Jon Gosselin (basic explanation for those of you lucky enough not to know who he is: he and his now-estranged wife had twins and sextuplets, then they got a show on TLC called Jon and Kate Plus Eight, then they split up and Jon started dressing like an overgrown frat boy and dating Kate's plastic surgeon's daughter. You're welcome.) recently gave an interview to ParentDish.com. There was quite a bit of Jewish talk, since Jon's girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, is a member of the tribe. Most of the quotes were so hilarious/embarrassing that we've decided to let them speak for themselves:

This is the first year I will celebrate Chanukah. Hailey is Jewish. Everyone in my life is Jewish now, my attorney. I love it. I'm now half Jewish and half Korean. The family values are great.

I just went through Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur and learned about the new year and every Friday is the Shabbat dinner. I love challah bread. I'm learning about Jewish food, going to Zabar's. I love that place. I'm learning about kosher and when not to order a bacon, egg and cheese and make an ass of myself. Hailey makes fun of me. My mom came to the city on Yom Kippur and asked where all the traffic was. I got from the West Side to Midtown in five minutes. She wants to come to the city every year on Yom Kippur.

I talked to Rabbi Shmuley [Boteach] a couple of times. He has nine kids. I was really nervous dating a Jewish girl. She's like the best girl ever. All my friends are like 'I'm so jealous' and I'm like, 'Stay away, she's mine.'

I have a therapist. But hanging around Jewish people you don't need to talk to anyone else. My parents and grandparents are divorced and I want to break the pattern. I have Hailey and Mark Heller, my attorney, my therapist. They're all Jewish. I watch them and I confide in them, especially Hailey. She is my best friend. She'll tell me if I do something wrong. God has put these people in my life for a reason. My inner circle is Jewish. I only care what they think.

 

There is no dearth of reading material for the Jewish community, newspapers and magazines are readily available and here is my take on them. I am sure I left some out, but these are the one's I have looked at or read on a regular basis. Do you have anything else to add?

Yated

The Yated is the yeshvish (ultraorthodox Jews who are not Chassidic) paper of choice. It has the "Readers Write" section, in which Lakewood kollel wives complain about women wearing crocs to shul, the visiting day crisis (see explanation below) and how to solve the shidduch crisis by telling girls to stay in the freezer (Lakewood yeshiva policy for not letting guys date after they come home from Israel) just like guys.

The only other interesting feature in the Yated, for someone who doesn't want to read cut and pasted week old AP and Reuters articles, is the Chinuch Roundtable - someone asks a question (sometimes juicy) and a bunch of rabbis from different institutions answer it. Every rabbi says the same exact thing and there is no diversity within the group. One week there was a question concerning this family who invites over yeshiva rebels to get them back on track but the family has two teenage girls and they're scared of the potential bad influence - it had the most sexual undertones I have ever seen in a yeshivish publication. However, most of the Roundtable has to do with whether or not girls should be taught aleph bais, because that may lead them to want to learn gemara and as a result women may have some influence.

The Jewish Week

Then you have the Jewish Week, which is trying to be a Jewish version of the New York times, well thought out articles by academics bashing anything religious or right wing, at least one article per issue about a crisis in Africa which has no Jewish appeal and items that are constantly telling us how philanthropic liberal Jews are even though they rarely give to Jewish organizations.

Hamodia

The Hamodia is actually a real paper - of course it's all right wing, doesn't have pictures of women and is full of ads for kishke and kugel makers - but it's a daily paper and people love it.  It has absolutely nothing of interest to me, but for folks who can't tune in to Fox News daily because their TV is behind the mirror in their bedroom it works.

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Soap operas have never been considered the most elite medium in our crowded cultural landscape. Because they air during the day and are targeted toward women, they're dismissed as fluffy, melodramatic, and unrealistic. All of those things are often true, but soaps-at-night-with-younger-casts like Gossip Girl and The OC are allowed to become pop-culture touchstones instead of being dismissed as irrelevant.

There are many reasons given for why soap operas are becoming less successful and less popular - the OJ Simpson trial, which ate up many hours of daytime TV programming and caused many soaps to be suspended or air at different, less favorable hours, is a popular blame target. In addition, many blame soaps' decreasing ratings to be the result of more women entering the workforce, which makes them less likely to be home during the day. My own theory? It has to do with soaps being largely unsuccessful at adapting to a culture which is less interested in serial drama. In the age of internet spoilers and fast-paced action-driven shows like 24, what incentive is there to tune into a show where storylines last for years?

Furthermore, soaps are expensive to produce, not only compared to other scripted shows but compared to game shows and reality programs, which are more likely to air during the day and compete against soaps. In order to keep multiple plots going on at once, soap canvases are crowded, and veteran actors work out deals that keep them well-paid even when they're not getting a lot of screentime - imagine a House with half a dozen Hugh Lauries. Because of soaps' longevity, actors - and their characters - can stick around for decades. Since soaps juggle multiple story arcs at once, they not only require a full stable of actors but large crews and a variety of sets. When Harrison Ford was once asked to name an actor he admired, and he said 'soap opera actors,' because they have to memorize huge chunks of dialogue in short periods. Soaps air five days a week, year round, and never show reruns. (If you're interested in catching old episodes, your best bet is the ABC-controlled SoapNET network, which shows the occasional vintage soap but is more interested in creating new soaplike series, such as Southern Belles: Louisville.)

In April of this year, CBS announced that it was cancelling Guiding Light, the longest-running TV show in history, which started as a radio program in 1937 and made the move to television in 1952. The show, which regularly came in close to or at the bottom of the ratings, had been in danger for some time. Executive producer Ellen Wheeler (who used to star in soaps, winning a Daytime Emmy for her work on Another World) had cut the show's costs as much as possible, moving the New York City-based show out to rural New Jersey to save money on set construction and space rental. Unfortunately, the ploy didn't work, and Guiding Light's final episode will air on September 18.

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The world has descended upon Rabbi Alysa Stanton. From coast to coast and continent to continent, global media trumpet the ordination of "the first African-American female rabbi." Whether it's The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Jewish Week, CNN, Black Entertainment Television, the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and seemingly every other Jewish and secular media outlet, all of them, by-and-large, cover the same facts:

"Alysa Stanton is the first mainstream African American female rabbi in the world. A convert to Judaism after being raised in a Pentecostal family, she was ordained by Hebrew Union College on June 6, 2009. She is the new congregational rabbi of Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, North Carolina."

That's the whole story. That's where most of the media stops. What interests us is what is not covered, the questions that are not asked.

America's response to Stanton's ordination calls for introspection and self-examination by the larger Jewish community. It is true that Alysa Stanton's ordination is a historical moment that should be celebrated. However, disproportionate attention is paid to her gender, racial background, and path to Judaism when her work and character should receive equal coverage, if not be at the forefront. What's more, the emphasis on her being "the first" downplays a decades-old, increasing shift in the fabric of American Jewish life.

Rabbi Stanton's ordination did not happen in a vacuum. She is not the first person of color to become a rabbi, nor is she the first woman of color to become a rabbi. Just as Rosa Parks wasn't the first or even the second to refuse to move to the back of the bus, Stanton is the rabbi of color who received the attention of the mass media. It is true that she IS the first African American female rabbi. Yet it needs to be acknowledged that other Jewish clergy of color who are not of African American descent have preceded her in mainstream synagogues, and more are in rabbinical school or on the way. Furthermore, Jews of color who are currently serving as presidents of congregations and working on synagogue boards are not the first to do so.

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As a former Jewcer, I'm pleased to call your attention to Tablet Magazine, the new and newsier incarnation of Nextbook. We launched at midnight last night after four not-so-grueling months of redesign and reconceptualization. (Just to preempt any confusion: Nextbook is still the name of our media holding company; think of it as the Conde Nast to Tablet's Jewish New Yorker, if that's not a redundancy.)

Tablet is edited by Alana Newhouse, the wunderkind behind the Forward's old Arts & Culture page, with assists from Jesse Oxfeld of Gawker and New York Magazine, and Gabriel Sanders, also of the Forward and Vanity Fair. I handle our politics coverage, which includes editing our two op-ed columnists Victor Navasky (The Nation) and Seth Lipsky (the much lamented New York Sun).  If that's not a highbrow form of Crossfire in digital media, I don't know what is.

