From the Editor: Swastikas, flags and talk radio

Not long after I arrived here I attended a Holocaust Memorial service at Beth Shalom Temple Center in Green Valley.

Reading the history of Nazi Germany is awful enough; being in the same room with people who lived it was overwhelming.

That’s why I was disheartened Thursday as I listened to a radio talk show host unwittingly marginalize the deaths of millions of innocent people and the lives of millions more who suffered at the hands of Hitler.

A couple of times a week I listen to the Jon Justice show out of Tucson because he often has guests with Green Valley ties. State Rep. Frank Antenori makes frequent appearances as do GOP candidates going after U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ job.

As for Justice, I figured out months ago that he brings nothing to the party. I hang in there through the hyperbole and the attacks on all things liberal, but I find myself turning off the radio having learned nothing.

It’s an empty show that loves to point out problems but offers few solutions.

On Thursday, Justice was talking about a swastika sticker for sale at a kiosk at Tucson Mall. Somebody complained and it was removed from the display. Justice thought that was going overboard in the sensitivity department.

Generally speaking, he’s right. American society is too sensitive.

PETA needs to understand that some people like fur and hamburgers, and school districts need to hear it when they expel students for bringing a plastic butter knife to school packed in their lunch.

Sometimes sensitivity needs to be challenged, but there are some topics you don’t toy with.

You could hear Justice slowly realizing that as a caller took him to task for not understanding the powerful message the swastika still sends nearly 65 years after Hitler«s death.

Justice scrambled.

He said that, as a Christian, the pentagram is offensive to him, but was it so bad that he’d ask that it be removed from a kiosk?

It was a weak comparison, and Justice clearly knew he’d screwed up. But his arrogant pride wouldn’t let him back down and he kept digging a hole. I hope he went home that day wondering whether he’d have a job when he returned on Friday.

Unfortunately, there are many just like him — liberal and conservative — on the national talk radio stage doing much the same thing. They exaggerate, they belittle, they quote people out of context and they make thoughtless statements they never have to answer for.

And many of them draw hefty audiences.

Are you getting tired of it?

A lot of people are, according to the numbers. Nearly one-third of registered voters in Arizona are Independents, and the growth is coming from Democrats and Republicans who are sending a message that they’re frustrated.

Justice, though, isn’t completely heartless. He ended the segment Thursday by chastising a county library that had no American flag on display.

A library patron wrote a letter to the Marana newspaper about it and received a flag from Giffords’ office. He donated it to the library, where staff decided to display it in a meeting room rather than at the library entrance, where they feared it could be damaged.

Justice was incensed.

He wondered aloud, don’t they understand the importance of the flag? What it means? The symbolism?

Yes, the symbolism.

The same guy who a few minutes earlier was annoyed by calls to remove a swastika from a mall kiosk suddenly understood symbolism.

He just didn’t understand it very well.

— Dan Shearer