Orange County: A Tragicomedy in Three Acts

By Tom Moran

Act I

The article, which appeared in the Dec. 7 edition of the Lariat, student newspaper of Orange County's Saddleback Community College, was by Michael Boren, the news paper's art director. It was written to explain Boren's anti-nuclear mock greeting card design, a menorah featuring nine nuclear warheads singing, "We wish you a happy holocaust."

The text protested "holy war," nuclear proliferation and Israeli suppression of the Palestinian intifada. There was no mention of Judaism, Zionism, American Jews or even US government support of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.

The "controversial" text came right after Boren's expression of concern over "a weapon of ultimate destruction in the hands of a fanatical government." He wrote:

"The Israelis claim that they have a divine right to Palestine. If they are indeed God's chosen people, though, it would seem that God might have made a better choice."

Act II

The reaction, printed in the Lariat's letters column, was astonishing, not for its vehemence but for its irrelevance to what Boren had drawn and written.

Wrote Rabbi Allen Krause, Temple Beth El, Mission Viejo: "Is Boren aware that Jews are the only indigenous people in 3,000 years to have an independent state in that land? ... There is no room for bigotry in the Lariat, even when it is disguised as self-righteous indignation."

Frieda Gelber, secretary, Emeritus Institute, Saddleback College, wrote: "Boren's immature degradation of God's Chosen People is very distasteful, hateful, vicious and sadistic. The transformation of a Chanukah menorah into a rocket- launching pad is sacrilegious."

The Saddleback Community College Chancellor, Richard Sneed, wrote: "While it may be appropriate to attack the foreign policy of the state of Israel, it is entirely unacceptable to misuse the sacred symbols of Judaism or to totally misrepresent the relationship of the state of Israel to the religion of the Jewish people or to have the temerity to make light of fundamental beliefs."

President Joan Hueter of the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees called on behalf of "my fellow board members" for an apology and retraction and explained, "An article which is based on ethnic slurs and religious bigotry has no place in a newspaper, especially not in a college newspaper which is supported by public funds."

Printed along with these objections in the Lariat's letters page was one letter from Michael Bryant, a facilities and maintenance department employee, asking: "Aren't we supposed to have the right, not just the privilege, to have ourown opinion, even if it is wrong, or right? By the way, who made up the 'right' things and 'wrong' things?" He called on the Lariat staff to "Keep up the good work (be it right or wrong)."

The Lariat injected its own editor's note that "Boren's intent was not anti-Semitic nor to offend any religious sect or to diminish the significance of the Holocaust, but to express his concern with Israel's possession of nuclear arms and the volatility of the Mideast situation. The Lariat supports Boren's First Amendment right to express his opinion, however we regret any emotional distress his commentary and illustration have caused."

Act III

By this time the uproar had overflowed into the news and letters columns of the Southern California press.

"I think this piece showed extremely poor taste and we were extremely offended by it," Elizabeth Gale, Orange County director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, told the Los Angeles Times, "It's disturbing to see a student publish something that is full of inaccuracy."

Frank Eiklor, founder of the "Orange County Christian Task Force Against Anti-Semitism" demanded the opportunity "to sit down with (Boren) eyeball to eyeball and talk with him. We want to know that there is genuine remorse over going beyond the bounds of decency."

A 15-member group organized by Jewish leaders and Eiklor did sit down with five members (not including Boren) of the Lariat staff, who then issued a statement similar to its original editor's note, regretting any distress the item caused, but not retracting it. Eiklor professed himself satisfied. The others were silent.

None of this was enough for a local community newspaper, the Daily Sun/Post, which proclaimed that "in the manner of anti-Semites throughout modem history, the author, journalism student Michael S. Boren, 26, has confused Israel with world Jewry ... It is absolute anti-Semitism to equate the positions of Israel's leadership with all Jewry ... Adding salt to the wound was the reference to the Holocaust, a common ploy among Israel-hating Arabs ... Anti-Semitism is so rampant in American culture that this student needed only to tap into this wellspring to generate hateful imagery ... The Lariat must not only apologize for the cartoon and essay, it must retract them."

When a reporter for the Washington Report asked to speak to the Daily Sun/Post editorial writer, however, he was told that the newspaper's management didn't know her name. "A Diane somebody" was the only description available from the Sun/Post office for the writer who had just used its pages to lecture Saddleback College's journalism department and students on editorial responsibility.

The Los Angeles Times belatedly remembered it was a newspaper, however, and not just a conveyor belt for organized assaults against the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In an editorial headlined "Overreaction at Saddleback," the Times criticized Chancellor Sneed's threat to withhold funding from the student newspaper and added: "Setting aside our own sharp differences with Boren's approach to the issue, he has a constitutional right to express his views, and the Lariat has a right to print them. Those who object also have a right to protest. That's where the matter should end." The Times tempered its own candor, however, by confining the editorial to the newspaper's Orange County edition.

Curtain Call

When the dust had settled, it was clear that the journalism students at Saddleback understand the protections provided by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, even if some college officials and board members, and local journalist "Diane somebody," don't.

Boren said from the beginning he is "sorry if I offended anyone," but that he sticks by his article and cartoon. He has received numerous awards for his illustrations, which, he told the Los Angeles Times, are often controversial, "but not like this."

With Boren standing by his work, and the would-be book burner at the Sun/Post unidentifiable, the republic, it seems, is in good hands.

Tom Moran, who proposed, researched, and submitted the draft of this article, is a resident of Los Angeles, California. It was edited by "a Richard somebody" of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.