Jeff Goldberg, too, is slated to write a regular column for us, serializing his forthcoming book from Nextbook's Jewish Encounters series, on Judah Maccabee. (I'm also the liaison between the magazine and the publishing arm, overseen by the excellent Jonathan Rosen).

What else? Oh yeah, our spiffy design is explained in a slideshow here.

For several years, I've had a writing relationship with Pakn Treger, the magazine of the National Yiddish Book Center.  This began a while back as a steady gig profiling celebrated Yiddish writers of the past, and offering my own brief translation of exemplary passages of their work.  Only recently has it come to include the occasional feature.  

I spent several of the months that made up last summer and fall putting together a piece for them on the state of the new Jewish media.  It was a lot of fun to write.  I chatted with the familiar cast of characters, who gave me retrospectives as well as assessments of the present and visions of the future.  In talks with foundation people, I also got a chance to piece together an understanding of how the Jewish old guard was reacting to all of this upstart activity.  It was this relationship that interested me most: the marriage of questionable convenience between the young people who wanted to throw pie in the face of the establishment, and the older folks who were willing to endure it because it heartened them to see so many young Jews getting together to throw pie.  

The article finally came out this week, and I submit it for your perusal, though in the end a number of circumstances have conspired to undercut most of the relevance it might at one time have aspired to.  The Book Center had to hold off running it for close to six months, because of money problems, even as the same economic contraction changed the circumstances of a number of the new media organs I had reported on. The version Pakn Treger is running is also scaled down from the version I submitted, excising in particular a lot of the blunt money talk that I found so interesting.  (And the title wasn't my idea.)  

Also removed are a couple of zesty citations, including Jewcy founder Tahl Raz agreeing to be quoted calling the establishment Jewish media a "cesspool of mediocrity," awash in a "perfect storm of shit", and a less scatalogical analysis from Elise Bernhardt, of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, on the relationship between cultural producers and potential funders.  "If art is a vehicle," for the outreach agenda of donors, she said, "they need to understand that it's attracting people for a lot of reasons they don't necessarily want to deal with.  The job of artists it to ask a lot of questions, and the job of institutions is to hold the fort.  So I think there is always tension."

In the end, this piece might just be a belated image of the new Jewish media landscape, as it appeared last fall in the days right before the stopper was pulled out of the economy, and all that water started swirling down the drain.  And last fall, in and of itself, was already pretty late in the game--the only people expected to be surprised, in November of 2008, that a magazine called Heeb, for instance, exists are precisely subscribers to the magazine of the National Yiddish Book Center.

If nothing else, at least now I can say that they've been warned. 

We have spent the last month meticulously reading, watching, listening to and analysing what the UK media had to say about Israel’s operation in Gaza (within the limits of our scope of monitoring). Our objective has been to see whether the coverage was balanced, impartial and factually accurate. Had any lessons been learnt since Lebanon 2006 when, in the eyes of many, the media got it so wrong?

Here’s a brief selection from our findings.

Our first observation concerns a key failing across the BBC and the broadsheets: a virtual absence of communication to audiences about who Hamas actually are and what they represent. We ran a simple index looking for mentions of facts such as:

· Hamas does not recognise Israel
· Hamas calls for Israel’s destruction in its Charter
· Hamas refuses to renounce violence against Israelis
· Hamas has a history of violence against Israelis
· Hamas does not accept previous peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians

The results are startling. Only 5% of news articles in the broadsheet newspapers made any reference to any of these indicators. Of 18 reports on the Today Programme, one made reference to Hamas’ Charter and the rest made no mention of any of the other indicators, and of ten programmes on the BBC Six and Ten O’clock news, only one included an interview excerpt with Tzipi Livni saying that Hamas ‘cannot accept my right to exist’. This was the only mention of any of the indicators by a quoted source or BBC correspondent. These findings indicate that the journalists behind these reports simply did not view these facts as relevant to the conflict.

Looking at the images in the media, only 4% of all the photographs published about the conflict in the first week depicted Hamas militancy and only one photograph of a rocket launcher appeared in the broadsheets. And in cartoons, more than 75% of all editorial cartoons published over the three-week conflict period depicted Israel as the aggressor, whereas only a quarter even featured depictions of armed Hamas fighters.

Another key failure specifically relates to our national broadcaster. The BBC consistently failed to make the crucial distinction between opinion and fact. The source of the confusion, to a significant extent, is the still highly ambiguous role of Jeremy Bowen: the Middle East ‘Editor.’ As an editor, Jeremy Bowen is permitted to ‘editorialise’ the news, which he does by rendering his reports highly personalised. All of which is fine, as long as any kind of editorialisation is clearly marked as an opinion piece. But this is not what the BBC does. In his daily Gaza diary on the BBC website, the Middle East Editor was given free reign to publish his own partial and emotive opinions. These demonstrated a clear sympathy with the Palestinian case and clear hostility towards Israeli perspectives. For example:

‘Back on 6 January I wrote in this diary about one of the most affecting pieces of video I had seen coming out of Gaza. For me, it is still the most memorable single image of the war. It showed a young Palestinian father kissing his dead baby son goodbye. He was murmuring farewells to his boy and I defy anyone to view it and not be profoundly moved. I was frustrated that I did not even know the names of the man and his son…But I wanted to know more about the man, much more. After a couple of days in Gaza I can tell you a great deal about him…And I am glad that I can finally put a name to a face.’ 23rd January 2009.

As well as a preponderance of entries focusing on personal stories of Palestinians, there was an unmistakable cynicism displayed towards Israel running through the series. On numerous occasions, he made reference to the ‘Israeli narrative’ and ‘Israeli message’, but never once referred to a Palestinian ‘narrative’ or ‘message’. The implication here is that Israeli positions are ‘versions’ and Palestinian positions are reality.

‘Israel has been able to put across its narrative, that it is acting in self defence and doing all it can not to kill civilians. But it has been countered by the sheer weight of images of suffering from Gaza, which have inspired protests across the world.’ 12 January 2009

‘I’m struck by the constant Israeli message that ‘any other country in the world would do the same’. Would they?’ 13 January 2009

Not once in all of the TV coverage we monitored did Mr Bowen tell the personal story of an Israeli. And nowhere in his diary was it made clear that this was his personal opinion and not that of the BBC.

The BBC Editor also slipped personal opinion into some of his news reports. For example, in the late night news on 27 December 2008, he made the assertion in the middle of a news report that

‘Hamas has not been part of the last year of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The talks have largely ignored Gaza, which is a fundamental diplomatic failure.’

Whether the exclusion of Hamas (regarded by the EU and US as a terrorist organization) from last year’s negotiations constitutes a ‘fundamental diplomatic failure’ is a matter of opinion and not of fact.

And on the Ten O’Clock News on 5 January 2009:

‘Israel says it tries not to hurt them – all this is the fault of Hamas. Try telling that to the people in Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals.’
Here, the use of the phrase ‘try telling that to’ is a subtle but effective way of conveying to the viewer that Israel’s assertions should be treated with suspicion or indifference.

Both of these examples constitute breaches of the BBC Editorial Guideline on impartiality:

‘Our journalists and presenters, including those in news and current affairs, may provide professional judgments but may not express personal opinions on matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy. Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal views of our journalists and presenters on such matters.’

To their credit, the BBC’s news journalists did regularly report what life in Sderot was like and show images of rockets falling, one landing perilously close to Jeremy Bowen himself. Paul Wood especially deserves praise for his balance and detached perspective.

However, there was one other area where the BBC did not manage to convey crucial information to audiences: in acknowledging the deaths of Hamas terrorists as part of the overall casualty rate. Despite understandably heavy focus on Israel’s media ban, there was no mention until after the ceasefire of the danger that Hamas might be influencing the statistics and sources coming out of Gaza. And so each night, the BBC reeled off casualty figures sourced from ‘Palestinian medics’. Only on one occasion did the BBC TV evening news programmes break the figure down into civilian versus non-civilian casualties. 11% of broadcasts on the Today Programme broke down the figure. In contrast, of the 48 broadsheet articles which gave a figure for the number of Palestinians reportedly killed, 40% attempted to make the distinction. So the general impression made was that all casualties were civilian, rather than a combination of civilian and Hamas.

