benshlomo

What's a Mayor?

2008-09-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

Everybody see this?

Allow me to suggest a slight variation:

When it comes to Sarah Palin's mayoral record as opposed to Barack Obama's work as a community organizer, the truth is that being a mayor is indeed like being a community organizer except that a mayor draws an actual salary.

Now who's the greater public servant?

Benshlomo says, Has the GOP forgotten that those who really want to make a contribution aren't necessarily interested in money and power?

Open Letter to the White House - Congress in 1987

2007-10-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President:

So this is "the worst Congress in 20 years," is it? Let's see, by that reckoning, there was a worse Congress in 1987, and the president that year was...Ronald Reagan. What do you know about that?

As near as I can tell, you're upset with this Congress because they have insisted on considering more legislation to support the health of the nation's children, despite the fact that the last time they passed such legislation, you vetoed it and they couldn't override you. They won't just roll over and play dead. What do you know about that?

What's more, they've decided to try to take care of our children's health when you'd rather they authorize more billions for your useless, lost war. Oh, those beasts.

Oh, wait, it's not the war – you said you're upset with Congress because they refuse to provide our troops with proper ammunition and armor. Now, that's just terrible. Before this lousy Democratic Congress took office, you would never have allowed such a thing, of course, because if you had, our brave men and women in Iraq would have been reduced to digging through the trash for makeshift armor and paying through the nose for fuel and...oh, wait, never mind...

Well, maybe it's not that, either. You said that this Congress's investigations into corruption and malfeasance in the run-up to this war, and treasonous disclosures of intelligence agent's identities, and the management of this war, is a waste of time. Well, that makes sense – it's all in the past now anyway, isn't it? I mean, what do those time-wasters in Congress think this is, peacetime? There's a war on, for God's sake. It's not like the people have a right to know how their government got us into this mess...oh, wait a second, they do.

Well, it's not like anyone voted for a Congress that would end this stupid war...oh, hang on, yes they did.

Well, then, it's not like the American system of government allows the people to second-guess the Decider's decisions...oops, yes it does.

Well, then, I guess this is the worst Congress in 20 years because since 1987, no Congress has prioritized public health over warfare, and all Congresses have given the President a free hand in conducting foreign and domestic policy, and no Congress has ever tried to undercut the President's authority in any way. Right?

Right?

Go home, George.

How to Perfect the World

2007-10-12T10:19:00.001-07:00

With all due respect to Christianity, if this is the face of perfection, I'll pass, thank you very much.

And with that, I will take the advice of a growing number of pundits, commentators and bloggers. On this journal, from here on in, Ann Coulter is a rumor. She doesn't exist.

On the count of three, everyone ignore her. One, two, three.

Benshlomo says, Jesus Christ.

O Pioneer

2007-09-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

Werner Erhard is 72 years old today.

He was much younger when this picture was taken.

He's the one who started that seminar back in the 70's. You know which one I mean. The only thing most people seem to know about it is that for the first few years, those who took the seminar were not allowed to go to the bathroom for long periods of time. I was going to say something snotty about how trivial that concern is by comparison to what Werner's work makes available, but let's face it, not being able to relieve yourself is a pretty frightening thing. That's probably why Werner eventually stopped doing that.

He's a controversial figure in lots of different ways, most of which I can't comment on because (1) I don't know the details, and (2) I've been doing Werner's work for more than twenty years and I'm biased.

I never did est, but I took the later developments of the seminar - the Landmark Forum and its associated courses. I think the whole thing is amazing. Little Miss has gone so far as to say that she's found two things in life that work, prayer and the Forum. I totally agree.

Straight out, folks, if I hadn't done the Forum I would never have met Little Miss, never would have gotten married, never would have attended Clarion - in fact, I'd probably still be living at home with my mother. The Forum did that for me.

As for Werner himself - well, let's put it this way. There's another important anniversary today. Fifty years ago today, On the Road by Jack Kerouac was published. Lots of people have made comments about what that book meant to America and to literature, and there are those who say that the life Kerouac celebrated in that book is gone from America. Today, with airplane travel so common and Greyhound buses rusting from disuse, with hitchhiking a dangerous pastime and the Internet all over everything, you can't go exploring anymore. You can't, they say, find space in which to invent your life.

Well, that may be true in the world outside, but if you ask me there's still plenty of room to invent your life in other ways, ways that make an actual difference in the world, and Werner is one of those who taught us how to do that.

Benshlomo says, Good night, Jack Rosenberg, wherever you are.

Buh-Bye Karl

2007-08-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'll try to keep this short.

I rejoice at the departure of the evil shmoo (here's a little something about good shmoos), fantasize longingly about a government (not to say a world) without him and wish with all my glands that he had quit seven years ago, but all of that is pretty obvious.

Here's what really troubles me, although it wasn't mentioned much; ol' Turd Blossom, in the time-honored tradition of discredited or inconvenient political termites, has announced that he's got to leave for the sake of his family.

He has a family.

Oh dear Lord, please please please PLEASE tell me that "man" didn't reproduce...

The mere idea of that maggot-shaped pile of dogshit having anything resembling sex with a woman...

Benshlomo says, The horror, the horror.

Clarion Call

2007-08-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I completely screwed up when it comes to blogging Clarion. I've been reading some of my classmates' postings just now and they all had such touching, funny, startling things to say on their LiveJournals and whatnot. What was I doing those six weeks, sleeping?

Well, yes, occasionally, but mostly I was struggling with getting thoughts on paper in some coherent fashion - which didn't always work. As a matter of fact, my Week 3 story came out so confusing that at least one person declined to say anything at all, and I can't blame him.

And I was preparing for Little Miss' visit over the third weekend and trying not to miss her too terribly when she left. And sitting up till 2 am writing out critiques on a lunchroom table because I couldn't seem to write legibly sitting on one of the comfortable couches in the living room. And pouring coffee down my throat in the morning and beer down my throat at night. And getting in a huge fight with my bank over a dumb-ass mistake that left me overdrawn for about a week and a half.

I even managed to borrow a guitar for the last couple of weeks. Week 6 I didn't play much, but our Week 5 instructor was Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is not only a skillful and enthusiastic editor, he's also a terrific guitarist. One night he and I sat in the living room and jammed, and gradually people wandered in and listened.

So last Friday night a bunch of people sat around in the TV room posting the worst of their early work on our wiki and trying to guess who wrote what while metal videos screeched at us, and I listened to the paragraphs and correctly guessed the author from time to time, and then it was 3:25 am and the shuttle came to take me to the airport and it was

over

More later, friends and folks. I'm still processing.

Benshlomo says, See you in the funny papers.

Speaking of Science Fiction, an Open Letter

2007-07-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Robert Heinlein:

Happy 100th birthday, wherever you are now. Hope all is well.

Shall I get the nasty stuff out of the way first? I never met you, but on the evidence of your books you were a sexist, militaristic, jingoistic demagogue. Quite a disturbing role model for a progressive wannabe science fiction writer like me.

Much as I enjoyed "Starship Troopers," for instance, I notice that the opposition to your promotion of manly military virtues appears in the form of the Bugs, a perfect communist hive mind. There's no in between. And so, waddya know - one is either a good soldier or a dupe. Sorry, not buying it.

I could point out a few more disturbing tendencies in your work. What exactly did you believe?

The ordinary rules of behavior don't apply to superior men - "Glory Road".

Labor unions are easily turned to destructive ends by any clever neurotic - "The Roads Must Roll".

The way to defeat conformity that comes from outside of society is to enforce conformity inside that society - "The Puppet Masters".

A truly enlightened woman will give herself sexually to any enlightened man, and in any case ordinary people will not seek or obtain enlightenment unless they're tricked into it - "Stranger in a Strange Land".

Even in "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," maybe my favorite of your books, government is a positive evil no matter what it does, and the only rules that seem the least bit digestible are those made up on the spur of the moment. And there's another one of your inhumanly hot females present to throw herself at the hero without hesitation.

Oh well. Nobody's perfect.

And having pointed out all those disturbing details, Mr. Heinlein, and acknowledging that this doesn't even begin to cover all those enormous rambling novels from later in your life, it's now time to remember everything you did for us.

I find myself wondering what it was like for you after you got out of the Navy. I've read elsewhere that you hoped to attain the rank of Admiral and make a military career for yourself, but that your health got you an honorable discharge instead. That must have been devastating, to have a dream collapse around you through no fault of your own. Did you cry? It's not supposed to be manly to cry, even at times like that, but the men in your novels cry from time to time. I wouldn't blame you if you did.

Others might come away from a blow like that and give up on life, but you looked around for something to do for the next few years, and got into writing science fiction to help pay the bills. And, as Dr. Johnson once asserted, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," so that's okay.

Let's not forget that you also coined the terms "waldo" and "grok", invented the waterbed, and gave us the acronym "TANSTAAFL," all critical developments in science fiction and in world history.

And politics or no politics, I keep remembering the story Philip K. Dick told about you. He was always short of money, and at one point he says he was about to be evicted from his home. You got wind of this somehow, and gave him a fair amount, not expecting to get it back. PKD was a wild hippie radical drug addict, and you were a conservative militaristic libertarian, and clearly none of that mattered a damn to you.

I appreciate your literary groundbreaking for the likes of me, Mr. Heinlein, but I'd say your true legacy comes from actions like that last one.

Benshlomo says, A good opponent is a blessing.

Into the Science Fiction Snake Pit

2007-07-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Seattle, Washington.

I've been at the Clarion West science fiction writer's workshop for three weeks. This weekend, Little Miss is visiting me, so I'm feeling more relaxed and in the mood to write something for my own amusement. Possibly the amusement of my millions of readers, too.

I and my 17 fellow students write a story every week. We read each other's work and critique it. That's a lot of words.

Of course, we ourselves get critiqued on our work. My colleagues (despite the title of this post) are a bunch of talented people, with great good will. However, even with the best will in the world, no one likes to hear the suggestion that the children of one's mind are anything less than perfect, right?

So we all sit around writing our heads off, trying to produce something comprehensible without any revision time. Then we read three or four stories every day and prepare comments that are useful to the author without devastating anyone's ego.

And we're all adults, and we take what we're given and try to improve. And deep inside we wonder if we have any future as writers at all.

Thanks to our instructors from the past weeks - Nancy Kress, Larissa Lai and Graham Joyce - and for the next three weeks - Kelley Eskridge, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Samuel R. Delany - for their efforts to keep us encouraged while trying to break our worse habits.

One thing's for sure, though - as much as I've missed my wife over these weeks, and as happy I'll be to get back home, when this is over I'll be sorry.

Benshlomo says, You seldom get everything you want all the time.

Many a True Word Spoken in Jest

2007-07-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

Well, she certainly isn't a woman.

Come on, check out that picture. Is that even a female?

Benshlomo says, them as dishes it out gotta take it, am I right people?

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

2007-05-07T19:33:00.000-07:00

Bill Kreutzmann is 61 years old today. He was the Grateful Dead's drummer for their entire career – Wikipedia points out that he is one of four people who played each and every Dead gig, starting just before his 19th birthday.

Was it fun, Bill? Oh, tell me how much fun it was. Tell me all about what it was like, when all the doors were open.

Tell me about traveling all over, the adventure. Tell about inventing a whole new world at a time when you could do that, when lots of other people also believed you could do that. Tell me all about it, Bill; make me feel like I was there too.

Tell me what you think when you remember the beginning. Tell me in words so vivid it takes me back like a time machine to a place I never saw, but that I need so badly to believe was there at least once. Some people say that it was a time when people forgot their duty, their responsibility to each other, that it was the start of a long downhill slide rather than the last bright chance I want to think it was. Which is it, Bill? Take me back there and let me stay for awhile until I can breathe easy again.

There are days now when it feels like the world gets more constricted with every minute that goes by. They say that back then, there were more and more possibilities opening wherever you went, and with a little care you could live a life where every moment was a brand new start.

My daily round gets more and more repetitive as time goes by, Bill. I'm getting old twice as fast as the calendar would seem to show. Tell me what it was like for you and the people who lived it with you. Tell me what it was like to watch the time going by.

Oh, Bill, somehow or another we blew it. It's a frightened and frightening world now. Did you see it happen? Can you explain it? Did you look out at the audience one night and realize that you and the guys had stopped being an inspiration and started being a haven? Did it make you angry? Are you still angry at us?

If you can help me, even if it's just for a while, I think I can manage the rest of it. I think I can live my life in this overheated, angry, frightened world, full of struggle and pain, if you can show me there once was another world building, even if someone tore it down unfinished because it was too beautiful to live.

Bill, you were there. You even helped build it. Do you remember it? Did you know what you were doing? Or did you just play the drums and let it come? Did it just pour out of you and your friends like breath? Do you think it will ever come back? Is it worth waiting for? Or is it just something in the past?

If that's all it is, Bill, please tell me all about it until I can go there myself.

Benshlomo says, with the Grateful Dead - One way or another, this darkness got to give.

A Time to Hush

2007-04-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

At one point today I walked into my boss's office and found him monitoring the L.A. City Council meeting on radio. Someone or another mentioned the Holocaust - why, I don't know, but there it is.

Now, today is Adolf Hitler's 128th birthday, interestingly enough. If we had been so unfortunate as to witness a full lifespan for him, he'd be dead by now anyway, despite the predictions of various B-movies.

Yecch.

