All the media in the world can’t explain

….when people don’t want to see or hear. Period.

That’s what happening in the radical quarters of the Muslim world with all the rioting and violence, and we just can’t get our heads around what propels this mass behavior so far out of control. The angriest mobs there don’t even know what the Pope said. But they don’t care. We may think ‘if only they knew the whole story,’ or ‘if only they knew the context’ then…what? They may go ‘Aha! So that’s the real story!’? Think they would come to their senses?

There’s no sense to this hatred, which mirrors the mind boggling violence after the Danish paper ran the editorial cartoon. What the Pope really said doesn’t matter to these mobs. But it should matter to the media. They have the responsibility for informing the public, and they’re failing. Overall, they’re doing a better job of getting the “Arab street” covered than the Western academy or church that can explain this clash and give it context.

This brings up a question I’ve been wondering. Just what IS the “Arab street?” That implies public opinion. Does public opinion even exist there, beyond the orchestrated mass outbursts and acts of violence we’re seeing again and again? “Arab street” seems to imply the ‘man on the street’ mood the American media like to talk about when they pretend to take the pulse of the country. But that’s a Western model.

The street scenes of mob violence are being driven by the only information they listen to, from the only voices they hear. What to do about that, then?

Ah, that’s what Benedict was addressing to the university academics in Regensburg when this whole thing began. More on that to follow…