Improvements in coverage were certainly detected in some areas: in the amount of time and space allocated to quoting Israeli spokespeople; in the overall stance taken by the UK’s broadsheets in their editorial pieces (34% were classified as ‘neutral’ about Israel’s operation in Gaza, 32% took a ‘less favourable’ stance and 34% were ‘more favourable’) and in the BBC’s coverage of both perspectives of the conflict in its news reports. It was principally in Jeremy Bowen’s opinion pieces that the BBC did not provide balance

However, when it came to arguably some of the more influential areas of reporting, we detected serious shortcomings, particularly at the BBC. We have seen the privileging of reporters’ own opinions at the expense of a full presentation of the facts and issues. As a result, core journalistic principles have been compromised.

To view our full report, go to www.justjournalism.com

IDF soldiers are given strict orders in terms of combat procedures as per IDF moral code; the IDF tells them when it is appropriate risk their lives, to save others, and to shoot. The details are numerous, but the basic outline is as follows:

IDF soldiers have three priorities in combat, and they are listed here in order of priority (all quotes in italics are taken directly from the IDF Moral Code):

1. Accomplish the mission

"The IDF soldiers view their service in the IDF as a mission; They will be ready to give their all in order to defend the state, its citizens and residents."

2. Protect oneself and comrades

"The IDF servicemen and women will act out of fraternity and devotion to their comrades, and will always go to their assistance when they need their help or depend on them, despite any danger or difficulty, even to the point of risking their lives."

"The IDF servicemen and women will act in a judicious and safe manner in all they do, out of recognition of the supreme value of human life. During combat they will endanger themselves and their comrades only to the extent required to carry out their mission."

3. Avoid collateral damage (damage to civilians and their property)

"The IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat."

Believe it or not, it's moral and lawful for those guns to be used. Among other things, implicit in the IDF moral code is the fact that soldiers risk their own lives in two cases: in order to accomplish a mission and in order to save the lives of their comrades. Individual soldiers are not permitted to risk their own lives in order to avoid collateral damage or to save civilians, and there is nothing peculiar or immoral about this in terms of military protocol. The United States Army, along with most standing armies, have the same principle.

The IDF warns civilians about incursions and goes through leaps and bounds to plan missions, on a strategic level, that are designed to keep civilians in mind. During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF even went as far as to reroute missiles already on their way to targets in Gaza, due to the fact that too many civilians 'gathered' (they were most likely being used as human shields by Hamas) near the original targets. Individual soldiers, however, must first accomplish their missions and protect themselves and their comrades-- these are the rules of war, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a military that does not follow the same protocol. Naturally, in this case, there are civilian casualties.

Even though the IDF's moral code is listed on its official website and is written in various publications for all to see, the IDF's PR front doesn't exactly advertise the fact that combat soldiers have a defined list of priorities that does not call for sparing the lives of civilians in all cases. Given the indisputable fact that this moral code is lawful, it should be advertised. During Operation Cast Lead, those speaking for the IDF repeatedly said that the IDF does 'everything that it can' to prevent civilian casualties. This is overwhelmingly true when it comes to senior officials planning missions, but the IDF failed to make it clear that there are situations in which it views civilian deaths as unfortunate, but justified. The obvious example is one in which civilians are killed because they were used as human shields by Hamas, who wouldn't allow them to vacate buildings, homes, schools, and other areas that Hamas used as military targets, despite having been warned before attacks by the IDF; the IDF considers these deaths to have been caused by Hamas, and rightfully so. The other example of civilian deaths that the IDF considers within the bounds of morality and legality is less obvious, and those are the deaths that happen due to a soldier's adherence to the IDF moral code and its list of priorities. Why should the IDF make this clear in the press?

The fact that IDF Moral Code is not made clear worldwide is a major part of the reason that much of the media call the IDF a bunch of liars, though not always in so many words. We say that we do everything possible to avoid civilian deaths, and next to these quotes from senior military officials, you'll find photos of dead Palestinian civilians. The truth is that, like any other military at war, we have a list of priorities. Contrary to popular belief, the principle of proportionality within the realm of international law does not relate to the number of civilians that are killed during war. Rather, it demands that the civilian casualties and property damage must be in proportion to the significance of the military target as it directly relates to the completion of military objectives. If the IDF kills 15 civilians when bombing a house that a Hamas operative once visited for a cup of tea, that is disproportionate. If , during a war whose objective is to decrease the ability for Hamas to carry out attacks against Israel, 15 civilians are killed when the IAF bombs the Hamas Government Complex, from which the planning of terror attacks occurs, this is not disproportionate. In addition, a soldier's life comes before a civilian in enemy territory, and even those that ideologically massacre principles of war in the name of 'international law' specifically when talking about the IDF, can't argue that this principle is illegal. As such, it would be to the IDF's benefit if it were forthcoming about its moral code. Those tragic photographs of dead civilians may be tragic, but why make it easy for the media to call us liars? Our moral code doesn't state that we protect civilians in all cases, and we need to explain that to the world.

Israel would have much less of an image problem if its PR front had the strength of the IDF's convictions.

With the release of The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection DVD box set making front-page news in The New York Times, I figured it was probably worth checking out some of the shorts that Homer Simpson deemed worthy of waking up at 6:00am every day to catch before heading in to his job as Mr. Burns' new Smithers. Other than the 1994 big-screen adaptation, which featured such latter-day child-star luminaries as the Olsen Twins, Raven Symone, Travis Tedford and Ross Bagely (Nicky from The Fresh Prince), my generation is generally pretty unfamiliar with The Little Rascals, with Eddie Murphy's hilarious take on Buckwheat serving as the primary point of reference (even though Eddie Murphy as a cutting-edge comedic staple on SNL is also really before my time).

I watched a couple of the Our Gang shorts on AOL TV, and while the humor doesn't quite hold up in the way The Three Stooges or Buster Keaton films do, it is easy to ascertain its cultural significance. One of the episodes that I watched all the way through, 1939's Dog Daze, included all of the following:

• Disdain for a regiment, well-adorned Boy Scouts troop
• A duo of juvenile Irish street-toughs who run a loansharking racket
• A mischievous goat, a penguin and 10-15 stray dogs
• The Gang turning to ‘petnapping' in order to pay off the gangster kids
• A violin-toting, well-spoken rich kid who the gang wants nothing to do with
• Top hats and bowlers as far as the eye can see

It's cool that a series of films produced in the 1930's featured poor kids who were obviously somewhat aware of their families' limited financial means but young and naive enough that they were accustomed to just making their own fun and not thinking about it. Our Gang is the direct descendent of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, The Sandlot, Heavyweights, Peanuts and The Bad News Bears. The concept of the happy-go-lucky poor kids has become such a staple of pop culture that David Wain and Michael Showalter's Wet Hot American Summer was able to parody the entire genre in a single monologue, during which Showalter's team of poor kids decides they aren't interested in competing against the rich kids from sports camp and simply forfeit the proposed baseball game.

Also noteworthy in the Little Rascals films is the inclusion of Buckwheat and other black characters as unstated equals. Despite Murphy's minstrel-esque portrayal of the nappy-haired Nubian Rascal, the other characters never mention or react to Buckwheat being black; he is just part of the gang - another poor kid who is prone to mischief and contributes to the gang's sense of fun. Same goes for the female characters, such as Darla and Farina. The gang's unquestioned incorporation of black and female characters is the direct ancestor of the Peanuts' Franklin and Peppermint Patty. Suspiciously, or maybe progressively, the non-children of The Little Rascals also don't seem to react to the Gang's diverse makeup - even the police officers they regularly interact with never drop any N-Bombs on Buckwheat, something that I'm pretty sure is not a reflection of things really went down in most of America in the 1930's.