Far be it from me to suggest that we shouldn't discuss the Holocaust, if for no other reason than to prevent certain despicable liars from getting away with their evil. It happened, folks, and all the wishing in the world by those it hurts or those who want to avoid responsibility won't make it go away.

On the other hand, I cringe every time I hear a politician mention the Holocaust. In fact I'm getting a little tired of hearing about it at all. There's an unfortunate tendency on the part of so many people to use the Holocaust to produce some result, and that strikes me as vulgar if not downright blasphemous. I gather that Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
If it weren't for the fact that some won't face facts, I'd suggest that very remedy, and the sooner the better.

Benshlomo says, You can't say anything sensible about some things, folks, so shut up already.

Un-Tragic Un-Hero

2007-04-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

It's not for me to go over the details of the bloodbath at Virginia Tech, nor to draw a lot of deep meaningful conclusions. I wasn't there, and the analysis has all been done quite well elsewhere anyway. Certainly in this day and age, when the Virginia Tech coverage has yet to match the frenzy that greeted Anna Nicole Smith's death, there's no need for me to get into it in any factual way.

This post responds to a comment I heard on television while I was browsing the magazines in a local convenience store this afternoon. Someone referred to the events at Virginia Tech as a "tragedy".

Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines "tragedy":

A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.

Implicit in that definition is the notion that the tragic hero has one tragic flaw in an otherwise upright and admirable character. A famous example concerns Oedipus the King, ruler of Thebes, a man of great gifts, enormous courage and wisdom, and overweening pride in himself. Not only does he have a flaw, it's that very flaw that brings him to ruin; because he's proud, he ignores the warnings of the gods, and thus loses his family, his home, his country and his eyesight.

Notice the point. In tragedy, an admirable person not only suffers from one particular bad characteristic, but suffers a downfall through the operation of that very characteristic. If someone comes to grief through no fault of his/her own, it can be sad, but not tragic.

Few people today bother about such niceties, but this guy Cho was a student of literature in some sense, and probably knew something about tragedy's literal meaning. Furthermore, given his video suicide note, it's pretty clear he wanted to think of himself in a grand way.

That's why this post. I'm a literature major myself, and a teacher, and I say words have power; I won't watch them being devalued, especially at a time like this. I'd like to make it clear that Cho was not a tragic hero, and calling his actions a tragedy pushes them to a level they can't sustain. It's not fair to those who struggle against destiny without shooting anyone, and it's not fair to the innocent people he shot.

Did Cho have virtues? I assume so - at the very least he could write plays that reached his classmates, even if it was only to creep them out. Other than that, he seems to have been antisocial in the extreme, completely incapable of relating to others or even acknowledging their reality. He lacked self-knowledge and the willingness to address his problems in any meaningful way. He took no responsibility for himself; his last statement was one of accusation against everyone he was about to murder, blaming them for their own deaths. (Full disclosure: I was a similar wet blanket during my first year of college, which may be why this gets me so steamed. The first year of college is tough for a lot of people, most of whom don't murder several humans in response.)

In short, he was not an admirable person with a tragic flaw, he was a pitiful clown with a couple of guns. The dreadful irony of this incident is that so many people (good people or otherwise) died at the hands of such a profoundly small man. He wasn't even an anti-hero; he was a loser.

Little Miss has compassion for Cho, as well as his victims. For the past few days she's been wondering what on earth he could have gone through to drive him to such a state. She's a better person than I am, folks.

Benshlomo says, In tragedy there is nobility - in mass murder there is none.

So It Goes

2007-04-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died last night.

In accordance with good Jewish custom, we will now take advantage of the event of his demise to reflect upon his life and work (because, the rabbis tell us, you can't really know the meaning of a person's life until it's over).

On the other hand, Mr. Vonnegut's biographical details are sufficiently well-know that we need not dwell upon them too much. So briefly:

The man's reputation rests primarily on a series of books he produced in the late 50s and the 60s, particularly The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). They dealt with death, humor, absurdity and madness, and as the Salon Reader's Guide pointed out, it's one of God's mysterious gifts that the man most able in our generation to communicate with us in the spirit of such times was a Nazi prisoner of war and present at the bombing of Dresden.

The five titles mentioned above make a kind of matched set - certain characters appear in more than one of them, their themes and styles are similar, and so on.

I, personally, have read those classic five novels plus Breakfast of Champions (1973) and Slapstick (1976). I enjoyed them both, as well as his classic short stories "Harrison Bergeron," "Welcome to the Monkey House," and so on, but I'm in no position to comment on the critical consensus that his work after 1969 doesn't match his previous standard.

What does strike me, looking back on Vonnegut's career, is that his courage was unassailable. In particular, he was one of the few non-Jewish artists (Roberto Benigni is another) who ever tried to grapple with the Holocaust, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that his ancestry was German.

He was not so foolish as to set any of his fictions in a concentration camp; instead he used his war experiences to examine the totalitarian mindset, particularly in Mother Night and Slaughterhouse-Five. It was in the introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five, by the way, that he laid claim to the kind of brutally honest realism that we always, always need. "If I had been born in Germany," he mused, "I suppose I would have been a Nazi."

That's a scary thought, but it's a whole lot more useful than any dozen speeches by self-righteous moralists decrying somebody else's sins, because somebody like Vonnegut in his admission of human weakness gives us all permission to be frank about ourselves, too. We might kneel before the aforesaid self-righteous moralist and loudly proclaim "Yes, I'm a sinner!", but what difference will that make in our lives when we leave the house of confession? We read Vonnegut, on the other hand, and was can quietly say to ourselves "Yeah, me too. Now what am I going to do about it?"

Speaking of Vonnegut's courage, by the way - it's a smaller thing, but he also managed to publish a short story called "The Big Space Fuck" in Harlan Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions. Submitting something with that title to Ellison probably wasn't so very dangerous, but it's still pretty impressive. And I can't think of too many other writers who would have the chutzpah to open a novel with "Call me Jonah" - that a direct cop from Moby Dick, in case you didn't know. (Well, actually, I can think of plenty of writers with that kind of chutzpah, but very few who could get away with it.)

In any case, I'd just like to point something out regarding Vonnegut's date of death. In Jewish life, we are now in the middle of a period called Sefira, the weeks between Passover and Shavuot, between the exodus from Egypt and the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and we are commanded in Torah to count each of those days. The rabbis teach us that each of those 49 days focuses on a certain combination of seven of God's attributes - lovingkindness, discipline, beauty, victory, glory, eternity and majesty. The first day focuses on the lovingkindness of lovingkindness, the next on the discipline of lovingkindness, and so on.

Well, last night, when Vonnegut died, we focused on the discipline of discipline, and asked ourselves: In life, do we administer discipline to ourselves and our loved ones in a disciplined manner? Do we discipline in a measured fashion, or do we insist on rules for their own sake?

It's satisfying to know that Vonnegut, who confronted fascism so steadily in his writing by confronting it in himself and who clearly disciplined himself and others with some compassion for their humanity, closed out his life on the day dedicated to that very thing.

Benshlomo says, Good night Kurt Vonnegut, and long live Kilgore Trout.

Do Androids Dream of Decent Movies?

2007-03-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the things you see before the movie begins, I saw a preview last night for an upcoming picture called "Next".

Now, this is based on a story by Philip K. Dick called "The Golden Man", and PKD is one of my favorite writers, so this news makes me feel rather cautious. The history of movies based on PKD stories has its ups and downs.

It starts, of course, with Blade Runner, based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" In both the book and the movie, a policeman must use a device which detects empathy to track down illegal androids. In the book he's unhappily married, there's a new religion about, and so many people have moved to colony planets that Earth is underpopulated. In the book he's divorced and Earth is crowded, but aside from those details it's a classic, like the book. Between the book and the movie, I'd call this one a draw.

"Total Recall" comes from PKD's short story, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale". A man longs to go to Mars on vacation, but can't afford it, so he hires a firm to implant the memories of a Martian vacation in his mind. When they try to do so, they discover that he is not who he thinks he is. The movie is a pretty good action story, with Arnold Schwarzenegger pulling his usual stunts, bashing everyone's head in real good, but the story carries PKD's subtle questions on what makes a person that person, and it's more entertaining too. Advantage PKD.

"Minority Report" takes off from, of course, "The Minority Report" (so much for the oddball PKD titles this time). A policeman, using the predictions of a group of precogs, arrests people before they commit crimes. He himself is accused of a future murder, and must expose the corruption of the system. PKD ran this character through physical and philosophical mazes right from the first word, which would bamboozle most directors, but this movie had Stephen Spielberg in charge. Aside from some of his usual syrupy tendency, he keeps up pretty well. Advantage movie.

"Imposter", again from the short story of the same name, follows the head of world security during a war with an alien species as he fights the accusation that he's really an alien probe with a planet-busting bomb in his heart. Terrific movie, with the courage of PKD's convictions - remarkably, it doesn't yoke on a happy ending. Doesn't add much to the original conception, though - the story turns through an amazing number of twists in its few pages, and the movie hasn't got time for all of them. Advantage PKD.

"Paycheck", from the story "Paycheck", follows an engineer whose memory of his last job of copying a new device has been taken from him. He uses a group of seemingly random objects to uncover a vast conspiracy. People don't seem to like Ben Affleck's performances, but I usually do, and while there's a little too much blowing things up, the rest is thoughtful enough to compensate. The movie is, surprisngly, smarter than PKD this time about what the future might be like - the story reads like a 1950s industrial manual. Let's face it, PKD didn't always hit his mark, although no one could beat him when he did. Advantage movie.

That leaves "Screamers," based on PKD's "Second Variety," and "A Scanner Darkly," based on PKD's novel of the same name. I haven't seen those pictures yet, so no judgment at this point. (On the other hand, PKD himself said "Scanner" was the only masterpiece he would ever write and the movie stars Keanu Reeves, so I'm not sanguine.)

All in all, the movies have treated PKD pretty well, but I'm afraid this latest is going to give the win back to the author. "The Golden Man" concerns a mutant, a young man with beautiful golden coloring, pure instinct rather than intelligence, and the ability to see the future. He worries the government because his genes are almost certainly dominant, he's impossible to kill, and if unchecked he's sure to turn the whole human race into animals like himself. This movie "Next", clearly, is just another shoot-'em-up, another step down in the once fascinating career of Nicolas Cage.

Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

Benshlomo says, Better luck next time, Phil.

Happy Songs Are Bad For You

2007-03-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Has anyone seen this ad yet? It's playing in some movie theaters.

That tune comes from Bugsy Malone, a old-style gangster movie in which children or adolescents play all the roles. Oddly enough, given the way my mind and heart work, I've never seen the picture all the way through, but I did see the last few minutes on television once, where all the kids sing that song after a pie fight.

You give a little love and it all comes back to you
(Da da da da da da da)
You're gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do
(Da da da da da da da)

I always thought it was a pretty song, especially with all those children singing it, but when I saw that ad with the thug going around doing favors for people and getting a huge Broadway number going behind him, I just about started to cry.

I walked around with a broken heart for a few days, and then for some reason I remembered another song from when I was a kid. Any other greybeards from the previous age of the world remember Pete Seeger?

Here's another force from the Dark Ages who could just about break your heart. When I was a kid going to summer camp, we sang songs that he popularized whenever we got the chance. I had some of his records, too, and whatever he sang it sounded like the Golden Age was going to be here any minute. And my God, he was wrong.

On one of his records for children (of which he made a couple thousand, seemed like), he did a version of Frog Went a-Courtin' in which he sounded about as happy as a person could. The chorus he used, from an old British version of the song, went like this:

Here's to cheddar, here's to cheese,
Here's to the pears and the apple trees,
And here's to the lovely straw-berries
Ding, dang, dong, go the wedding bells.

As I say, that song came to my mind, and that did it. I haven't cried for years, but I cried my eyes out.

Why? Well, near as I can tell, it's because those songs are both so optimistic, and the world just doesn't operate the way they say it does. You give a little love and it all comes back to you, huh? You're gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do? Baloney. You give a little love and sometimes you get kicked in the teeth, and you're gonna be remembered for the accidents in your life.

As for the frog song, it says that all you need is something to eat, some beauty and some love, but everybody knows that all those things are in short supply these days. And they were much more rare in previous ages.

It's the contrast between the joy in those songs and the pain in life that gets to me. And if you think I'm being hypersensitive, tell someone else.

Benshlomo says, If a happy song makes you sad, you're in trouble.

End of My Rope

2007-02-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

This administration has officially left orbit.

George W. Bush has spent the last six and a half years destroying America's army, economy and reputation in a useless war based on false premises.

He has attempted to ignore the American system of checks and balances and turn his office and himself into an untouchable tyrant. In many cases he has succeeded, with the complicity of those institutions designed to bring him into line.

He has destroyed the American sytem of education, the American wilderness, and the American middle class, generally by means of programs with titles implying the exact oppposite.

If nothing else, his policies have put the final touches on our destruction of God's beautiful earth.

And this is what he had to say about his legacy during a recent interview.

Compassion. Can you believe that?

Benshlomo says, I used to get angry, now I'm just sad.

Today in the History of Antisemitism

2007-01-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

Let us consider Vanessa Redgrave, who turns 70 today.

Those who love movies remember that she appeared in some very important ones, in particular Antonioni's "Blowup". Her last scene in that picture showed her strolling past a shop window. The crowd blocked her for a moment, and then she quite suddenly vanished.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a few years later I (and a good many other Jews) wished to goodness she'd disappear again.

