news said Iraq had WMDs and was somehow involved in 9/11. The news usually jumps to a conclusion and then figures it and then buries the actual facts in a hidden editorial. Second, your vehement opinion about the state of Israel is meaningless. Like cheerleading for a football team you watch on TV, your screams and exhortations affect the teams in no way whatsoever. Unless you actually do something, you’re just making noise for no other reason than to be recognized as having thoughts and emotions.”

“…Zionist.”

According to national surveys the current state of media is that it is overwhelmingly viewed as not to be trusted. Common sense observation indicates the same. My experience is that most of the journalists involved in crafting the narrative are honestly doing the best they can to be dispassionate and accurate but they are also under the gun to move far more rapidly than is often compatible with those two goals. When you’re cooking chickens as fast as you can there are going to be some that come out pink in the middle.

Take everything with a grain of salt. Do your best to avoid assumption of intent. Focus on what is happening in the world and, once you’ve reached a conclusion, interrogate it. Take the time journalists do not have to get it right. Personal anecdote and political leaning are neither factual or remotely unbiased.