 

Watch more Our Gang Comedies videos on AOL Video

 

The euphoria of Brother Obama’s election sure was fun, but welcome back to reality, America. Luckily, an increasing number of Americans have plenty of time on their hands to focus on the issues the country is facing, as they no longer have jobs to distract them. As the economy continues to falter, criminals populate the Senate, and the military invades foreign countries left and right (the enemy du jour appears to be Pakistan), headlines about the President Elect have begun slipping southward in the paper.

It was somewhat refreshing to see WashingtonPost.com leading with ‘Unemployment Rate Jumps To 14-Year High’ today, rather than the optimistic Obama cheerleading that has dominated the news media as of late. It is understandable that people seek the promise of better days ahead, it’s what people do -- in the early days of civilization, man conceived of Heaven and the afterlife when life became too horrible to deal with. However, avoiding real-life problems via escapism doesn’t really get anything accomplished, other than placating the masses. It’s obviously exciting that America has a young, charismatic new President coming to power, but he won’t take office for another 2 ½ months. During that time, a lot of people are going to be out of work, killed by American soldiers, lose their retirement money, be subjected to more movies where Jim Carrey falls victim to some wacky supernatural happenstance and other such misfortune.


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, American should be careful to properly calibrate their expectations; things are just as likely to get worse as they are to get better in the coming months.  

I guess some people only want to hear about Jews who do good things. I was a con man, a sting artist
who posed as a cop to rip off drug dealers. Okay, so the guys I stung were worse than me but I still kept the drugs and money. Then I became a real cop, but that's another part of the story. Anyway, I wrote my autobiography, "The King of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw," after a few years in prison and many years of being a good citizen and community leader in my hometown of Kansas City.

The editor of The Jewish Chronicle in KC writes a front-page story about me and the book and all hell breaks loose. People call for his resignation and there are some nasty letters to the editor.

Why?

Because I'm not a good image for Jews. "You are glorifying a criminal!" they screamed. Apparently some people think the only stories about Jews should be about scholars, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. But Jews are criminals too, and cops. We are everything. Some of us have had the most outrageous adventures in the drug underworld, some of us carried a gun while we were going to college, some of us kicked ass. Okay, I don't fit the stereotype for an upper middle class Jewish kid from the suburbs. Deal with it. David kicked Goliath's ass. Damn straight.

Craig Glazer, author of The King Of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw, is guest blogging on Jewcy this week. Stay tuned.

 

In these times of subliminal advertising, discreet media bias and general indirectness, it's nice to see someone just come out and blatantly drop hateful racial slurs. Oh, wait...no it's not; it's a horrible thing to do. So why has John McCain's continued use of the term "gook," as well as his unmistakably clear explanation of why he uses the idiom, not received much scrutiny during the Senator's presidential campaign?

I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday...."I will hate them as long as I live."
"Gook," he said, "is the kindest appellation I can give."
-- San Francisco Chronicle, 2000

Wow. That's not Trent Lott tripping over his words and praising a man who had supported segregation in 1948, this is the man who is currently the second-most-likely person to become the President of the United States explicitly reducing an entire ethnic group to a pejorative locution and then clarifying his word choice so that there could be no confusion as to why he used such hateful language. It's also not some utterance he made as he was exiting a POW camp back in his war days; the above comment was made during Miley Cyrus' lifetime!

As Raymond Leon Roker writes in the Huffington Post, there must be some reason why this story isn't getting more coverage. Barack Obama referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person," a couple of months ago and the story made headlines in every publication in America. It's bizarre to see a quote like McCain's and not be able to find a single public apology. That's how being a public figure works: You say what you really think; people get upset; you apologize and claim that you never meant it in the first place. Just ask Mel Gibson...

 

 

Early yesterday, Jonathan Martin filed a report on the McCain campaign's growingJohn And Cindy in 2000: When the press was still their base frustration with what they feel are double standards in the way the media are covering John McCain versus the way they're covering Barack Obama. Is there a precise antonym of 'serendipity'? Because something tells me there won't be too many more Sedona cookouts for the "base" if articles like this Mail on Sunday piece --- complete with Shymalanian Ross Perot cameo! --- migrate across the pond and proliferate :

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering...

'My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does' [Carol McCain said].

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to 'play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

It gets more unflattering from there. For the record, I'm not endorsing this; dumpster-diving is a poor substitute for journalism. The point, though, is that angrily lashing out at the press, as the Martin piece suggests is the McCain camp's strategy, is just going to lead to a negative feedback cycle in which only McCain stands to lose. You'd think their savvy new communications expert, Michael Goldfarb, would know that. If the McCainiacs don't want to face a spiral of hostility, leading questions, and sensationalism from the media, the solution is fairly straightforward: They can work with the Obama campaign to apply bipartisan pressure to keep coverage clean and focused on issues (good on both sides for shutting ABC out of future debates, by the way; the way to deter future McCarthyite spectacles like the Philadelphia debate is to punish the parties responsible).

Alternatively, they can try to overcome deplorable, barely-sourced snooping into McCain's private life, by paying Michael Goldfarb $X more than he's worth (where X = his total salary) to win over hardline militarists who supported Hillary Clinton by regaling them with tales of McCain's fondness for ABBA. Whatever works.

The Best:

In the Washington Post, Zbigniew Brzezinski outlines the inductive fallacy at the heart of the case for perpetuating the war in Iraq --- comparing unrealistically optimistic projections of Iraq's future if the war continues to unrealistically pessimistic projections if it doesn't --- and offers a sensible plan for bringing the war to an end. The key is to provide rational incentives for middle Eastern states to cooperate in stabilizing Iraq, i.e., establishing a framework whereby neighboring states participate in mitigating the consequences of American withdrawal not because of US or EU pressure, but because they stand to profit by doing so. (A pre-emptive word to commenters: I am fully aware of who Zbigniew Brzezinski is.)

Sticking with Iraq, Anthony Cordesman delivers a sobering critique in the New York Times of the overhyping of the scope and centrality of al Qaeda forces to the deep-seated ethnic and sectarian conflicts that stand in the way of establishing a unified Iraqi state in which the government maintains a monopoly on force. If there were no al Qaeda in Iraq, Cordesman warns, the incentive would not exist for Sunni groups to cooperate with the Shiite central government whose political domination they (rightly) fear. Further, the currently dormant multilateral (and border-spanning) ethnic conflicts over control of northern Iraq would remain unresolved. Worst of all, the on-again off-again civil war among Shiite factions would have no countervailing force to prevent an escalation of violence in which the only winner can be Iran. The takeaway point is that to the extent the US has a long-term strategy in Iraq, our short-term strategy cuts against it.

In the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell offers a measured criticism of the "libertarian paternalism" of Barack Obama advisers Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, as advanced in their new book Nudge. Thaler and Sunstein propose to take advantage of real-world failures of ideally rational decision-making in order to craft public policy that promotes the good of the many without infringing individual rights. The problem, as Caldwell notes, is that by nudging individual choices in the direction Thaler and Sunstein approve, they limit the extent to which people are free to make decisions about what it is they want in the first place. Moreover, Thaler and Sunstein are afflicted by cognitive biases of their own, such as praising the anti-littering policies and public pressure that have swayed dog owners towards cleaning up after their pets, without thinking through the long-term environmental consequences of putting that much more non-biodegradable plastic on the market.

The Worst:

Did I tell you, or did I not tell you, that Hillary Clinton chose to make Jeremiah Wright one of her campaign's public talking points in an editorial meeting with Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper for a specific reason? Namely, "she could trust no other publication to understand, frame, and properly distribute the real message she's trying to express." Who could have guessed it, Scaife's rag went live this week with an op-ed by Ralph R. Reiland asserting (not really arguing) that Barack Obama has been a party to "lighting murderous fires in the black community." Is the guilt by multiple degrees of association crowd ready to STFU now?