In 1977, she came to public attention due to a rather remarkable confluence of events. She got a Best Actress nomination for "Julia," in which she played an anti-Nazi activist in World War II Germany. (That movie was based on Lillian Hellman's memoirs, incidentally, and later turned out to be mostly lies.)

At the same time she produced and appeared in a documentary on the Palestinians, in which you could see her dancing around with one of their machine guns. She referred to Zionism on 60 Minutes as a "brutal, racist ideology" (which the Palestinian nationalist movement apparently is not). When she won her Oscar, as a group of Zionists protested her nomination outside, she congratulated the Academy for its refusal to be intimidated by a bunch of "Zionist hoodlums" who shamed all of world Jewry (she evidently didn't know that most Jews in the world are Zionists of one kind or another).

And in the face of all this, some dimwit decided to cast her in a television show about Fania Fenelon, a Jew and a Holocaust survivor.

What I remember most about that last incident is an interview, again on 60 Minutes, with Vanessa and Fania sitting side by side. Fania insisted, in the strongest possible terms, "Vanessa Redgrave cannot be me!" And there sat Vanessa, looking - of all things - perplexed. Apparently, she could not for the life of her comprehend how Fania, for whom she had the highest respect, could possibly object to having her life story told by an antisemitic advocate of violence against the Jews.

Right about then, her career started to go into decline. She kept making movies, some of them quite good, but she wasn't such a big deal anymore.

Well, in checking out her recent history, I find that a couple of years ago Bob Costas interviewed her on the Larry King show. He asked if, regardless of political disagreements, she accepted Israel's right to exist, and she said "Yes."

Sounds like she's had some sort of epiphany, like maybe dancing around with a PLO machine gun doesn't really inspire confidence in a woman who claims to want peace. That's an image that's mighty hard to forget.

I started this entry with the genuine intention of wishing Vanessa Redgrave well on her 70th birthday. I'd really like to be able to do that.

Benshlomo says, oh God I wish that the mistakes of the past could be erased - mine and everyone else's.

Whose Huge, Big Mouth?

2007-01-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

Looks like Brother Rush decided to celebrate his birthday by donating yet another comment so unbelievably asinine that it boggles the mind.

I don't have to spell it out for you, do I? Oh well, what the hell.

Like every other neocon-submissive commentator on record, Brother Rush has completely missed the import of Senator Boxer's remark to Condi "Dubya is my husband" Rice. The Senator pointed out, in language so obvious a four year old child would understand it, that neither she nor Ms. Rice will lose anything personally by Dubya's latest iteration of his same old Iraq plan. Brother Rush seems to have neglected the fact that the Senator included herself in her comments, which I'm sure was quite deliberate on his part because it enables him to tell everyone within earshot that the Senator was insulting Condi only. A lie.

Not to mention his implication that the Senator's remarks are racist and antifeminist. This is Rush Limbaugh we're talking about here. He's so racist he couldn't resist making a snide remark about a black quarterback, much less a black congressman, remember? He's such a male chauvinist he coined the term "feminazi," remember? And now he's so concerned about equality and justice. Riiight.

But that's not the best part. There are two best parts. The first is Brother Rush's description of the Senator as a "rich white chick with a huge, big mouth." Hysterical. Other than the "chick" part, that's a perfect description of Rush Limbaugh, and I'm not too sure that the "chick" part is so inapplicable.

In other words, as he and his smart-ass clones always do, Rush has taken a quote out of context and deliberately misrepresented its meaning so he can accuse his political opponents of something that they plainly didn't say. The other best part is that Brother Rush takes this non-existent incident and tells us that the Democratic party is "imploding sooner than I expected."

You've got to be kidding me. Does anyone with more than zero active brain cells actually buy this stuff?

Benshlomo says, Shut up, Rush.

Bad Boys Get Spanked

2007-01-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

Today is the birthday of both Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. What are the odds?

Then again, it makes some sense. Here we have two egocentric loudmouths who go into radio broadcasting and attract legions of fans. Of course they'd have the same birthday, albeit three years apart. The only difference is that one of them is a big fat idiot and the other one is just a sex maniac.

By now it should be obvious which of the two I'd rather hang out with. Anyone who disagrees with me, get your own blog.

Benshlomo says, Happy birthday, Howard.

Ice Man

2007-01-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

This is Dr. James Bedford. He was a psychology professor and a descendant of the family that founded Bedford, Massachusetts.

Forty years ago today, when he was 73, his body was cryogenically frozen in anticipation of being revived when a cure is found for whatever killed him. He was the first to undergo this procedure, which means he's been waiting in the cold for a long, long time.

What do you say to a guy like that? Happy deathday?

Benshlomo says, The good Lord moves in strange and wonderous ways, but every once in a while some guy beats Him all hollow.

Tale Told by an Idiot

2007-01-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Apropos of nothing, I happen to be reading the classic George Eliot novel Silas Marner at the moment. For those who don't know, it's about an old weaver in a 19th-century English country town, an exile from his former community and a miser, who finds an abandoned baby girl and through her learns to live among his fellows again.

It wouldn't seem to have much to do with modern American life, at least not in specifics, but then I ran across a passage about the town's medical practices and superstitions:

"There were women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman's little bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had."

Yes, you heard right.

Now, it would be foolish to suggest that a novel from the early 1860's could be at all prophetic. On the other hand, George Eliot was no dummy. The question is, if Ann Coulter actually did have an idiot child, at least in a metaphorical sense, who might it be? And how much of an idiot is he, after all?

Benshlomo says, Wisdom cries aloud in the street and no one heeds her.

Consider the Source

2007-01-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Well, Mel Gibson is 50 years old today.

Do we have to rehash the old question about whether we should judge an artist's work by his or her personal life? Do we have to wonder again whether we should listen to Richard Wagner's music because he was an antisemite who stole his friends' wives, or whether we should read Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree because the author's real name is Asa Carter and he was a white supremacist? Yes, we do.

At the very least, Gibson is a confused and angry man with a few maladaptive habits, such as drinking and driving and shooting his mouth off. Many of his movies, on the other hand, show his genuine talent on camera. (I'm not too sure about his talent off camera.)

Torah teaches us that, in the event that the people of a city turn to idol worship, not only are those people executed, but the city razed down to the ground and the earth salted so nothing can ever grow there again. Any foods, jewels, or utensils used in idol worship were to be likewise destroyed. A rabbi once taught me that this law also applies to the products of sinning men (he meant Elton John, but everyone's got a different idea of sin).

So do we avoid Gibson's movies because he's a sick puppy, or swallow hard and go see them because some of them are pretty good?

Happy birthday, Mel.

Benshlomo says, There's nothing like a nutjob to rock your world.

Various Talents

2006-12-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, several things to note:

James Brown, of course, died a couple of days ago - on Christmas. More than enough has been said about Mr. Excitement by now, but I haven't yet seen anyone remark on that date. It's kind of a nice coincidence, though.

To me, the most interesting fact about James Brown's career was the fact that he fined his musicians if they made any mistakes during concerts. Well, why not? Music is an art form, to be sure, but it's also a craft that needs care and attention, especially if a person's getting paid for it. James Brown's musical innovations have so entered the collective unconscious that, like other originals, we almost don't notice how creative they were, but most of us have yet to learn that lesson about playing properly.

Then, too, Gerald Ford died last night.

Like all other presidents who die, Ford is now being roundly eulogized by all and sundry. (Including, as an aside, George W. Bush, who referred to Ford as a man of "quiet integrity, common sense and kind instincts" - none of which characterizations, interestingly, apply to George W. Bush).

This is very sweet, of course, and true enough, but with all due respect I can't get very excited about the passing of a president whose main qualification seems to have been that he was a nice guy. I hope he's happy where he is now.

On the other hand, as others have noted from the well-known SNL sketch of ten years ago, this leaves open the question of whether or not Tom Brokaw is gay.

Finally, and completely unnoticed, today is the 100th birthday of musician, raconteur, television talk-show pioneer, famous neurotic and well-known hypochondriac Oscar Levant.

We need more people like him around today, those who make a profession of slaughtering sacred cows. Jon Stewart stands almost alone at the moment, and even he can't hold a candle to Oscar. I, for one, would consider him a most necessary role model if he had never done anything more than say, as he did:

"There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

RIP all.

Benshlomo says, Which of these men would you most like to sit down and have a beer with?

Evangelic-Fools

2006-12-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

From time to time, my poor heart dares to believe that these lunatic Christianists have plumbed the depths of surrealist nightmare psychosis, the kind of thing that grows in the damp dark like mushrooms and would have Salvador Dali painting pastoral landscapes the next morning. I occasionally let myself hope that the light of day has finally penetrated the dank caves of their paranoia and killed the swarms of Lovecraftian ooze that dwell there. My soul leaps up in joy; I tell myself that all is well and we can bask in good faith and rational humanity once again.

Not this time.

Benshlomo says, Oh my God.

Swear to God Again

2006-12-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to see that the Anti-Defamation League has weighed in on Dennis Prager's assertions regarding Keith Ellison's intention to swear his Congressional oath on the Koran.

I take credit for noting independently that this issue goes to freedom of religion. I note I completely forgot that the Consitution forbids religious tests for holding office. (And here is a little comment on that enlightened principle.)

Incidentally, the first sentence of this entry may be the most convoluted sentence I've ever written. That's saying something. I consider it some sort of breakthrough and I decline to edit it for comprehensibility.

Benshlomo says, That United States Constitution is a pip.

Swear to God

2006-12-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

As in most of his writing, my friend Dennis Prager here makes a lot of excellent points, this time regarding the demand of Keith Ellison to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the Christian Bible.

On its face, that demand at first struck me as reasonable, but then I read Dennis' piece and I wonder. So before we get into his conclusions, let's look at his claims.

Dennis' basic argument seems to be twofold. First, he argues that since Mr. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United State Congress, is getting ready to swear to uphold American values, he ought to swear that oath on the book that contains those values. Second, he argues that Mr. Ellison's demand is profoundly arrogant, in that it disregards the decision of the American people that their representatives swear their oaths on the Bible; that, in fact, by insisting on the primacy of his opinion in the matter over that of Americans, Mr. Ellison is "undermin[ing] American civilization."

Let's leave aside the question of whether the Bible is the source of American values; that's a constant right-wing and fundamentalist claim that I am happy to entertain, but not here. Let's also leave aside the question of whether the American people "decided" on what book its officeholders were to swear their oaths; I rather suspect that practice was imported from England without much cogitation, so calling it a "decision" is misleading. I'd make a sizeable bet that a lot of people never really thought about swearing oaths on the Bible before now, so in that way Mr. Ellison has actually done us a service.

Moving right along, the idea that Mr. Ellison by his decision "undermines American civilization" strikes me as being alarmist at best. Yeah, he's doing something that many Americans find distasteful, but he's still swearing the oath, and the fact that he's holding a Koran at that moment makes him neither more nor less likely to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" than, say, Tom DeLay.

Speaking of distasteful, if you ask me (and no one did), it's rather distasteful that Dennis at one point refers to the Koran as Keith Ellison's "favorite" book. We're not talking about a Stephen King thriller or a Harlequin romance here, or "Profiles in Courage" or the Federalist Papers, for that matter - we're talking about someone's idea of the Holy Scripture, and the fact that it isn't mine or Dennis' is irrelevant. The use of the word "favorite" connotes bedside reading, not the holy writ by which a person lives his life. Using that word may seem like a small thing, but I was an English teacher and I say that words have power. The word "favorite" in this context is an attempt to diminish the status of the Koran in Keith Ellison's life, and it won't do.

Which brings us to the purpose of swearing an oath on a book in the first place. Dennis asserts that public servants do so as a representation of exactly what they are swearing at that moment to uphold. Could be, but I always thought that it was a representation of the solemnity with which they regarded their oath, not the object of the oath. Even if we consider the public nature of the oath, it seems to me that the presence of the holy Book is not a way for the oath-taker to say "Here I stand swearing to uphold the values in this Book"; rather, he says "Here I stand swearing to uphold certain values, with a copy of what I hold dearest and most sacred in the world so you know I'm serious."

There's a little more to it than that, of course, as Dennis' Mein Kampf comparison makes clear (and by the way, watch what happens when people learn that Dennis drew a parallel between the Koran and Mein Kampf!). The choice of the book does indeed give us some notion of the person swearing the oath. A person may hold Mein Kampf most sacred, and seriously swear an oath in its presence, but it suggests that the person doing so will not represent us accurately or well, so we won't have it. Does Dennis really think that Keith Ellison plans to wage jihad against the United States? Is that what he thinks the presence of the Koran means? I doubt it; I suspect that in this case it's just Keith Ellison's way of showing how seriously he takes this oath. (With, yes, maybe a little public-relations awareness thrown in.)

Dennis' point about Jews in the past having sworn oaths on the New Testament is well-taken, I think, to an extent. If memory serves, though, few nonsecular Jews have served in government positions up to now, and those nonsecular Jews who did were mostly non-orthodox. This means, I suspect (and no doubt Dennis would be happy to correct me), that most Jews who have served in government office before now did not find taking a New Testament very difficult, the way an orthodox Jew probably would. I wonder what Joe Lieberman has to say on the subject, and what book he used? If it was a Christian Bible, well and good; Dennis has made his point.

