Zacchaeus, that ink-stained wretch

 Tax collectors have been in the Gospel lately. Last week, it was the humble one who was justified in contrast to the boastful Pharisee. This week it was Zacchaeus, treed, who was described as both rich and a tax collector. In both stories, the tax collector comes out well, in spite of being one of a despised class of citizens.

 Somebody had to collect the tax.

 We were wondering who, in this land of the free, might stand in for tax collectors if the Gospel  stories were told in this day and age, when tax collectors are mostly a computer program. My friends suggested: journalists.

 Yeah, there is something in that. The president has called us “enemies of the people” 36 times, and Tweeted “fake news” 558 times. Sometimes he points out reporters and gets his cult to chant, “Lock them up.” Customs and Border Patrol agents seem to be on board.

 

Last month, an American reporting for a military news Website was held up by an agent at Dulles International Airport who said, “So your are a propagandist, right?” The reporter replied, "No. I am in journalism. Covering national security. And homeland security.”  The agent allegedly repeated, "So you write propaganda, right?" The reporter agreed to avoid further hassle and got his passport back.

 That incident followed the same scenario as one that transpired across in the continent, in Los Angeles, in August. Again the CPB was venting. This time it was with a British journalist: “He wanted to know if I’d ever worked for CNN or MSNBC or other outlets that are ‘spreading lies to the American people’,” the reporter tweeted. “He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy.”

 The trope that the press is against them is on a well-thumbed page in the political playbook.  In sports, it is called “working the refs (or umpires),” and you do it in hopes that next time he is about to call a play against you something in the back of his head tells him it would be unfair to sweet, little you. It works better with the press, which is eager to be, and more eager to look, even-handed. If “both sidesism” applied to crime reporting you would read:  “The mass murderer was finally shot to death, but criminals quickly pointed out that the police broke several traffic laws on their way to his murder scene.”

 Donald Trump is very good at accusing others of doing the same thing he has done, so there is always a traffic law violation by Democrats or the media to be included in stories about him.

 What is different about working the ref lately is that  uniformed officers of the government have taken it up. They are only following the example of their chief executive, but they used to maintain a professional attitude with the people who pay their salaries or, in the Los Angeles case, with visitors who will spend money in the country.

 With KellyAnne Conway in contumacious violation of the Hatch Act, the restraints of law, as well as professionalism, seem to be removed.

 I think I mentioned here earlier that I eventually tired of hearing the Trump version, as mediated by FoxNews, of the Never-Trump Left Wing Socialist Media, from a conservative I was having lunch with every two weeks. I blew up and said, “That’s me you are talking about.” Oh, no, he assured me he didn’t mean me. Then he went ahead and repeated the whole recitation in a group of people a few days later.

 The lunches ended for another reason, but he still prefers alternative facts to “fake news.” Because journalists are the new tax collectors.

 One more point: "Enemy of the people" is, like everything else Trump tweets, over-used to the point of meaninglessness. But when Henrik Ibsen used it as the title of a play in 1882, the "enemy" was a doctor who discovered the town's famous spring was filled with bacteria that would eventually kill everyone in town and the medical tourists the spring attracted to the town. Nobody wanted to hear it, and they shut the doctor down. A major revival of the play would be too much like what people don't want to hear from those repulsive tax col... er, journalists.