In the LA Times, Jonah Goldberg warns ominously of a new form of religious bigotry against Christians: What he calls "Darwin fish." Where to begin? Firstly, Darwin decals have been around for decades, so we can safely assume that the actual point of this column is to fulfill a contractual obligation on a day when Goldberg had no original ideas (like the idea that liberals are fascists). Secondly, Goldberg's effort is somewhat impressive for the sheer number of factual errors it crams into the relatively small real estate of a newspaper column. Here are a couple: Goldberg mistakes the animal identified with Darwin (it's a turtle --- because, as Goldberg seems not to know or care, members of the order testudines are rather important to Darwin). Also, Goldberg claims that the Jesus fish is based on "the Greek word IXOYE, which not only means fish but serves as an acronym, in Greek, for 'Jesus Christ the Son of God [Is] Savior.'" Well, except that the Greek word is ΙΧΘΥΣ, which, if you insisted on spelling in Roman characters, would be 'Ichthys.' Goldberg's linguistic difficulties aside, it appears that the Darwin turtle offends him. As he puts it, "I find Darwin fish [sic] offensive," on the grounds that it's okay to affirm an identity, as with the Jesus fish, but pernicious to attack an identity. Presumably then, Goldberg is okay with "white power" and "black power" as slogans. Whereas secularists even attempting to affirm their own identity is a form of bigotry.

Speaking of wastes of column inches, Richard Cohen gives his Washington Post column over to --- surprise! --- using some minor non-controversy to preen about his own righteousness. "A new book argues that we should not have fought WWII. It is wrong." Okay Richard, thanks for the tip.

The Most Improved:

In my hometown's little league, players in the youngest boys division can't strike out. If they swing and miss three pitches (from their fathers), they get to hit the ball off a tee. Keep that teeball standard in mind when you read over Bill Kristol's column in the New York Times this week. Kristol (okay, let's be honest, his ghostwriter) spends 793 words making the banal and at best worthy of a blog post point that John McCain should talk about issues and not just his biography while campaigning. Still this is Kristol we're talking about. The piece contains no libels recycled from right-wing fringe sites, no factual, grammatical, or syntactical trainwrecks, and even uses generally clear and precise prose. Great success!

We weren't exaggerating: The cover, naked bird-men and allThings of note in the Jewish media this week:

• The LA Jewish Journal runs the ugliest cover of all time (pictured right)

• Hamas’s lovable children’s characters Farfel and Nahul have been replaced by Assud the rabbit, who suspiciously resembles a famous American bunny and sings songs like "We Will Never Recognize Israel." [Heeb]

• The Jewish Awareness Movement, an outreach organization dedicated to frum-inizing college students, is run by a woman who regularly makes people cry. David Kelsey points out that her tactics are surprisingly successful. [New Voices, The Kvetcher]

• The English edition of the daily Jewish paper Hamodia won’t run pictures of women because the female form is “immodest”—which means no Hillary pictures, even if she becomes president. [Jewish SF via JTA]

• Australia’s Prime Minister apologized to the nation’s Aboriginal population for years of discrimination and abuse. Behind this measure? Jews! “We’ve suffered 2,000 years of persecution, and we understand what it is to be the underdog,” said Mark Leibler, the co-chair of Reconciliation Australia. [JTA]

AppeasniksMichael O'Hanlon, "Obama as Diplomat in Chief," The Wall Street Journal

O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and famous booster of the surge, was last heard from advocating the seizure and transportation of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal to New Mexico, through the power of wishful thinking. Today he takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize Barack Obama's pledge to engage in diplomacy with unsavory regimes. He does so despite acknowledging that "Mr. Obama is not wrong about the utility of negotiations with unsavory regimes. They are often useful, and they need not amount to appeasement or even a false raising of hopes."

O'Hanlon fears that by "elevat[ing]" presidential diplomacy "to a doctrine," a President Obama would risk rewarding autocrats and thugs with international credibility. But of course, if American policy were to speak to any country that wanted to speak with us, getting to speak with US diplomats wouldn't be any sort of distinction. On the other hand, remaining sclerotically tied to a conception of foreign policy that cannot distinguish between negotiations and concessions does, in fact, make diplomacy needlessly difficult.

Grrrr: Scared yet?Max Boot, "Go With the Tough Guy," Los Angeles Times

John McCain's foreign policy advisor advises us to vote for John McCain because he'll frighten Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won't:

It is hard to see how Bush could reverse this decline in America's "fear factor" during the remaining year of his presidency. That will be the job of the next president. And who would be the most up to the task?

To answer that question, ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq.

This kind of thing appeared pretty frequently in 2004, with Bush taking the place of McCain and Kerry taking the place of all the others. And indeed, with just a little find-and-replace action, you'd have a perfectly serviceable College Republicans flier in support of George W. Bush's re-election.

Which is sort of the point. While it's conceivable that the foreign policy failures of any president, no matter how belligerent, stem from being not belligerent enough, belligerence is bound to run up against diminishing marginal utility eventually. Since, for example, it's not feasible to invade North Korea, exactly how is an empty threat from McCain going to inspire fear in Kim Jong-Il? And if it isn't, maybe it's time to consider whether there are other salient objectives in foreign policy besides making empty threats.

Swing Voter:: "What's the opposite of progress? Congress! Ha! Get it?"Douglas Schoen, "The Disaffected Voters Who'll Decide 2008," Washington Post

One of our most depressing quadrennial rituals, after the presidential election itself, is the fabrication discovery of some moderate swing-demographic that's going to decide the election. Naturally, the pollster or consultant who drunkenly pummels statistics into submission until they tell him what he wants to hear makes this discovery will cash out handsomely is a disinterested footsoldier in the cause of science.

Disinterested pollster Douglas Schoen has big news. Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, security moms, baseball cousins, bipolar aunts, insecurity in-laws, it's time to make way for the RAMs:

I call them "restless and anxious moderates," or RAMs. Most come from the third of the electorate that identifies itself as independent, but some Democrats and Republicans have also joined this new bloc. These voters tend to be practical, non-ideological and unabashedly results-oriented -- people such as Gary Butler, 60, who lives in Show Low, Ariz. Both parties, he says, "are way too far apart, and nobody is looking out for the good of the people."

"Address my life and the problems I face in my terms," another RAM told me. "Cut political rhetoric, cut political fighting, cut the game-playing, stop the five-point programs; just address my issues in a real-world, straightforward way."

 

"Address my life and the problems I face?" "Cut political rhetoric?" "Cut political fighting?" Slow down there, kimosabe. What dangerous, new, radical kind of talk is that? I'll bet it barely predates the invention of hackneyed political writing.

In all seriousness, congratulations to Douglas Schoen for discovering that people want problems solved.

 

Everyone's had the skeevy friend request on a social networking site from someone they don't know well. But what about a request from someone you know very well, but prefer not to hang out with in a given digital realm?

USA Today (via Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs) points to the case of Deb Levine, executive director at Internet Sexuality Information Services in Oakland, who faced a tough decision when her rabbi's wife added her on LinkedIn:

Then the wife of Levine's rabbi asked to "friend" her on the site, and Levine felt compelled to say yes.

Now Levine has mixed her religious life with her work life online, something she never intended to do. And she worries that having a personal contact listed among business associates will make her look less professional.

"I'm using LinkedIn to further my professional projects," Levine says. "There's just no way (the rabbi's wife) could be helpful in that. I don't talk about my religion and religious affiliations" while at work.

 

Levine's quandary raises some important issues about where religion fits into the scheme of social networking, including sites like Friendster, Facebook, or that other one that Darth Murdoch. Social networking norms also complicate how users interact with smaller, more specialized sites that are accessible to the public, including sites built around cultural spheres -- such as religion -- that tend to be volatile. (At least one such site for riffraff comes to mind.)

In addition to Jewcy, so far I've toyed with a professional network for my career, a private blog for family and friends, started a new social networking account, lapsed with an old one and tried out social bookmarking.

In the process, I've grown less concerned with my digital footprint. But I've grown more concerned about which footprints I allow my different friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues to follow. Users might not always consider it kosher to let all of their friends into a specialized social networking space. I'm sure that if Levine was also a member of a social networking site for say, single Jews, she might think twice about importing all of her LinkedIn contacts.

Online social networking seems to work best at its two extremes. Facebook and the rest work splendidly as general spaces. And the most advanced, forward-thinking online magazines -- sites I like to call digital magazine communities -- make the most of their readerships by capturing their activity online, beyond the mere consumption of content. In other words, the larger platforms are trying to specify their features while the smaller platforms are trying to broaden them. After all, every social networking site wants to be profitable, and profits depend on two things: audience and activity.

