AK/AH: Summer League

So, over the summer, I may just post occasionally whenever anything just jumps out at me as particularly asskicking or asshattish in the news.  These are, as always, open to any submissions. 

Oh for crying out loud: Sarah Palin is making a propaganda movie about herself, called "The Undefeated" (yes, brain, I know, I heard it too.  Have some music.). It's a "two-hour long, sweeping epic" and it includes

"Images of lions killing a zebra and a dead medieval soldier with an arrow sticking in his back dramatize the ethics complaints filed by obscure Alaskan citizens, which Palin has cited as the primary reason for her sudden resignation in July of 2009."

And I'm not just calling it propaganda to be a jerk, it's actually being developed as a campaign tool, which means it's probably going to be reported as news, which means she is NEVER GOING AWAY.  At this point, we should probably start trying things from comic books.  Can we get her to say her name backwards? 

But, on the side of hope for human decency, we have Zochrot (remembrance), an Israeli organization working to promote the teaching and remembrance of the Palestinian exile in the face of a recent law that prohibits public events mourning, commemorating or protesting the "Nakba" (catastrophe).  Now, this is not something that easily splits into the AH/AK dichotomy.  The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is, of course, a wildly controversial problem that's just chewed up and spit out its what, umpteenth diplomat?  And certainly there are majority Israeli views with weight to them that the Nakba events are aimed at the catastrophe not at the exile of the Palestinians but at the creation of the state of Israel itself, and that any demonstration attacking the existence of the state is fair game for the state to ban at public events. 
But while these issues are complicated, there are a few canaries in the coal mine that apply across human conflict, and when any group sets about to intentionally remove a minority narrative from public consciousness-- whenever a climate becomes so closed that teachers receive threatening letters for what they're teaching and students ask if it's still allowed to learn about something-- your canary is quite sickly.  So kudos to Zochrot for adding something to this mess that's not a heaping pile of disdain for the other side.