As for the probability that Mormon officeholders did not swear on the Book of Moroni, nor secular ones on Voltaire or the New York Times editorial section (a nice dig at liberalism there), nor Scientologists on Dianetics, those objections seem irrelevant to me. Mormons hold the Christian Bible sacred, though not as much as the Book of Moroni, so swearing on the Christian Bible should not give them any problems in the matter of sacred oaths (although the same could possibly be said for Muslims like Mr. Ellison, who also hold the Christian Bible sacred, so that's not such a powerful statement after all). The point about Scientologists and Dianetics is probably true, though we have had no test cases yet. As for the stuff about secularists and the New York Times, that's mere rhetoric - no one, however liberal, considers the Times editorial section to be holy writ, no matter how amusing it may be to say so.

Having said all that, the last part of Dennis' remarks are pretty telling, if you ask me. Arguing, as some do, that allowing Mr. Ellison to swear on the Koran will pacify the Muslim world is naive at best, and we do indeed want to avoid any damage to American unity. It may also be true that allowing Mr. Ellison to swear on the Koran will embolden Muslim extremists in their goal of Islamicizing America.

My last question, therefore, is this: If in fact Muslim extremists would be emboldened by such a move, is that a reason to forbid it? Why in the heck should America make a decision about Mr. Ellison's choice of book, or any other decision, based on whether or not a bunch of thugs might get a boost out of it? Let's decide whether Mr. Ellison can swear on the Koran for our own reasons, not out of fear that Osama bin Laden might like it; that's the argument George W. Bush and his boys made just before the last election, that Muslim terrorists were trying to influence American electoral politics. The American people rejected that argument then, and ought to reject it now.

So should Mr. Ellison be allowed to swear on the Koran or not? Dennis suggests it would undermine American unity. If that's so, maybe we can find a way to mitigate that result. Suppose, for instance, we said that Mr. Ellison is allowed to swear on the Koran as a demonstration of the ongoing strength of that fundamental American value, freedom of religion. I bet all Americans can unify behind that value, except maybe a few fundamentalist lunatics who want all Congressmen to swear an oath of allegiance to Christ, and I don't much care what they think anyway, any more than Dennis does.

It would be a delicate balancing act, but America has been balancing various demands ever since it was founded. That's one of the results when you decide you don't want a king.

Benshlomo says, Democracy is complicated, you better believe it.

Happy birthday, Nick

2006-12-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky turns 214 years old today. Lookin' good.

Or, as Tom Lehrer invites us to sing:

Who made me the genius I am today?
The mathematician that others all quote?
Who's the professor that made me that way?
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat.
One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame,
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hai!

Benshlomo says, You never know what you'll be remembered for.

Who to Chain Yourself To

2006-12-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not always up on just who's who in Congress. Since moving to Santa Clarita a few weeks ago, I don't even know my congressman's (or woman's) name.

However, when a congressman or senator really puts his/her foot in it, I like to look up their record and see if the idiocy is just a slip-up or genuinely endemic. In the case of Conrad Burns, the junior Republican senator from Montana, it's an easy call.

I can't find out the context just yet, but a little while ago soon-to-be-ex Senator Burns lashed out at environmental activists, saying "If they really want to save the horse or the wolves or the grizzly bear, why don't they chain themselves to them?"

This from a man who chained himself to Abram Jackoff.

Incidentally, this strikes me as a peculiarly Republican tactic; you find a certain person or group irritating because of what they advocate, so instead of addressing their concerns you simply ridicule them personally. I don't doubt that Democrats do that, but you don't usually hear about it unless it's John Kerry forgetting to use the word "us" in a joke. Can anyone point me to an example of Democratic personal attacks?

Benshlomo says, It sure is easy to laugh off your enemies, especially after you've just lost your job.

You Talkin' to Me?

2006-11-29T16:19:00.000-08:00

This is a generally fascinating and occasionally disturbing interchange between two very smart, committed men regarding (ostensibly) whether or not God exists. In point of fact, it seems to be really about whether belief in God does more good or more harm, today and in the past.

Sam Harris avows that belief in God is uniformly nonsensical, that there is no value whatsoever in it, and that human life is in immediate danger from all of its manifestations, not just the ones that encourage people to fly airplanes into great public buildings.

Dennis Prager avows that belief in God is true and factually based, that no moral system can survive without it, and that human life is in imminent danger from atheism in all its forms.

My many millions of readers know by this time that I believe in God and that I seek (with varying degrees of success) to live a Jewish life. I've never heard of or met Sam Harris, except in his appearances on Salon and The Huffington Post; on the other hand I have a nodding acquaintance with Dennis Prager and disagree with his politics, except where Israel is concerned.

Both of these guys are smarter, better read and more skilled in argument than I am, which may explain why their rhetoric is so fractious. The question of whether or not God exists - whether or not belief in God promotes good individual or collective life - is an important one, so both Mr. Harris and Mr. Prager seem to have acted accordingly. They've rolled out the big guns and attacked both each other's arguments and each other personally, which I've always found a little distasteful in spiritual discussions, but that's just me.

Anyway, the most fascinating thing about this interchange is that Mr. Harris and Mr. Prager spend much of their time accusing each other of the exact same things! Observe; here and there you find them both saying "You have neither disproved my arguments nor presented any new ones of your own," and "What you're saying has nothing to do with the subject at hand," and doubtless a few other things you can find for yourself.

I make no claims for my own ability in this kind of argument, and if I found myself sitting across the table from either one of them I know I'd lose; Dennis has demolished me once or twice in the past. That doesn't stop me from noting that they don't seem to be listening to each other very carefully. Neither Mr. Harris' devotion to reason and scientific clarity, nor Mr. Prager's devotion to truth and moral clarity, seem to have led either one of them to much respect for the opponent. (Of course, respect for the opponent is not very popular these days, but I like it.)

Well, maybe they're both bumping up the intensity because they're in a public forum and want to sway the audience if they can. Maybe if they met one-on-one, they'd take a less confrontational tone. Makes sense, but doesn't that mean that they're not really talking to each other? They're talking past each other to the audience. So they're neither talking to each other nor listening to each other, and what's the point?

I once saw a panel discussion on television between a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer, moderated by a specialist in conflict resolution. The first thing the moderator did was require both parties to present the other side's argument, without comment or objection. The remaining discussion actually led somewhere, if memory serves.

Zealots may not believe that such a tactic is either useful or moral - why spend time detailing a point of view you know to be wrong? - but it works for me.

Benshlomo says, If you want to discuss something with me, you can start by remembering that you're discussing something with me.

Goodbye to the Real Player

2006-11-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

Robert Altman's dead, and somehow I have a hunch he's not too unhappy about it.

That's pure speculation, of course, and those of us who love movies are decidedly unhappy about it, but the man was 81 years old, and although he worked practically up to his last breath he had been in poor health for a while. It's not like he owed us anything, either.

Much has been made of his distinctive style of filmmaking. He's the one who directed his actors to speak over each other and his cameraman to pan over to action already in progress, so that we in the audience felt like we were seeing something as it happened, not something set up artificially (it was, of course, set up artificially, it just didn't seem that way). Altman got to direct movies in his own manner, and make money at it, which very few filmmakers have ever had the skill or the support to do. He was lucky, and knew it, and deserved it. We're going to miss him.

Opinion is divided as to his greatest movie. Some vote for M*A*S*H, some for The Long Goodbye, some for Nashville, some for The Player, some for Popeye, some for 3 Women, maybe even some for Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (no). I'm no cinematic maven, but I remember one comment from Roger Ebert's original review of McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Mr. Ebert later described this as Altman's only "perfect" movie, and for all I know he's right. That's not what struck me, though. In his original review (not the "Great Movie" review but the original one, which doesn't seem to be on his website for some stupid reason), he describes the opening scene thus (I'm paraphrasing):

A hooded man rides his horse in a mild snowfall down a muddy path and stops just short of a ratty little cluster of slapped-together shacks. He gets off, shrugs out of his hood and puts on a snazzy bowler hat, first brushing the snow off. As he does so, he mutters to himself. We can't understand his words at all, but his meaning is clear enough - this time, he snarls, the bastards aren't going to get him down.

Some time after I read that review, I watched the movie. I had assumed that Ebert's description was mere rhetoric - if you can't understand what the man is saying, how can you possibly know what he's talking about? Well, lo and behold, Warren Beatty stopped his horse, got down, put on his hat and muttered to himself, and his meaning was exactly what Ebert said it was.

That's a compliment both to Ebert's understanding and to Beatty's performance (and I've never thought too highly of his acting), but Altman's the one who knew what was needed at that moment, got the proper attitude out of his actor, and realized, critically, that the audience should not be able to make out the words. Most directors (most people, for that matter) assume that the audience has to be spoon-fed, if not force-fed. Remember the controversy over what Bill Murray said to Scarlett Johanssen at the end of Lost in Translation? Altman did stuff like that all the time. It was a critical encouragement to audiences, and I just hope that Sofia Coppola and maybe some others will continue to take Robert Altman's cue.

Benshlomo says, It's hard to treat adults like adults, but that's the only way to play.

Re Yesterday's Election, Just One Word:

2006-11-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Benshlomo says, whew.

Twisting in the Responsibility

2006-10-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Here is Dennis Hastert's real opinion of his current dilemma's source; this is what he said off-the-cuff and straight from the heart.

Or at least, that's what I (a die-hard progressive, an opponent of Bush and his whole alliance) would like to believe about the old Republican Speaker's true nature.

To be fair, though, and to give the guy the benefit of the doubt as commanded in Torah, it's possible that a subsequent quote - "I'm deeply sorry this has happened and the bottom line is we're taking responsibility" - may reflect his more genuine attitude.

As for the demands that Hastert resign over Mark Foley's trail of e-slime, I'm not entirely sure that's necessary.

Surely the Speaker's resignation would accomplish little in the way of cleaning up the Foley mess. Although I'd love him to quit and hand the Bush administration another defeat, I can't see any reason for it other than the political. (Besides, it would be much tastier if he ran for the Speaker's chair and got his ass handed to him, although that's not likely.)

No, I can't see any point to calling for Hastert to step down. On the other hand, it does leave me with one question very loudly unanswered:

What exactly does the Speaker mean by saying "we're going to take responsibility"?

We all know what it means when George W. says he's responsible for something - "Yeah, I did that and I'd do it again whether it made sense or not, so shut up." But what does Dennis Hastert mean?

I have a hunch it means pretty much the same thing to him; he intends it as a signal that the conversation is over and nothing's going to change.

Well, out here in the real world, responsibility means something quite different, to wit: the right, ability and obligation to take action regarding some issue within one's sphere. No less a figure than John D. Rockefeller Jr. said:

"Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."

And he's far from the wisest person who ever made that point.

So if Dennis Hastert acknowledges that the Foley matter comes within his orbit, that he has the right, ability and obligation to take effective action about it, and yet he doesn't plan to resign, what does he plan to do? So far, all he seems to have promised is that he will cooperate with the Ethics Committee investigation and will testify if subpoenaed. That's not the act of a responsible man, it's the act of a man who's been caught misbehaving and will do only the bare minimum to get his feet out of the fire. And he's not even the accused!

In short, he's behaving like his master, George W. Bush. Surprise.

Benshlomo says, Send me someone who knows the middle ground between quitting your job and covering your ass.

New Life

2006-09-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

Little Miss married me a couple of weeks ago.

There isn't much more to say, really, except that I'm very glad.

Benshlomo says, May you all be happy in your choices, as I am.

Sha shtil

2006-07-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

And now, two perspectives on silence...

Syd Barrett died a few days ago. There's something appropriate about the fact that no one seems to know exactly when.

He gave Pink Floyd its voice in the band's early years with his guitar playing, singing and songwriting, all of them genuinely innovative. At some point (this being the mid-60s), he took to ingesting a little too much in the way of pharmaceuticals. Next thing you know he stood motionless onstage all through Floyd concerts, or played the same shattering chord all night. Rumor has it that he even played an utterly nonsensical solo one night, which upon later examination proved to be the correct solo, played backwards.

Genius or not, his antics proved too much for the rest of the band. They brought in David Gilmour, who eventually replaced Syd altogether, and turned over the bulk of the writing and musical/lyrical direction to Roger Waters. Syd made a couple of confusing, sporadically brilliant records of his own and went home to his mother's basement.

A well-known story tells us that one day he rejoined Floyd in the studio, during the recording of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a song about him. In the ensuing years he had gained weight and shaved all his hair off, including his eyebrows. His old bandmates didn't recognize him at first.

Musically, not a peep since the 70's. Syd joins a small cadre of artists who produce extraordinary work, then suddenly fall silent and occasionally disappear altogether for years. You take people like Jean Sibelius, Harper Lee, Henry Roth and Gioacchino Rossini, and you have to wonder what shuts them up. In some cases it's mental illness, but there are others whom mental illness drives to incredible activity, so that's not a good enough explanation. What does silence do for them that communication cannot?

Which brings us to the case of Meher Baba.

His followers claim, as he himself did, that he was the living embodiment of God Himself. I don't buy that for one second, but at the very least he seems to have avoided any of the hypocrisy that so many "gods" fall into. He did not live in luxury while his followers put up with squalor; he did not exert control over all aspects of his followers' lives unless they wanted to join his inner circle, nor did he ask them to die for him; he did not collect gold Rolls Royces or rare stamps or anything like that; to the best of my knowledge he did not sexually abuse his followers; he rarely even spoke. And there, as they say, is the rub.