In the grand tradition of technology causing problems that only technology creates, this doesn't make things easier.

Call it networking creep: if online social networking works best at its two extremes, does that mean we all need X number of specialized digital magazine communities in order to satisfy our particular digital craves? There's obviously a terminal limit, if for no other reason than there are only so many hours in a week to maintain one's spot in every community.

Of course none of this solves Levine's quandary. Then again, I'm a little bit less concerned with users who worry about religious friends and acquaintances -- oh, that pesky rabbi's wife! -- creeping into other social networking sites, and much more interested by the opposite scenario. Should religious networking sites make an effort to blockade non-religious users?

Put differently, who owns the right to define the community?

 

 

I can personally vouch for David F. Smydra's insightful post into the reasons mainstream media fails at substantively covering religion. It was the summer of 1999, a year after graduation, and in the pre-millennial madness that enveloped God's city – the sanatorium averaged two messiahs a month the years before, it was getting seven a week at the time – I lost my bearings somewhere around the Damascus Gate. Only in Jerusalem can one feel so lost.

It happens to most at some point, my editor at the Jerusalem Post explained, "The book of psalms calls Jerusalem the City of God and Zechariah calls it the City of Truth – but which God and whose truth?"

The city and the country itself forces one to wrestle with these eternal questions. And without answers, the lines between fact and faith, religion and politics, the sacred and the secular blurred, leaving behind a conflicted and confused young reporter.

My parents are Israeli-born, but raised their children in America. I've been straddling borders religious, national or otherwise all my life. I thought I was as well equipped as anyone to deal with whatever Israel threw at me: a degree in philosophy from Vassar, a thesis on Kierkegaard and Jewish thought, and a six-month research and ethnographic study at Hebrew University.

It wasn't enough to cover religion in Israel. While interviewing a Sufi mystic in Ramallah, the man leaned over and whispered, "Hamas will some day live by the words of Rumi and not the sword of Allah." If I had known then that he was referring to the 13th century poet Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi, who preached tolerance, I would have recognized the importance of his statement. A Palestinian religious leader was, in effect, condemning his own. It didn't make the paper, because I didn't realize what was meant till much later.

Many of my colleagues had similar experiences. The American Press, by and large, lacks a critical perspective informed by knowledge. To a journalist, skepticism is the pillar in which all else is built. But how can one honestly question doctrine or deed without an understanding of either?

In Israel, my experience as a journalist begged the question of how religion is covered. In America, it's why religion isn't covered enough.

After a year, I left the Jerusalem Post to help start a media venture started by CNN executives targeting Baby Boomers, a demographic in hot pursuit of 'what it all means.' I interviewed Deepak Chopra, Rabbi Harold Kushner, leading academics and other figures in the spiritual marketplace, and I came to understand that you cannot grapple with America, its history and contemporary forces, without understanding the nature and history of its religious life.

Spotty religious reporting isn't a new thing. Louis Cassels wrote a much-read syndicated religion column from 1959 to 1973 for United Press International. He admitted that the worst error he remembered making was repeating the historically discredited claim that Islam was spread forcibly by the sword during religion's years of early growth, "My error stemmed from plain ignorance rather than malice."

Faith matters, and not only within the walls of a church, synagogue or mosque. There is Bible study at a Houston oil and gas company. Weekly yoga at dot-coms. Torah class at Microsoft and Islamic study at Whirlpool. In this year's presidential elections, there are relentless invocations of the Almighty. So why isn't coverage better? Why do editors show such a disregard when pitched with a religion story?

A media and religion survey by the First Amendment Center found that 76% of religion writers felt that formal training in religious studies is either helpful or essential. Sadly, 6 out of 10 writers said they had no such training.

Much of the media views religion suspiciously, or worse, as irrelevant. Journalists deal in matters of fact, religion in matters of faith, and rarely the twain shall meet. When they do, it's usually because religion intersects with politics or scandal. The latter usually determines the treatment of the former and as a result neither is dealt with wisely. So it's not just a question of giving religion more prominence, but encountering it with more understanding.

More important than the sort of knowledge one gains in the academy is what you might call religious street smarts or pew-level understanding. Contending with the powerful convictions and lofty ideas inherent to the beat require an intellectual grounding supported by a naive narrator's immersion into the experience of faith -- what journalists covering a war call "embedded." The "small" stories, the quiet, daily influence of religion on people's lives are as important as the larger issues that arise from covering belief systems or religious philosophy.

Is anyone doing a good job? There are a handful. Jeff Sharlet, editorial adviser to Jewcy, may be among the finest. His investigative reports from the evangelical front lines appearing in publications like Rolling Stone and Harpers are the very embodiment of pew-level reportage that are also intellectually grounded. His daily review of religion and the press, called The Revealer, is one of the better religion sites on the Web.

Here's a snapshot of what Sharlet, and his colleagues at The Revealer, find worthwhile elsewhere on the Web:

Bartholomew's Notes on Religion looks at "religion in the news" from a perspective that's not so much liberal as relentlessly skeptical of absurdity, and intrigued by belief.

Casing the Promised Land offers an intelligent roundup of religion news from a center-left perspective.

Christianity Today's blog is a superb resource regardless of your faith or lack thereof. Regular blogger Ted Olson roams far and wide and has the wisdom to bring back more than just the controversy of the day.

DeepBlog: Not a God beat blog itself, but a good directory to the blogosphere with a growing list of "Spiritual Blogs."

Direland, a sharply written politcs and media blog by journalist Doug Ireland, occasionally runs a "theocracy watch" colum

On Religion is an excellent newsclipping service -- terrific links to the hot topic of the moment and good finds from the lesser-known press.

OpEdNews's Religion and Politics page publishes a fine collection of original, politically progressive religion essays as well as links to other noteworthy religion articles.

The Raving Atheist, "An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Belief [on] How Religious Devotion Trivializes American Law and Politics," is an intensely intelligent, often funny, and all around well-made blog that's good enough for true believers as well as godless folk.

Relapsed Catholic is a fierce godblog without mercy for liberals or unbelievers, by Kathy Shaidle, a Canadian journalist and poet with a sharp eye for the absurd and compelling.

Brian Flemming is the man behind Bat Boy: The Musical, and his blog is everything you'd expect from a man with such interests. Which, naturally, include religion, commented on from a smart, liberal perspective. Mostly limited to the news of the day, you'll find original ideas here, and, if you care to do some free associating with Brian's other interests, genuine inspiration.

Makeout City's Jay McCarthy understands the art of linking and the collage possibilities of threading together fragments from around the web -- whether they're his own thoughts or collected ideas from others, his posts are always essays. Jay is a man who gets the Montaignesque potential of blog. He often comments on religion, a subject in which Jay has read widely and eclecticly.

The Claremont Review of Books, put out by the conservative Claremont Institute ("a new, reinvigorated conservatism, one that draws upon the timeless principles of the American founding, and applies them to the moral and political problems that we face today") is an interesting, intellectual read, whether or not you agree with their purpose, to help conservatism "understand its own majestic purposes, and become a more effective political force."

Nth Position is a webzine that advertises "high weirdness" in all areas of inquiry; investigate their "strangeness" category for manifestations of the divine. Excellent writing and surprisingly good reporting (given that there's limited cash behind this fine endeavor).

Oliver Willis bills himself as "kryptonite to stupid," and we can testify to that slogan's truth. Hey, wait -- does that make us dumb? Nah. It just means Oliver is really smart. His popular blog is mostly political talk from a "center-left" perspective, but we think it's relevant to Revealer readers because Oliver gets the role of religion in American politics. That is, he gets that it has one, whether we like it or not, and that Dems and liberals in the U.S. are blind to its full influence and importance beyond the borders of New York and L.A.

One Inch Ahead features an interesting confluence of spirit and flesh--in the occasionally religious musings of a long distance runner.

As campaign season heats up, the candidates' "religious beliefs" will increasingly become part of the American conversation. The media isn't likely to be of much help. If Iraq is your issue, you can count on an endless parade of articles describing just about every aspect of the war; the same won't be true of the candidates religious beliefs and practices.

