Three Apples: My Genocide = Her Traffic Snarl
a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … Last Sunday I stood a foot from my TV flipping channels to find local news coverage of the protest rally at Pelanconi Park in Glendale. Instead of a story about ten thousand Armenians gathering there were stories about Roman Polanski’s arrest and Yom Kippur services. Why had I even bothered, I thought, remembering what a pale-faced, petite news executive said to me five years ago. “The only thing the Armenian Genocide means is a traffic tie up on Times Square every April 24th,” she stated bluntly. She wasn’t trying to be funny. She thought her position as my boss and as a supervising producer at a TV network earned her the right to arbitrate the 21st century value of an unpunished and unspeakable 20th century genocidal crime. “You’re not getting it,” she said, “it’s not newsworthy.” That exchange in the early hours of April 24, 2004, was like the Ottoman sword that split my head op...