July 10 was the anniversary of his vow of silence, taken in 1925 and kept until his death 44 years later. This doesn't mean he refrained from communicating, though. He used an alphabet board, later a system of gestures, and he wrote several books. But he didn't speak.

He apparently claimed that this silence, rather than a sacrifice, formed an integral part of his being as an avatar of God. I, for one, am inclined to believe that at any rate it formed an integral part of his spiritual journey.

So what's the value of silence, and what is its proper use?

I don't know that either Syd or Baba give us a final answer to that question, but it does bring to mind one experience from some years ago:

I attended an event designed to introduce the Landmark Forum, a course I had taken some years before. I really wanted more people to do the course, because I had found it so profoundly impactful. That afternoon, though, in addition to the introduction leader and the owner of the house we were in, we only had one guest, which made three enrollers and one potential enrollee.

Oddly enough, that was the same circumstance I had found myself in when considering doing the course in my turn; there was me, the friend who had invited me, the introduction leader and another person. I was all set to feel ganged up on, but the other person said nothing whatsoever all night. She was attentive and obviously interested, but silent. So I decided to do the same thing, which wasn't easy for a verbal type like me.

It was a great night, though. A lot of smiles and laughter from everyone, including our guest, and I learned that I can make a contribution to the proceedings without donating my infinite wisdom. In fact, I can often make a much greater contribution to the proceedings by being still.

At first glance, we'd probably say that Syd fell silent because he had nothing to say, and Baba fell silent because he wanted to listen. I wonder if it might not have been the other way round.

Benshlomo says, What do you hear, what do you say?

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book?

2006-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today is, as all James Joyce fans know, the date on which the events described in Ulysses take place. It is therefore a great day, not least because nothing very special happens in the novel. Unless you count the meeting of a promising young man and his spiritual father. (And by the way, that picture of James Joyce over there is the one in which he later said he was wondering if the photographer would lend him five shillings. That's the kind of guy he was.)

For those who have not read Ulysses, because of its length or the difficulties of its language or for any other reason, I can't blame you too much; it's got a reputation as impossible to read, the exclusive property of elitist ivory-tower university bums. Nevertheless, I encourage you to give it a try. It's not all that difficult, you can find a positive tsunami of guides to the thing if you want them, and by golly it's fun.

According to the book, then, 102 years ago today, a young man of Dublin named Stephen Dedalus woke up, had a fight with his roommate, taught his usual class at the local middle school (his own alma mater), took a walk on the beach, then headed to the library to give a public lecture on Shakespeare's Hamlet. As I recall, it's not clear what he did with his afternoon; he must have run into some friends, because he eventually found himself in a hospital waiting room. The wife of an acquaintance was giving birth there and young Stephen tagged along to await news. He also managed to get himself amazingly drunk.

That same day, an ad salesman for a local newspaper named Leopold Bloom, the descendant of Jews, woke up, bought himself a pork kidney for breakfast, brought his wife her breakfast in bed and headed off to work. Before he got there he washed in the public baths and contemplated his daughter's letter from the previous day, the death of his young son many years before, the fact that he and his wife had not made love since, and his conviction that she expected a visit from her lover that afternoon. At work, he failed to convince his boss to accommodate an ad client, but he did convince him that there might be some useful examples of ad copy in the library. He went to the library and got what he needed, attended the funeral of a friend, had lunch , picked up his mail and then stopped in at a local pub, where he had a run-in with an antisemitic acquaintance. He therefore changed pubs, again agonizing over his conviction that his wife was even then having sex with her lover. After that tortured hour, he went to the hospital to attend to the birth, and there met Stephen.

Stephen allowed himself to be led away to a house of ill repute, and Leopold followed him there; he knew Stephen slightly as a youth of great promise and wanted to prevent him from doing anything damaging. The two of them eventually escaped from the whorehouse, though not without a few confusing mishaps owing to drink and overexcitement. Leopold invited Stephen home with him, gave him some cocoa and invited him to spend the night on the couch, but Stephen, sobered up, thanked him and left. Leopold, somewhat more confident after the night's adventures, went upstairs and asked his wife to make breakfast the next morning for a change. She agreed, surprised at her husband's unaccustomed assertiveness, and apparently feel asleep remembering their early courtship at Gibraltar, her childhood home.

Nothing very remarkable, but then again it's a very moving story, with a lot of ordinary people living as best they can and at least one (Leopold) reaching out to other humans - his wife, Stephen - in a new way. Yeah, Joyce based his plot on Homer's Odyssey, and it's important to notice the parallels because it turns this story of ordinary folks into a heroic epic and Joyce thought such people deserved that kind of attention. However, you don't really need that knowledge to enjoy the book, which is profoundly touching and very funny. Read a few sections and see for yourself.

I notice, by the way, that because Mr. Haughey, Ireland's former government leader, passed away a few days ago, this year's Bloomsday festivities have been cancelled. If you ask me, that's quite proper. On the other hand, I wonder what Joyce would have thought of Bloomsday itself or of cancelling it because of a state funeral. Considering that he spent just about all his adult life out of Ireland, I honestly doubt he'd care much either way. That's the kind of guy he was.

Benshlomo says, Happy Bloomsday anyway

Remedial Reading for Representatives

2006-05-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Lord knows I have enough reasons to look askance at many conservatives, but I used to be an English teacher and this just makes my skin crawl.

Alabama senator Jim Sessions jumped right into the debate on immigration last week with a quote from Robert Frost; "Good fences make good neighbors." His point? Obviously that if the United States builds a fence to keep illegal immigrants out, we'll get along much better with Mexico.

Well, that may or may not be true. The fence between Israel and the Palestinian territories on the West Bank certainly prevents a good many terrorist murders, but it doesn't make good neighbors of the Jews and the Arabs, and illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States don't blow up civilians. They just clean up after us.

Be that as it may, and delighted as I am whenever some right-wing yahoo makes a fool of himself in public, would someone please explain to this moron that you ought to read a piece of work before you quote it?

As quoted ad nauseum in countless better blogs, here is the full text of "Mending Wall," the poem Jim Sessions wrenched out of context and splashed, bleeding, all over the country.

Now that you've read it, you might write a letter to Senator Sessions and advise him to stick to "See Dick Run."

Benshlomo says, Hey Jim, something there is that doesn't love a wall!

Sugar, Sugar

2006-05-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Yep, I've had quite a time with good old dextrose lately.

First, a few weeks ago, my doctor informed me that my blood sugar was close to 250. I'm diabetic, but not on insulin, so I wasn't taking the diagnosis very seriously up until the doctor put the fear into me.

He said "In 10 years you're going to have a heart attack or a stroke, and after that you won't live or die; you'll just exist, completely unable to do anything for yourself. The pain in your arms or legs will be so intense you'll have to go on debilitating painkillers for the rest of your life, but the pills won't really eliminate the pain, anyway. As for getting married, there's no point; functioning sexually will be out of the question."

So I stopped eating sugar almost entirely and my blood sugar went down to about 150 - not excellent, but acceptable. Which is all very well, but for someone who loves dessert, as I do, it's still a struggle every day.

Then the other day, some complete waste of life poured sugar into Little Miss's gas tank while her car was parked across from my home. And we all know what that does.

It's some sort of miracle that she noticed the crystals when she pulled into the gas station; she could just as easily have missed that and found herself stranded somewhere between here and Oxnard with her daughter in tow. As it is, she made it to my mother's house and we got her to a service station.

Thank God for my mother and her family feeling toward her daughters-in-law, both current and prospective. Neither I nor Little Miss is now in a position to pay for the necessary repairs. But my family loves my love.

Despite that, I found myself asking God this morning "What are You doing, anyway? Why all these crises being heaped on us?"

Of course I haven't got an answer to that. Maybe it's just an opportunity to get close to the family and let others support us in our need. That does feel mighty good, I must admit.

Nevertheless, and despite my peace-loving nature, if I catch the malicious pinhead responsible for this encounter, it's going to get ugly.

Benshlomo says, Roses are red, the engine is shot, sugar is sweet unless it's not.

One Good Thing About Music

2006-05-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

Twenty-five years ago today, Bob Marley died.

I consider myself a pretty eclectic music fan, and I like reggae as much as I like any other kind of music. I would not, however, say that I am or was a real devotee of Bob Marley. So why bother to post?

Well, some years ago I had to deal with losing someone I loved, and there were two songs that helped me grieve and get to the other side. One was "Minute by Minute" by the Doobie Brothers, and the other was Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain".

To me, "Minute by Minute" gave an outlet for my anger, my sense of having been a sucker; "You think I'm you're fool, you may just be right" and all that. Singing it or listening to it pushed me way down into the blackness, made it impossible to avoid and forced me to swim in it until it was all gone. Very necessary. Not at all fun.

"Waiting in Vain," on the other hand, gave me a place to stand and hold onto hope. The lyric isn't angry, but it isn't resigned, either. To me, it said that my feelings were mine and I didn't have to surrender them if I didn't want to. If I wanted to cling to them, that was my choice, and when I sang it or listened to it I felt stronger, even in my loneliness. I needed "Minute by Minute" so I could cry, but I needed "Waiting in Vain" so I could heal.

Now I'm with Little Miss and happy at last. I think I might not have had the capacity for this joy if it wasn't for Bob Marley, who succumbed to cancer on May 11, 1981.

Benshlomo says, Don't kid yourself; your life needs music.

Hammer and Tongs

2006-04-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

He's trying to put a good face on it, but Tom DeLay is quitting.

He prayed and fasted, he says, and came to the conclusion that he'd rather leave the Congressional race and all the power he's built up over the years than run the risk of a bunch of liberal softies turning this election into a referendum on himself.

Yeah, right.

This is a guy who used intimidation, parliamentary folderol, illegal political money and outright lies to both enrich himself and defy the will of the American people, whether it agreed with him or not. That's the only way I can interpret his call for a "permanent conservative majority." I feel reasonably sure he's ducked out of this race largely because his associates are pleading guilty to federal crimes, and he knows his head's on the block. And now he's playing Christian martyr.

Looks like the "Hammer" has lost a good bit of his starch. Good riddance.

Coincidentally, this also happens to be the 30th anniversary of Sihanouk of Cambodia's abdication. The late, great Spalding Gray referred to this Prince as something like a "sax-playing, marijuana-loving, partying Buddha."

I don't know all the details of his abdication - had something to do with the Viet Cong's illegal bases in Cambodia and America's resulting invasion of the country - but one thing is fairly clear. Prince Sihanouk, in an effort to preserve peace, put up no resistance to his deposition. Afterwards, his country went through hell, courtesy of Pol Pot (y'mach shmo, may his name be erased), but he stuck around, and now his countrymen refer to him as "His Majesty" again.

Now seriously, which of these two would you rather hang out with?

Benshlomo says, Goodness survives.

Congratulations, Bugsy Siegel

2006-03-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

Nevada legalised gambling 75 years ago today.

I like books and movies that take place in casinos. Funny how often they seem to be crime stories, police procedurals, murder mysteries and whatnot, whether they concern upper-crust tuxedo-wearing slackers in Monte Carlo -

- or abuse-ridden lowlifes in Las Vegas.

In real life, on the other hand, it's been my experience that there's no place so desperately boring as a Las Vegas casino. So, with all due respect, today's anniversary leaves me pretty cold.

Benshlomo says, Someone's making money hand over fist out there.

Unique New York

2006-03-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

"The Pushcart War started on the afternoon of March 15, 1986, when a truck ran down a pushcart belonging to a flower peddler."

I'm terrifically sorry to be late with this historical commemoration, but better late than never.

In any case, twenty years ago yesterday, Albert P. Mack of Mammoth Moving smashed Morris the Florist's pushcart and knocked Morris into a pickle barrel, where his picture was snapped by young Marvin Seeley. As historian Jean Merrill points out, from that point onwards New York's pushcarts fought back against the oppressive trucking companies of Manhattan, and although few New Yorkers realized at the time that they were living in a war zone, the events of the next few months permanently changed city dwelling into the comparatively civil, efficient and happy way of life we know today. (I wish.)

So everyone go out and read this vital work of history immediately. Then we'll talk.

Benshlomo says, Sometimes alternate history beats the real thing all hollow, doesn't it?

How to Stop the Killing

2006-03-15T11:35:00.000-08:00

I heard this story on National Public Radio yesterday while driving home from work. The violence, alas, is nothing new; the part that caught my attention was the claim that sectarian violence in Iraq is even more of a threat to democracy and peace than the insurgency is. (Here is further detail on the same story.)

It brings to mind an incident from the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

Without mistaking movie scripts for historical analysis, the fact is that shortly after the British withdrew from India and left it to divide itself into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, the Hindus and Muslims began killing each other in really atrocious numbers as they moved from place to place.

For Gandhi, who had spent much of his life dreaming of an independent homeland, this must have been so devastating as to be physically painful. So he began to fast and said he would not eat until the killing stopped.

He nearly died, but it worked. To this day, despite the ongoing war over Kashmir and other sporadic violence, Hindus and Muslims in that part of Asia no longer murder each other wholesale.

In Iraq, on the other hand, murder is an ongoing event. And these aren't Hindus and Muslims, these are two sects of the same faith. If history didn't teach otherwise, you'd think it would be fairly easy to establish peace among two groups of Muslims, or Christians, or Jews, for that matter.

So where is the Iraqi Gandhi who will refuse to put up with it?

Benshlomo says, I want a hero.