I understand why religion reporters so frequently give up the beat, and why their story ideas meet with skepticism from editors. Because while reporters are forced to think about the outside world, religion forces us to consider the interior world.

Consider how a reporter goes about his beat. If it's education, then he visits the school district and reports on what teachers and staff and students tell him. But if it's religion, going to a church, mosque or temple doesn't work quite as well. Private conversations with God aren't all that accessible to reporters. The First Amendment gives reporters the freedom to ask questions of whomever they please; it doesn't bestow magical mind-reading powers.

Take abortion, for example. How often does a reporter really attempt to get inside the head of a Christian evangelist pro-life advocate? Or Palestinian-Israeli relations. How often does a reporter ask a person in that dispute, "What do your prayers with God tell you about this situation?"

Very rarely. And that's because editors are bred to treat with skepticism any reporter's attempt to get inside a source's head. This works in 90 percent of journalism because reporters and editors have to guard against the possibility that the source is bullshitting them. And more often than not, that type of maneuver can be checked against empirical, verifiable, external facts and evidence. Not so with religion. If a source tells a reporter that she's voting for Huckabee or Edwards because her prayers guided her in that direction, how could a reporter possibly call bullshit?

As this process unfolds, I'd love to see reporters really dig into religious issues. Not so much what the candidates believe, but what Americans believe -- remembering, also, that no belief at all is still a belief in something. Because the campaign offers a high-profile opportunity for journalists to get it right, to set the agenda, to bridge the interior to the external. People vote not always for what they suspect will affect their surroundings, but also for what they hold closest to their souls. I've seen countless stories so far on how Iraq, the economy, and health care are helping voters sort out their presidential preferences. But I haven't seen a single story where reporters really interrogate a number of Americans about their religious beliefs.

Good reporting, no matter the subject, challenges our assumptions and adds nuance to our understanding of the world we live in. Informed, accessible coverage of "religious beliefs" must be part of of this process.

Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont wants to know why the media sucks at teaching us about "the greatest problems facing our country." Clip at bottom (Hat tip Kvetcher).

Bernie says “the function of the media is to educate you to live in a democracy.” Really? If the media ought to serve a single function rather than lots of functions determined by lots of people with different goals, I imagine the state would have to take over, perhaps allowing Secretary of Mass Media Sanders to provide a list of appropriate topics along with guidelines about how the populace might be educated about them.

Continue reading...

Ron Rosenbaum wants magazine journalists to stop fawning and start reporting again:

Powerful figures who now think they can avoid thoroughgoing scrutiny by journalists just by withholding their participation might become a little concerned that magazines might then decide to hire more energetic and investigative-minded reporters (the sociopaths of doom) to look more deeply into their record than those who lazily settle for unexamined explanations and equivocations in person. And a write-around would of course inform the reader that the subject is afraid of facing a nonsycophantic reporter, may indeed have something to hide, questions he or she doesn't want raised.

[...]

And you editors out there. Don't be so attached to having a big shiny famous head on your cover. Don't be afraid to use stock photos: A well-chosen black-and-white stock photo can give a cover subject a something-to-hide, caught-in-the-act look that can be far more dramatic and revealing (and often truthful) than the big shiny exclusive photo head.

Let's put it this way: The best intellectual journalism ever conducted on leftist politics in the 1930's was Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time, in which he relied -- so far as I know -- on no first-hand sources or personal interviews to profile figures as surreptitious as Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, Lee Pressman, Paul Robeson and Elizabeth Bentley. (Writing about Communists in real time, without the benefit of declassified archives, was like translating the Dead Sea Scrolls into Esperanto.)

In fact, I'd underwrite Ron's good sense about the write-around with following thought experiment: Compare any work of investigative journalism about the Soviet Union that used one-on-one interviews with Joseph Stalin with those that did not. Which gave the more accurate assessments of life in the world's first workers' state?

 

I'm delighted to have been asked back to guest edit another week in the life of the Daily Shvitz; I'm writing from Scotland, but will try to keep the focus as broad as possible. No doubt Jewcy readers can keep me on the right path if I start to wobble. (Apparently I'm not meant to wish you a 'happy and fun Yom Kippur', for example? Stick with me, anyway, I'm learning as I go.)

To start off, then, here's a curious little story which starts in the north-west of England, but quickly moves across the globe. Duncan Money is a journalist and anti-fascist campaigner in Cumbria. A couple of weeks back, he received a rather curious email from an organisation called the 1990 Trust – who are “the first national Black organisation set up to protect and pioneer the interest of Britain’s Black Communities”, and are close to Lee Jasper, who is London Mayor Ken Livingstone's senior policy advisor on Equalities. 

Here’s a flavour;

Should Western Governments engage with Islamist movements?

Press TV is pleased to invite you to join the audience for a new current affairs debate show called Forum. The programme is part of a weekly series of televised debates on various contemporary political issues concerning the Middle East.

The 48 minutes show taking place on 8th September 2007 will feature 4 specialist panelists, who will be asked the question: Should Western Governments engage with Islamist movements? This will be followed by a number of questions on related issues.

As well as being invited to come to our West London studio to listen to the recorded televised debate Press TV is offering audience members the opportunity to put their own question related to the theme of Islamist movements. If you are interested in attending the event and would like to put a question to the panelists on air please send an email to bouteldja@presstv.co.uk. […]

Press TV is a new international news television network specialising in covering events across the Middle East. This Tehran-based station has bureaus throughout the world and aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the region than provided by most mainstream news channels.

Why’s this an odd email? Because Press TV is rather more than just a “Tehran-based” TV station. It’s the English-language channel of Iranian State TV; funded and controlled by the regime. You can take a look at the website here, if you really want (at time of writing, the viewers’ poll asking “Was September 11 event an inside job?” is running at 77-23 in favour). A few hundred hits from Jewcy will probably make their servers explode.

These are the people that the 1990 Trust is choosing to distribute propaganda for; a reactionary theocratic regime that executes homosexuals and stones adulterers. Odd bedfellows, to say the least, for a supposedly progressive anti-racism organisation. Such are the alliances some parts of the Left feel it appropriate to make.

(With a tip of the hat to Harry's Place)

The New York Times, proud of its centuries-long tradition of reporting on "trends" years after their expiration dates, was contemplating what to cover in July 2007. The up-and-coming Lower East Side? Nah, better wait five years. The East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry? That could be good. How about that new personal computing trend of using so-called "floppy disks" to store kilobytes of information from the computer? Genius!

But in the end, the Paper of Record bought a ticket abroad to see what life was like for Jews in post-Jewish Eastern Europe. Thus it came up with a piece on Krakow's Festival of Jewish Culture, citing a phenomenon as "beginning" when it's been happening for almost two decades. The article could easily have been written in 1995. In fact, it sort of was.

Here's The New York Times, July 12, 2007:

KRAKOW, Poland — There is a curious thing happening in this old country, scarred by Nazi death camps, raked by pogroms and blanketed by numbing Soviet sterility: Jewish culture is beginning to flourish again.

"Jewish style" restaurants are serving up platters of pirogis, klezmer bands are playing plaintive Oriental melodies, derelict synagogues are gradually being restored. Every June, a festival of Jewish culture here draws thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish dances. The only thing missing, really, are Jews.

... with relatively few Jews, Jewish culture in Poland is being embraced and promoted by the young and the fashionable.

..."You cannot have genocide and then have people live as if everything is normal," said Konstanty Gebert, founder of a Polish-Jewish monthly, Midrasz. "It's like when you lose a limb. Poland is suffering from Jewish phantom pain."

Here's The International Herald Tribune, July 17, 1995:

... Throughout the festival week, the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and other parts of the city were the scene of concerts, theatrical performances, exhibitions, films, street happenings and workshops rooted in Jewish heritage.

... The irony of staging a Jewish festival for a predominantly non-Jewish audience, in what essentially is a Jewish ghost town, has been apparent from the beginning.

... In addition, chic new Jewish style restaurants, cafes, bookstores, and galleries have been opened. There is a new Jewish Culture Center, and a local travel agency specializes in tours of sites related to Steven Spielberg's movie "Schindler's List," which was shot in Krakow.

