Among the many bits of ephemera that have taken up residence in my brain over the years is an old sketch from the much-loved comedy series Mr. Show that ran on HBO back in the 1990s, featuring a local news station whose motto is “We Make the News.” Over the course of the sketch, it emerges that the newscasters are not just covering riots, forest fires, etc. but actively starting them.

I couldn’t help but think of this while reading the already-controversial new issue of New York magazine—particularly Madeline Leung Coleman’s profile of the New York City dining scene, titled “When Eating Out is Political.” As one examines the body of the piece, it becomes clear that the article itself is actively participating in the very politicization it claims to merely be describing. Indeed, it’s fair to say that the writing and publishing of such an article greatly intensifies that politicization—far beyond the awareness of the typical diner.

This is the kind of inherently misleading framing one finds in press releases informing us that so-and-so has announced such-and-such, when in fact the press release itself is the announcement.

The article purports to cover the emergence of an increasingly wide range of Middle Eastern and Central Asian dining spots, including high end restaurants: “More and more Middle Eastern chefs and owners are opening the kinds of restaurants that get booked out, hyped up, and earmarked for an extra-special dinner.” So far so good. Except that this lede only comes four paragraphs into the article; the first three are concerned entirely with Israeli restaurants.

And both Israel and Jews—NYC being a city in which Jews have historically asserted a good deal of cultural influence—serve as foils to the broader Middle Eastern or “SWANA” (a neologism whose staying power remains in doubt but refers to “Southwest Asia and North Africa”) protagonists throughout. This is not reading between the lines, by the way; the article opens the scene by describing the city (not inaccurately) as “a Jewish-ish town.”

The article refers to a map on a wall of a Palestinian chain........

© Canadian Jewish News