Fire and Ice

2006-03-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the Fast of Esther. Observant Jews did not eat or drink from sunup to sundown, and neither did I.

We do this in remembrance of the day about 2400 years ago that Queen Esther of Persia asked all the Jews to fast and pray for three days with her, so that when she went to King Ahaseurus the next day he would hear her and rescue the Jews from Haman. (That was the first of many men throughout history who have decided that the thing to do is kill all the Jews.)

Well, it worked, and that's why we celebrate Purim, which is today. Happy Purim, everyone. As usual with the Jews, the theme of today's holiday is, "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat."

I have fasted before on major observances, but yesterday I had more success than usual in keeping my mind on the reason for my hunger and thirst. I said to God, "May my fast be the last bit of energy we need to bring the Messiah, although my fast is shorter, includes fewer people, and comes from a less pious person than the fast in Persia all those years ago. Those people prayed for redemption, and You delivered it. I pray for redemption in the same manner on the same day; may You deliver it now."

Well, today I ran across this in science news. Astronomers have discovered fire and ice in the tail of a comet.

Now, the Bible teaches that shortly before the Hebrews left slavery in Egypt all those thousands of years ago, God sent a series of plagues to straighten the Egyptians out and to demonstrate His power. One of the plagues was a massive hailstorm, which the Bible tells us consisted of hailstones and fire from the sky. The Midrash interprets this to mean that the fire burned inside the hailstones, which would be impossible under ordinary circumstances, but which God produced in this case as an open miracle to show the Hebrews Who was rescuing them.

When Moses prayed that the plague end, again according to Midrash, the hail stopped falling on the spot. The hailstones that had not yet hit the ground miraculously remained in the air, and there they are to this day, ready to come down as part of the cleansing of the Earth when the Messiah arrives.

And, according to NASA, there they are, all mixed up in the tail of a comet.

You don't have to take the Midrash literally, of course, but it's interesting, isn't it? And on the day after many Jews fasted in commemoration of an ancient prayer for redemption, myself included.

I take a certain amount of satisfaction, deserved or undeserved, from that.

Benshlomo says, We want Mashiach now, we don't want to wait.

Blaming the Victim

2006-02-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

Oh my God.

Harry Whittington, the man Dick Cheney shot last weekend, has apologized, apparently for getting in the way of the VP's gun. He's sorry for everything the VP and his family have had to go through on account of his carelessness.

Do you understand this? Mr. Whittington got a face full of buckshot, and he's apologizing. Yeah, poor Dick Cheney.

John Kerry is a hunting enthusiast, too. Can you imagine what the Republican reaction would be if he got careless and shot someone by accident? Do you think for one minute that the "President" would be satisfied with anything short of flaying him alive? (Notice, by the way, that Senator Kerry's hunting partner is still on two feet.)

Oh well, at least this incident demonstrates in the clearest possible fashion where Republican sympathies lie; with those in power, always always always.

Benshlomo says, Sometimes victims are actually victims.

Accidents Will Happen

2006-02-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

As a determined enemy of this administration, I've been trying to find some way of using Dick Cheney's hunting accident as a means to tear down the Bush presidency - to say that it indicates how dangerous this presidential team is, or how little it cares about safety, or what have you.

Can't do it. It was an accident. I even know a man who was the victim of a similar accident some years ago.

The way the administration announced the thing, on the other hand, is just the opportunity I was looking for.

Get this - Cheney accidentally shoots another hunter on Saturday evening. (That the victim is a prominent Texas Republican and Bush donor is a nice irony.) No one apparently even discusses informing the public until Sunday morning, and no one actually tells the press until some 24 hours after the accident, when the owners of the ranch where the shooting took place talk about it to a newspaper in Corpus Christi.

Nothing necessarily untoward, so far, but then everyone reassures us about the reason for the delay. Why did it take so long? Because everyone in the vicinity was so concerned about getting the injured man to the hospital, and didn't want to waste energy discussing it with the press.

Let's think about this for a minute. According to MSNBC, the ranch where all of this happened covers about 50,000 acres and has been in the same family for over 100 years. Do you believe that Dick Cheney and the guy he shot were the only hunters on the premises this weekend? I didn't think so.

Do you believe there was no one on the site except those two hunters and a couple of family members? I didn't think so.

Do you believe that everyone present at a 50,000 acre ranch during hunting season, at a time when the Vice President of the United States and God knows how many Secret Service agents were there, had to drop whatever they were doing and personally take care of an injured man until they could get him to a doctor? I didn't think so.

So, to sum up, do you believe that it needed everyone on the premises to get this guy to the hospital? That no one could be spared to tell the American people about an accident involving the second highest officeholder in the Executive Branch? No? Me neither.

Call me a cynic, but I suspect that Cheney and his bunch spent the time planning how to spin the incident. And doing a pretty poor job at that.

Even if I'm wrong, though, I still think the Bush Administration machine blew this one up, and as usual it's spending all its energy trying to make itself look good.

Benshlomo says, Looks like Dick Cheney shot his buddy in the face and himself in the foot.

Sense of Proportion

2006-02-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a well-reasoned, and therefore frightening, comment on the recent hoo-ha regarding those cartoons of Muhammad published in Europe lately.

I have little to add, except for one thing. The writers, Roberta Seid and Roz Rothstein, rightly point out the evident attitude among those Muslims who riot over cartoons that only Islam is to be treated with any respect at all, whereas all other faiths may be not only ridiculed, but attacked without mercy. Is anyone surprised at this?

Granted that each religion's followers believe, pretty much by definition, that their faith is correct and all other incorrect. I, for example, believe that Christianity and Islam are both mistaken about the true nature of God and the Universe, and that Judaism has it right. At various times in history, pretty nearly every religion's followers have tried to force their world view on everyone they could get their hands on while reacting with fury at any such attempt by anyone else; indeed, it's an unfortunate characteristic of human nature that we can dish it out but can't take it.

So this attitude on the part of the Muslims is simply par for the course; after all, from their point of view, ridicule of other faiths is simply ridicule of a silly or dangerous falsehood, whereas ridicule of Islam is a profound insult to the one true God. The difference, as I hope I don't need to point out, is that in the 21st century most religious groups have gotten past the necessity of spilling blood when their beliefs are denied. That is, people still kill each other over genuine religious differences, but not over cartoons.

So, to my Muslim bretheren who indulge in this kind of display, I ask this question: I can understand getting upset if someone says your faith is untrue, but how do you expect to be taken seriously when you can't even hold your mud over a cartoon?

Benshlomo says, Keep your hands to yourself.

Sympathy for the Jackoff?

2006-02-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

David Klinghoffer published this attempt at a defense of Jack Abramoff in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal last week.

Now, as I believe I've made clear before, I think Abram Jackoff is a terrible blot on the Jewish community in more ways than I could ever count, so I wrote this response:

It's all very well for Klinghoffer to quote Torah law in assessing Jewish anger towards Jack Abramoff, but he should at least get his facts straight. The rabbis teach that a unanimous verdict demands reconsideration, not outright dismissal, and then only in capital cases. Neither death nor dismissal applies here.

By all means let's give Abramoff the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging his generosity and repentance. Let's not, however, simply forget what he did, which involved more than just fraud. He undermined American democracy at a time when we are allegedly spreading it worldwide, while proclaiming his devotion to Jewish ethics.

To quote another Torah law, we leave an executed criminal's body hanging until sundown, then respectfully remove it. Until then it remains in plain sight so that all may see and be afraid to sin.

In view of that principle, it's a little early for the kind of instantaneous forgiveness that Klinghoffer wants, particularly considering Abramoff's utter failure to correct himself until caught.

You better believe that sort of hypocrisy is a desecration of God's name. Praise Abramoff if you must, but cut the breast-beating about how the Jewish community abandoned him. He abandoned it long ago.

Benshlomo says, He that will not follow the law in good times may not excuse himself by it in bad times.

Great Women of History

2006-02-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

I'm extremely fond of people who don't strut - those who tell the truth about themselves, the good and the less good. So let's commemorate the birthday today of Nell Gwynne (1650-1687), mistress of Charles II of England.

And why should we pay any attention to this woman? Here's one of my favorite stories, coming to you from the "It's good to be the king" department:

Charles II had several mistresses, which was pretty common for royalty at the time - come to think of it, it's pretty common for royalty now - and he didn't discriminate. He took on Catholics, Protestants, maids and nobles.

One day Nell Gwynne was riding through Oxford in her carriage, and a crowd of people mistook her for Louise de Kerouaille, another royal mistress and a very unpopular Catholic. They started shouting opprobrious epithets; it looked like a riot in the making. Ms. Gwynne quickly realized what the problem was, stuck her head out the window, and said something like "Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore."

They loved it, and an ugly scene was averted.

Benshlomo says, There's nothing like calling a spade a spade.

Villains and Thieves

2006-02-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

Let's see now. Over the last couple of days...

Ken Lay and Jeff Skillings began their trial for fraud and whatnot in the Enron matter. Remember that these are the guys who, according to their own chief accountant, announced rosy earnings when they knew perfectly well that their company was in the tank. They thereby cleaned out their employees' pension fund and God knows what else.

Sam Alito took the oath of office as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. This guy got a total pass from the Senate, despite endless unanswered questions about his evident totalitarian ideas, starting with his membership in an alumni organization that advocated barring minority enrollment at Princeton as much as possible. Now we've got a court that's liable to give the government more power to tap our phones, read our emails, and throw us in the slammer than any genuine democracy ever dreamed of.

And George W. "Prez" Bush delivered a State of the Union address containing absolutely nothing we haven't heard before. Even his announcement that the U.S. is addicted to foreign oil first emerged no later than the Jimmy Carter administration thirty years ago, and you know that back then the Bush family wanted nothing to do with alternative energy sources.

And to top it all off, he began his remarks with a tribute to Coretta Scott King, who worked all her life (as, of course, did her late husband) advocating an idea of the United States that most certainly turns George W.'s stomach in his private moments.

Benshlomo says, Skin 'em.

More Light in the World

2006-01-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

Happy 250th birthday to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who is holding up remarkably well for someone who died at the age of 35.

The very amusing and skillful classical-music critic Jim Svejda tells the story of how he once filled out a job application and wrote "Mozart" in the space marked Religion. The interviewer was not amused, but then, says Svejda, "I hadn't intended it as a joke."

That more or less sums it up. I'm no expert on orchestral music, and there are times when I prefer the work of other composers, but if nothing else Mozart is the most dependable of artists. Other musicians step wrong from time to time; not Wolfgang. Even his most ridiculous pieces (see "Abduction from the Seraglio" and "The Magic Flute") will suddenly reach in and touch your heart.

(Yeah, I know, there are a lot of people who will threaten me with death or worse for that opinion of "Zauberflote." To me, the thing is and always will be a third-rate fairy tale with a lot of embarrassing philosopho-sexual trash dropped in like overcooked matzo balls. Nevertheless, as I say, the damn thing can still move me. No one cuts Amadeus.)

I note with interest that today is also the 125th anniversary of the day Thomas Edison filed a patent for the electric light bulb.

And thus, as we should be told much more often, do art and science pursue the same goals.

Benshlomo says, Light is light.

Terrorists in the State House

2006-01-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a pretty good analysis of the Hamas victory in yesterday's Palestinian elections. Juan Cole is not exactly Israel's friend, and I disagree heartily with some of his assertions in this piece. There's no evidence I'm aware of, for instance, that Israel intends to unilaterally withdraw from West Bank territory while keeping large blocks of settlments there, although I'm sure they do intend to maintain control of united Jerusalem - it's Israel's eternal capital and always has been. Nevertheless, Cole's major points about George Bush's America, and about Sharon's Israel, seem quite well-taken.

So I don't have much to add regarding the new power of Hamas. I suspect that the Palestinian people did indeed vote for that party because Fatah is a corrupt gang of thieves and the voters had had enough. I'd like to believe, as I've been told, that a great many Palestinian Arabs could not possibly care less about destroying Israel, for all the "leadership's" rhetoric. And I suspect that, once Hamas takes power, with or without Fatah, they'll be so busy cleaning up they won't have time to blow up Jews any more than they have been (which is bad enough, but not as bad as it could be).

All in all, I'm not exactly happy about Hamas, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed real hard.

Benshlomo says, Hope is most powerful when all seems lost.

Open Letter to the White House - Doubts in Your Mind

2006-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

I seriously considered giving you a break on the issue of illegal wiretaps on American citizens' phones. God knows why; maybe I just felt tired. My thanks to you, therefore, for your comments at the "super-secret" NSA headquarters yesterday (and what's with the "super-secret" moniker? What is this, a James Bond movie?). I feel like those remarks really woke me up.

Let's see - you said two things in particular that really struck me as even more cute than your usual meaningless fluff. First, there was your declaration that "the American people expect me to protect their security and their civil rights, and that's what I'm doing." Second, there was your reassurance, "There's no doubt in my mind" that those NSA wiretaps are constitutional.

Now, sir, I've addressed you before on the subject of what the American people expect from you. Your poll numbers have gone up slightly since that time, but not enough to bolster your claim. It's obvious that the American people, contrary to your assertion, expect nothing but further bumbling from you and your administration, whether deliberately or through mere incompetence.

I won't bother to repeat myself any further than that when it comes to yesterday's statement, though. Let's discuss exactly what you seem to think the American people expect from you - protection of our security and our civil rights. Where in the world did you get the idea that those items reside in your personal job description?