...fascination with the Jewish world destroyed by the Holocaust has grown among many non-Jews in the region.

New Jewish museums, study programs and seminars abound, and Jewish books proliferate even in countries where few Jews remain.

... It's as if the vacuum created by the Holocaust physically demands to be filled — whether or not there are Jews to fill it.

Next up, The Times plans to send a reporter to Afghanistan to report on the growing use of "Mujahideen" to combat Soviet troops.

If you don’t know that George Bush just doubled the size of PEPFAR, the Bush anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that was already the largest and most ambitious anti-disease program in human history, you shouldn’t feel too bad. PEPFAR has never gotten much media attention, and this week’s stunning announcement was no different. Here are the dull details, accurately presented by Dan Turner in an L.A. Times op-ed:

Today, Bush upped the ante by asking Congress to double the size of his AIDS program, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, to $30 billion over five years. That is a vast commitment that dwarfs past efforts and provides real hope that humanity will in the near future be able to stop the spread of AIDS—an accomplishment akin, at least in scope, to putting a man on the moon. This disease has killed 25 million people so far and is still raging out of control, especially in Africa.

According to Newsmap, which visually represents how much attention a given topic gets from the international newsmedia, the top story in the UK last night was “Hamas says Israel wounds 2 Gaza gunmen.” PEPFAR? I can’t find it on the UK Newsmap at all. Or on the American one. Or the Canadian or French or Spanish or Australian or German or any of the others.

But can you blame them? Isn't it all a bit dull? I mean, how many stories are you going to write about the fact, as Turner puts it, George Bush “has done more to relieve poverty and disease in Africa…than any other American president”?

My own interest is partly due to a memorable conversation I had with an HIV pharmacologist from the Infectious Disease Institute in Kampala, Uganda. She described how people like her had spent the Clinton administration tirelessly but fruitlessly begging Clinton and other world leaders to send the antiretroviral medication needed to save the lives of those infected. As she watched patient after patient die for lack of meds readily available in the West, progress was virtually non-existent. By the end of the Clinton administration, the number of people in all of sub-Saharan Africa receiving ARV therapy was still pitifully small, almost darkly absurd: 50,000. Then Clinton left, Bush arrived, and before long she was struggling with a very different sort of challenge: finding enough doctors to prescribe the crates of ARV meds that kept arriving. “Bush’s money,” as she repeatedly referred to it, had changed everything.

I hope we can celebrate PEPFAR as a boon for HIV-infected Africans without being insensitive to the plight of the progressive, socially-conscious Westerners who find the program’s existence so irritating. You’ll get a sense of their confusion and pain if you play a little parlor game I’ve developed. Find an article on PEPFAR in a left-of-center publication, and see how long it takes to spot an egregious factual error or misrepresentation that conveniently diminishes the accomplishments of the program.

For a taste of egregious factual error, try this line from an extremely rare attempt by Counterpunch to write about PEPFAR: "three-fourths of the monies allocated for treatment must be spent on the purchase and distribution of antiretroviral drugs from U.S. pharmaceutical manufactures and cannot be substituted by generic alternatives."

Well...no. Not exactly. Or even at all. PEPFAR uses both foreign-made and generic drugs. In cases in which a foreign-manufactured drug violates a patent held by an American pharmaceutical company, the FDA still approves the drug for use by PEPFAR though not for sale in the U.S. itself. So the Counterpunch quote is dead wrong, a plain fabrication that portrays the Bush administration and PEPFAR as slaves to corporate avarice.

Continue reading...

I get a weekly email from the Forward, which I do not open unless I am somehow enticed or titillated by the subject line. Today's looked like this:

Al Jazeera's Jews * Zion's Mafia * Dr. Ruth's Advice

Hmm, I thought to myself. Is that all one topic?

No, it was actually three separate issues, but I couldn't help but appreciate the unlikely pairing of the three, all of which were actually interesting.

I learned three things, each more provocative than the next:

1.) Al Jazeera apparently has "no problem with Jews." And it seems that several top employees at the network's English operation are Jewish.

Some participants at the third-annual forum of the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera were sorry they didn’t bring matzo with them — had they known how many fellow Jews were attending the media conference, they would have made a Passover Seder.

That would've been interesting to see on Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera has been harshly criticized in the West for providing airtime to terrorists like Osama bin Laden, but it notes that American networks borrowed that material. It was also the first Arabic network to give Israelis air time. “Al Jazeera was seriously attacked by Arabs — Islamist, nationalist, and even governments like Saudi Arabia — for inviting Israeli journalists and government officials to present their point of view,” Atwan said.

Oh, okay. I'm convinced.

2.) According to a new book called Blood and Volume: Inside New York's Israeli Mafia, you can be a "gangster with a soul." And, of his girlfriend, Honey Tesman, the Brandeis-educated daughter of a successful Long Island laundry-plant owner, Israeli mafioso Ron Gonen says:

“She’s my disco Jewish queen . . . Smart like a wiz, gorgeous, speaks beautiful Hebrew, and she’s a fighter — it’s what I love about her.”

I want to be someone's disco Jewish queen when I grow up.You Will Be My Jewish Disco Queen!: Former drug dealer Ron Gonen pushes his weight around.

3.) Dr. Ruth can provide more than just sex tips. The Forward is bringing back its Bintel Brief column:

Started in 1906 by the Forward’s legendary editor Abraham Cahan, the Bintel Brief — literally “a Bundle of Letters” — dispensed advice on life, love, family, faith, work and why, contrary to popular superstition, having a spouse with a dimpled chin won’t lead you to an early grave.

And to kick it all off, they're bringing in Dr. Ruth, who has been spending less of her time teaching women how to perform oral sex, and more of it teaching a class at Princeton University on the Jewish family. I can't wait to read the Bintel Brief in the Forward -- I'm so excited!

So says Lithuanian parliament, denying one blogger the right of accreditation as a member of the Fourth Estate. Frankly, why such membership requires accreditation in the first place is the real question.

"This decision does not allow me to enjoy the rights and protection other journalists are entitled to," Liutauras Ulevicius, author of the www.blogas.lt/liutauras, said.

Parliament rejected his application for accreditation, saying he and other bloggers do not meet the legal definition of a journalist.

"The Media Law describes a journalist as a person who collects, disseminates and provides information to the media, based on a contract with the media, or who is a member of a journalists' union," parliament's education, science and culture committee said.

Ulevicius told AFP the decision breached his right to self-expression.

He vowed to appeal in the first instance to parliamentary administrators.

"If this does not help, I shall defend my rights in court," Ulevicius said.

JTA: Bringing you news you may (or may not) want.

It occurs to me now that I linked JTA this morning, and didn’t bother to explain what it is. And since I’d never heard of it myself until a few months ago, when a woman called to interview me for a story they were doing about “new Jewish media”… it’s totally possible you don’t know what JTA is either. Which would be too bad, because they’re a huge resource. But honestly they’ve done an awful job of marketing themselves for new technology. Which is a shame.

In case you’re interested… a little history (from the website)

In 1917, during the waning days of World War I, a 25-year-old journalist named Jacob Landau had a vision. The war had brought home the realization that what happens in our country affects more than just its own people - that the nation's fate is bound up with the fate of surrounding nations. At the same time, the continuing mass migration of Jews to the New World meant that more and more families were now separated by oceans. Jews in one part of the world had a personal interest in what was happening halfway around the globe. And the Jewish People as a whole had an increasing stake in the geopolitical developments transforming much of the Western world.

Landau realized that world Jewry needed a mechanism for transmitting vital information about what was happening to Jewish communities in various parts of the world. The Jewish People needed its own reliable source of information, so that it could keep its leaders informed about important developments of the day and, when necessary, motivate the community to action. And so, Landau founded the Jewish Correspondence Bureau, later renamed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It was, in fact, the first news agency that not only gathered but also disseminated news in every part of the world.

So basically, JTA was, for many years, a wire service like the Associated Press (for Jews). But now, in the new age of the internets, it has become a website (or you can get it via email) offering up-to-the-minute Jewish news from all over. They claim “no allegiance to any specific branch of Judaism or political viewpoint.”

Worth a bookmark!