Holy City

Note: What's with the constant use of these words in the 'News' when used to describe some town or province in Iraq as in: "The Holy City of Najaf", or "The Holy City of Karbala"? The Old World is full of places that several thousand years ago had something to brag about: The Upper Nile, Nippur, Karbala, Abydos, Kairouan, Mecca, Jerusalem, Bukhara, and to a lesser degree, The Vatican and Athens; but so what! Attempting to put some mystical sheen on these arid wastelands is close to obscene.

Were it just Fox, the Daily Mirror, and the junk journals that refer to these cities in that way, I could ignore it and leave it for their native audience; but now NPR, PBS, the Atlantic Monthly, the NY Times and others do it with equal fervor. Do these 'journalists' not recognize that these 'Holy Cities' have the most horrid record on civil rights, respect for basic human dignity, individual liberty, and adherence to the stated laws of their own prophets? What might be accurate is to call them: "The Ancient Holy City of XYZ"; but again, why is that necessary.