Time for a quick civics lesson. You, sir, are the head of the Executive Branch, not the emperor. Your job is to implement the laws enacted by the legislative branch, that is, the Congress of the United States. You are indeed the commander in chief of the armed forces; that does not mean that you make all the decisions having to do with national security, or with anything else, nor does it mean that you may not be questioned or investigated. Your decisions and orders are subject to review, just as are the decisions and orders of Congress and of the courts. Protection of our security is a joint responsibility to be shared between the three branches of government, not your personal bailiwick.

As for protection of our civil rights, that is even less your personal task than national security. You are commander in chief of the armed forces, and therefore may be considered to have some leeway in your military actions. You are certainly not commander in chief of the Bill of Rights - that is utterly outside your jurisdiction. If, as is undeniable, our national security is a matter for joint administration among the three branches of government, our civil rights and freedoms are even more a matter for joint oversight. They are not to be molded to the will of any executive, least of all a secrecy-obsessed power-hungry demagogue like yourself.

So much for what the American people expect of you (and I might add, your statement that you are indeed protecting our national security and our civil rights is simply another lie, but we'll cover that sometime in the future). Let's move on to your other statement. You said "There is no doubt in my mind" that the NSA wiretaps are unconstitutional.

Mr. President, I could not possibly care less what is in your mind. Your mind is not the final arbiter of what is and is not constitutional, and you may not simply wipe away your misdeeds by executive fiat. I would not trust Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, with that power - I certainly will not trust you with it.

There has been a lot of talk from you and your administration lately, attempting to reassure us that no telephone conversations between American citizens have been subject to illegal wiretaps; that our government is listening only to phone calls originating overseas; that the information thus obtained has prevented several terrorist attacks; that revealing this secret program gives valuable information to this nation's enemies; and so on. These claims, too, do not weigh with me in the least whether true or false. As usual, you and your cronies are missing the point in a quite spectacular fashion.

Once again, allow me to educate you regarding the American governmental system. You may not simply do as you please - you are required to submit to judicial oversight. If you cannot convince Congress and the courts that your contemplated actions are necessary and legal, you may not undertake them, but you are required to make your argument nevertheless. You may not violate the law at any time, nor attempt to excuse your conduct later, when it becomes known, no matter how critical you may consider your actions to be. If you find governmental processes slow or inefficient, you are required to work with the other branches to fix them; you may not simply go around them. In short, when it comes to your job as an employee of the American people, no matter what is in your mind (or whatever you call your mind), you are to submit its contents for review before you act.

I notice that, in your first comment, you evidently claim to read the minds of the American people, to know what they expect of you. In your second, you evidently ask us to read your mind and to trust what's there. We refute both claims, sir. Henceforth, we require that you obey the laws and do your job properly, rather than destroying all democratic institutions within your reach while claiming to preserve them.

If you find that requirement uncongenial, you can pack up your things, head back to Crawford, and let your cows try to read your mind. They could not possibly be less successful than the American people in figuring out just what the dickens you're up to.

That'll Do

2006-01-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

The other day, Little Miss and I went grocery shopping at a local Whole Foods. We were trying to pick out the proper brand of qinoa (you'd never find that in a regular grocery store), when we heard a voice asking "Excuse me, is this your cart?"

I turned around and found myself face to face with Farmer Hoggett - James Cromwell.

His voice was polite and his face was friendly, but I don't think Little Miss recognized him. She said "No," and turned back to the qinoa.

Mr. Cromwell took the empty cart down the aisle, and a couple of minutes later Little Miss looked up at me sheepishly and said "That wasn't very polite of me, was it?"

That's one thing about Little Miss that really softens my heart; she loves people so much and she wants to treat them well so much, that she'll think she's being rude when she's only being normal.

So we walked down the aisle and Little Miss said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so short."

Mr. Cromwell grinned so wide I thought the top of his head would fall off, and he said "That's quite all right, you weren't!"

As we continued our shopping, I said to Little Miss, "You know who that was? That was Farmer Hoggett!"

She didn't quite remember the name.

"You know, the dead guy from I, Robot!" That's one of her favorite movies.

I think she felt very happy that she had apologized to him before she found out he's a celebrity.

Living in Los Angeles, you see celebrities on a fairly regular basis. Over the last few years, within about a ten-mile radius, I've seen John Goodman, Jeff Goldblum, Shaquille O'Neal, John Cleese, Geena Davis, Jerry Seinfeld, Axl Rose, John Hiatt, and a host of others, all in the ordinary course of daily life, and old as I am I still find it surprising that they're normal sized (except Shaq, that is, and Geena Davis too). I keep expecting celebrities to be about fifty feet tall, even the ones you only see on television.

None of them have ever been rude to me, but James Cromwell was about the friendliest (with the possible exception of Jay Leno), and he was nice to someone I love, so I'm going to remember this incident very happily.

Benshlomo says, Way to go, Farmer Hoggett.

Shandeh fur de Goyim

2006-01-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

It's a little late to comment, but now that the dust has died down, here are a few comments about Jack Abramoff's hat (with thanks to Stephen Hirsch for pointing it out).

I've said before that Jack Abramoff's claims of Jewish orthodox belief strike me as - well - incongruous, to say the least. Before he pled guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy, I thought with many others that his declared spiritual beliefs and his apparent corrupt activities didn't quite match up. How could he spend his week taking money from both opposing sides of an issues - from two Indian tribes interested in building a casino on the same spot, say - insult them in his e-mails and private conversations, join with Tom "Broken Hammer" DeLay in violating both legal and ethical rules, and then go to synagogue on the Sabbath and proclaim aloud his devotion to the law of Moses?

Then he comes marching out of court wearing the hat of an Orthodox Jew and everyone says he looks like a gangster.

In truly orthodox circles, this is called a Chillul HaShem, a desecration of God's name. What it does is give people a reason to say "If that's what belief in God leads to, I want nothing to do with it." Those people, under the influence of Abram Jackoff's hypocrisy, thus separate themselves from God, the source of all happiness, and from their access to the best life available.

The title of this post is Yiddish and means "it's a shame for the non-Jewish world." It may be an even more apt phrase than Chilllul HaShem in this context - Abramoff brings us all into disrepute. God keep me far away from any Torah that man adheres to.

Benshlomo says, Lose the hat, Jack, and don't you come back no more.

Hail to the King

2006-01-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows, Elvis Presley would have been 70 years old yesterday. Sorry I missed your birthday, King.

Yeah, he never wrote a song, and he recorded a lot of junk, and almost all his movies are a waste of time, and his final years were just sad. On the other hand, if he hadn't lived it would have been necessary to invent him.

I like what Greil Marcus said in Mystery Train, which everyone should read right away. Marcus' point was that Elvis, whatever else you might say about him, was great. He was a great rocker, a great bore, a great American, a great purveyor of schlock, and so forth. In other words, he jumped into life with both feet and did something with it. We're still trying to figure out what, and it's a very useful inquiry.

Which probably explains why there are still people who believe he's still alive. In a very real sense, he is.

Benshlomo says, I would not care to live in a world that had not been touched by Elvis.

The Howl of Human Jackals

2006-01-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

At the risk of perpetrating a radioactively awful joke, who died and made this idiot God? I suppose he's got an even greater mental ability than the Lord Almighty; after all, he seems to think he can read the Lord's mind. Does that strike anyone else as just plain weird?

It's not enough we look like losing Ariel Sharon just at the time when he might actually do some good for a change; now we have to tolerate this senile egomaniac's oral diarrhea on the subject as well? Can't someone just take a length of barbed wire and sew his dribbling mouth shut for him?

Yesterday I complained to God that I just couldn't figure out what He wants from us. I wish Pat "God's Analyst" Robertson were similarly confused.

Benshlomo says, If God talks to you, best clam up about it.

Forward into the Past

2006-01-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

Ariel Sharon is back in the hospital after a "major stroke," according to his doctors.

After a lifetime of war against the Palestinians, he suddenly gives us reason to be optimistic. He withdraws from Gaza and makes it look easy, he unites Israel's voters like they haven't been united in years, he gets us all set to hope for peace again, he has a minor stroke and recovers nicely, and then he gets really sick. The louse.

Just when he was getting ready to win another term as prime minister and bring (so it seemed) a new, genuinely moderate party called Kadima (meaning "Forward") into Israeli politics - and with his old nemesis, Shimon Peres, with him - it now looks like he's going to have to withdraw. Even if he survives.

Remember what I said about looking forward to the years of my father's life after his minor stroke?

You're damn right I'm feeling bitter.

Benshlomo says, Dear Lord, sometimes I wonder what You want from us.

Think I Thought I Saw You Try

2006-01-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

Today's a pretty busy day, it seems. Even if you don't count the Rose Bowl.

In politics, the putz Jack Abramoff prepares (or so the conjecture goes) to tell us who he bribed, when, for how much, and what he got for his money. Republicans all over Washington quake in their boots; with amazing speed, and with loud declarations of shock, they fling shovels full of Abramoff money out the window in the general direction of various charities.

When was the last time you saw a bunch of Congressmen move that fast when doing government business? Even George W. Bush can't goose them that hard. But I guess people move when someone shoves a red-hot poker up the fundament, or threatens to.

I'll have more to say on Abram Jackoff later. Meantime, in other news, eleven miners died in a West Virginia mining accident and a twelfth remains in critical condition. This after their families were at first told that the men were alive and well.

I've been trying to find a way to blame the Bush administration for this cock-up, but even I'm not that deluded. Yet.

However, on a strictly personal note, I'm most intrigued by the fact that today is Michael Stipe's birthday. I have two reasons for this. One, he's the lead singer for R.E.M., one of my favorite bands, whose music accompanied me through some difficult, amazing, frightening and profound times. Two, today is also my late father's birthday.

I only just learned that my father shared a birthday with one of my favorite rock stars. Who knew?

They don't seem to have much in common. My father divorced my mother when I was very young, and although he was a thoroughly decent man – paid his child support on time, almost never missed a weekend visit – it took me years to think of him as a father. I doubt Michael Stipe will have the same problem; despite rumors in the mid-80's of a relationship between him and Natalie Merchant, he came out of the closet at about the same time as R.E.M.'s biggest hit, "Losing My Religion." (He said "I wear makeup and a dress onstage - why are you so surprised?") In fact, there are those who say that song is itself about being gay in a homophobic world. I don't quite get that myself, but you can check out the lyrics if you like.

On the other hand, like Michael Stipe (who spent something like five years with R.E.M. playing bars and pizza joints on the south Atlantic coast practically without a break), my father was a stunningly hard worker. He came from a poor background and never got to finish college, but he got into the computer business back when computers took up three rooms. He predicted ATMs and home computers back in 1976. When he had his first stroke, he referred to it as a "wake-up call" and decided it was time to take it easy.

I remember visiting him in the hospital at that time. He was a little stiff on his left side and his voice rasped because of the tube they had run down his nose before he regained consciousness, but it was his facial expression that really struck me. He looked a little worried and a little stunned, like he still couldn't quite believe what had happened to him. Mostly, though, he looked pensive. He was thinking about things he'd probably never given himself time to think about before. He told me he would be working less and enjoying life more, and he started by asking his long-time girlfriend – a woman I really liked – to marry him.

I was really looking forward to hanging out with him over the next period of years, seeing what he did with himself. With that energy of his, I figured he'd stun us all.

Then a couple of weeks later he had another stroke, much more severe, and it killed him.

While my parents were still married, my mother tells me, she would sometimes ask him to spend more time with me. His response was that although his family was the most important thing in his life, his work was more urgent. I've come to believe that his family, particularly his sons, were indeed the most important thing in his life. I've also learned that we human beings may declare what's urgent in our lives and what's not. My father never learned that himself, but he taught it to me.

Benshlomo says, Happy birthday, Dad.

Two Zero Zero Six

2006-01-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the day with Little Miss at my brother's house, with my mother and her sister, my sister-in-law and niece in attendance.

I used to think that if I didn't spend New Year's Day doing something out of the ordinary, something was seriously wrong. That usually consisted of watching the Rose Parade on television. And there's nothing wrong with the Rose Parade, but expecting to get some kind of special-occasion high from a television broadcast invariably gave me the sense that it was going to be just another year.

I much prefer today's marking of the turn to 2006. Nothing specifically new-yearish, but it left me with the definite knowledge that this year is going to be good.

Benshlomo says, Happy New Year, everyone.

Hung Upside Down

2005-12-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

I promise to post something of a cheeful New Year's nature later on, but first, check this out. The Justice Department wants to know who leaked information to the New York Times regarding George W. Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program.

Does anyone in government want to know how these ANTI-AMERICAN ASSHOLES got away with spying on American citizens in the first place?

Benshlomo says, Wake me up when some patriots get elected.

Oh Those City Lights

2005-12-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

The Lumiere Brothers received their first paying audience to a moving picture show 110 years ago today. This audience saw a number of short films, including The Arrival of a Train at la Ciotat Station. It scared the pants off them. Whoever heard of a train bashing right through the wall of a building?

Well, of course, the movies have seen much worse things since that time, but I'm told that December 28, 1895 is widely considered the birth of the cinema.

Just think, if it weren't for the cultural revolution we commemorate today, I personally would have at least 300 extra hours each year for productive work!

Benshlomo says, Thanks a lot, Lumieres!

Festival of Lights

2005-12-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

I hate to be picky, and I'm grateful that my men's chorus included a medley of Chanukah songs in our Christmas program this year. I'm even impressed that the medley included a song in Hebrew, since it would doubtless have been easy enough to find Chanukah songs exclusively in English.

Now, would someone please explain to me why the translator insisted on the following English lyric (emphasis added)?

Chanukah, Chanukah, happy time of year,
Chanukah, Chanukah, presents and good cheer.

Maybe it's just me, but there's something indisputably goyisch about the phrase "good cheer" - makes me think of a bunch of Charles Dickens lookalikes sitting at the groaning festive board, surrounded by holly-decked halls, toasting each other like crazy with mulled wine while a low-level blizzard slowly covers the windows, and suffering from horrible gout for the ensuing six months. In any case, it doesn't have much to do with Chanukah.

Granted, the original Hebrew is pretty difficult. It goes like this:

Chanukah, Chanukah, chag yafeh kol kach,
Ohr chaviv misaviv, gil le-yeled rach,
Chanukah, Chanukah, s'vivon sov sov,
Sov sov sov, sov sov sov, ma na-im va tov!

Which very loosely translated means this:

Chaunkah, Chanukah, a completely happy holiday,
Beautiful light all around, joy for the little child,
Chanukah, Chanukah, dreidel spin, spin,
Spin spin spin, spin spin spin, how pleasant and fun!

(Let's just casually ignore the Yiddish version until next year. Enough is enough already.)

I probably need not go over the Chanukah story here - if John Belushi felt it was familiar enough to spoof on Saturday Night Live years ago, then everyone must know it - but this is my blog and I'm telling the story, so siddown and listen up!

It all starts when the Syrian Greeks conquer Judea, which had before that time been in the control of Persia. (Matter of fact, I think the Greeks conquered pretty much all of Persia at around that time, but everyone knows that we Jews only care about Israel, so let's skip over that part.) Foreign control of Israel was nothing new, but unlike most previous foreign entities, the Greeks decided that everyone in their empire had to imitate them. So they outlawed the study of Torah, put up statues of the Emperor (a guy named Antiochus) in the Holy Temple, and commanded that every religious observance in the empire include the sacrifice of a swine.

Strike three.

A certain priestly family called the Hasmoneans, led by Mattityahu (or Mattathias as he's known in Greek), organize an insurrection and an army called the Maccabees, and despite their small numbers they eventually throw the Greeks out. This is Miracle Number One. Control of Israel is back in Jewish hands for the first time in ages, and one of the first things they do is cleanse the Temple and rededicate it ("Chanukah" is Hebrew for "dedication").

Now, worship in the Holy Temple included a good many activities, one of which was keeping the seven-branched candelabrum, the "Menorah," lit at all times with olive oil. Unfortunately, the Temple has been desecrated for so long that the Jews can only find one small container of pure oil - the rest have either been broken open or used for idol worship. There's only enough oil in the one container to burn for one day, and it's going to take them eight days to prepare more. They decide, rather than wait to light the menorah and keep it lit, they'll light it for the one day. It's a pretty well-established Torah principle that God would have us follow the commandments as well as possible, even if we can't do it perfectly at the moment.

So someone lights the menorah and they get to work on more olive oil. Eight days go by, and the same oil is still burning when they pour the new oil in. Miracle Number Two.

Here's an interesting, if rather disturbing, commentary on Chanukah from a rabbi at Yale named James Ponet. Rabbi Ponet proposes that telling the Chanukah story as I have done above is all very well when the Jews are weak, scattered and oppressed, but that today when we have our nation and land back, we'd be wiser to think of the Chanukah story as that of a Jewish civil war. He has a point - the Maccabees were a considerable minority in Israel at the time, and most Jews wanted to assimilate among the Greeks. There was a lot of blood spilled, with Jews killing Jews, a horrible thing to contemplate. However, I think that Rabbi Ponet's question as to "whether an ethnic group that wishes to survive must turn itself into a nation-state" is disingenuous, at best. We're talking about Israel here, not just any ethnic group, and Israel is in danger at all times of being "wiped off the map," as you may remember.

Rather, I suggest that we take time this Chanukah to wonder whether Israel can survive with its soul intact if it continues to ignore God. I wouldn't dream of advocating that Israel become a theocracy - some of those rabbis are scary enough in civilian life. I do, however, call this to mind; on Chanukah we're told to remember the miracles that God did in saving Israel from its foes. What makes us think that God won't do that now if we let Him?

Benshlomo says, Could you help someone if they thought you weren't even there?

Latter Day Who?

2005-12-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today, December 23rd, is Joseph Smith's 200th birthday. Do you know where your conspiracy channel is?

I'm a religious man, friends and neighbors, but even I can see what happens when we turn our eyes to Heaven exclusively. We trip on rocks.

Benshlomo says, Watch where you're going.

Open Letter to the White House - Killing the Messenger

2005-12-19T23:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

I have to hand it to you, sir. The other day you actually made use of a subtle rhetorical device. First you secretly and illegally wiretap American citizens, then when confronted with this action, you deftly change the subject from your own crimes and focus attention on those who told everyone about it. More slippery yet, you actually own up to your violation of the law, cunningly defusing the charge altogether. Now, instead of discussing whether or not you should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, we have to spend time discussing whether or not the New York Times should have fulfilled on its basic obligation to inform the public of what its elected officials are up to. Well done indeed!

Congratulations, too, on the obvious effort you've put into studying your vice president, your chief political adviser, and all those right-wing pundits you've either enrolled or purchased over the years. There was a time, you may recall, when you claimed you didn't "do nuance." It was a worrisome claim, sir, since no conservative politician today can survive for more than a few minutes without some skill in weaseling out of his or her self-generated difficulties - just ask Tom DeLay and Bill Frist. Certainly, no politician of your stripe can continue handing over America's future to his rich friends without giving himself some room to maneuver by any means necessary. Of course, your friends must have taken some comfort in the fact that you had masters of fancy footwork like Cheney, Rove, Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and dozens of others to cover your tail, but on the other hand there would always be the chance that you could stick your foot in it if you weren't supervised. What a sigh of relief they must have heaved when you pulled the old blame-the-messenger game on the New York Times the other day, and apparently on your own initiative! You've been learning your lessons very well, haven't you?

I just can't get over how beautifully you handled yourself. When I try to put myself in your place I can't imagine what I would have done. I'm not as decisive as you; if I had been the President in 2002, I might have hesitated before secretly wiretapping American citizens who hadn't been charged with a crime in order to maybe find some terrorists, just because I have some respect for those pesky civil rights our forefathers fought and died for. And if I had summoned up the courage to commit that crime and some lousy liberal newspaper had caught me at it, I might have folded; I might have actually shown our enemies (not to mention our friends) that America respects democracy and the rule of law, instead of showing them that we can beat them at their own dictatorial game. Not you, by God; you turned right around and nailed those who would hold you accountable right between the eyes. Accusing them of damaging American security was a nice touch; without that, you might have looked like some kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. People might even have said that you were sending the wrong message - that according to you, tattling is a worse sin than tyranny. They sure won't say that now, not when whistleblowing is called treason. Altogether, it was a beautifully designed piece of political theater, sir.

I'm glad to see that you seem to be giving yourself due credit for your cleverness, too, and practicing it more often. I notice that lately you've used the word "irresponsible" for those in Congress who voted to end the Patriot Act and give the American people their civil rights back, and that you've asked us not to "give up on Iraq" when some public speakers suggest it would be as well to plan this war, instead of just sitting there and making the Iraqis angrier every day. George Orwell would be proud.

Yes, sir, your rhetoric is improving by leaps and bounds. Soon you'll be able to burn all our rights down to the ground and make us think it's not only good, but critically important. I know you like to give nicknames, and I've got one for you - how about George "Agent Orange" Bush? You know, that stuff they used in Vietnam to kill all the trees in an area where there might be enemy soldiers, leaving a desert behind but winning the war at all costs? That seems to be what you're interested in.

And when the whole political landscape is utterly barren because of your maneuvers, Mr. President - when there's nothing left of the beautiful and free country we once knew - well, we'll miss America terribly, but at least we'll know that you only destroyed it in order to save it.

Music and Literature Today

2005-12-16T15:09:00.000-08:00

As every fan of Peanuts cartoons knows, today is Beethoven's birthday.

He was born in 1770, and let's face it; he had a pretty miserable life. His father was an abusive opportunist who chained him to his piano during his childhood in an effort to make him a second Mozart. He suffered nearly constant pain from the time he turned 30 (the most recent theory is that this stemmed from lead poisoning, but I'm sure he didn't care much about the cause). And, of course, he wrote his greatest music after he lost his hearing, and never got a chance to hear it. Despite all that, a lot of musicologists will tell you that he took the clear rules of classical music and used them to produce something entirely new, a clear and necessary step to the Romantic style in art that we still enjoy today, for better or worse. Good thing, too, because Mozart had explored those classical rules about as thoroughly as possible. Without some breakthrough like Beethoven provided, European composers would have been stuck repeating Mozart's moves until they died a painless death.

I believe that when we die, we experience time in the same way God does, which is to say, all moments simultaneously. Maybe Beethoven is listening to the Ninth Symphony right now.

Well, anyway, I've known since childhood that December 16th was Ludwig's birthday. I did not, however, know until recently that today is also Philip K. Dick's 77th birthday (or would be if he were still alive).

Actually, I suspect that Phil would be the first to suggest that his "death" is insignificant under the circumstances. In his entire writing career, he never stopped questioning the reality of reality. He wrote about drug pushers who exist only in pharmaceutical hallucinations, androids with more soul than their human creators, the victory of Japan and Germany over the United States in World War II (yes, you read that right). Just before his death, Hollywood finally caught on to his genius and gave us Bladerunner, based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Since then, Hollywood has given us Total Recall, Imposter, Minority Report and Paycheck, all based on Dick short stories, and there's talk of a movie based on his novel A Scanner Darkly. That last is pretty exciting (apart from the fact that Keanu Reeves seems to be starring in it), since Dick himself considered it "the only masterpiece I will ever write." That may be correct, but you have to read them all anyway, whether you like science fiction or not.

A more interesting point today, however, is that Philip K. Dick did in literature (yeah, literature, you snobs) what Beethoven did in music; he took the established rules and used them to make something utterly unexpected. Good thing, too, because shortly before "Bladerunner" came out, we all went to see a little movie called "Star Wars." Which was a perfectly good piece of fantasy, but it took over the world. Go to any bookstore and check out the science fiction section; at least half of it consists of Star Wars tie-ins, or Star Trek tie-ins, or some other movie or television novelization. If it weren't for Philip K. Dick and people like him, there would be no science fiction left at all.

So, as with Beethoven (born December 16, 1770), so with Philip K. Dick (born December 16, 1928). Both geniuses, both historically and artistically critical. But let's let Schroeder have the last word:

Benshlomo says, Geniuses write their own rules.

Open Letter to the White House - Responsibility

2005-12-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

I've written you a great deal, one way and another, about responsibility over the last few years. Lord knows, I've tried to educate you as to what that word means, and about the consequences of taking genuine responsibility for our actions. I've told you over and over again that taking responsibility is not a mere rhetorical device, but a true philosophical stand we take that affects both our view of the past and our future actions. I must give it up as a bad job. Your latest speech makes it abundantly clear - you neither know nor care what responsibility is.

I'm an optimist, so I'll try this one more time. When you say, of the decision to go to war in Iraq, that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," and that "I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," that means, sir, that your decision was based on false premises and was therefore the wrong decision. You cannot, a mere few minutes later, turn around and declare "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct one," and "Saddam was a threat," and expect to be taken seriously. The statements are mutually contradictory. They cannot all be true.

At the very least, when you say that you are responsible for the chain of events that led to a wrong decision, it is absurd to then claim that your future actions will not change. The statement that you are responsible for an error implies, logically, that your previous course of action was based on a false assumption. By insisting, after acknowledging an error, that you will continue to do the same thing you're doing now, you imply either that the error was not a serious one, or that your acknowledgment of responsibility means nothing at all. If the first, you had no reason to construct a major address around a minor mistake; if the second, you display a cynicism and depravity that I think would shame a robber of old-age pensions or panhandler's coins.

You recently insisted that you don't live in a bubble. Mr. President, I wish to God you did. It would be better than having a president who lives in the reflection of a funhouse mirror.

Shades of Wonderful Things to Come

2005-12-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

I've been so wrapped up in world events and anniversaries, I completely forgot to blog about a significant event in my own life. Call it humility if you like, but it's probably just embarrassment.

A couple of weeks ago, American Cinematheque held a showing of "Playtime" by Jacques Tati. It's one of the funniest movies ever made, and screenings are not common. So when Little Miss came down for the weekend, I told her I really wanted her to see it.

Friday night is the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, of course, and Little Miss wasn't thrilled about driving into Hollywood or anywhere else on the day of rest. I don't remember being particularly insistent, but I was very excited about seeing this movie and Little Miss likes to accommodate me, so we got in her car and headed to the theater.

I said "Playtime" is a hilariously funny movie, but it doesn't produce a lot of loud guffaws. You have to get into the rhythm of it. Little Miss found that difficult; she was uneasy about seeing a movie on the Sabbath, and her mind was elsewhere. She left the theater a couple of times to have a smoke and try to calm down. Then she suddenly stormed back in and hissed at me - "They're towing my car!"

Now, Little Miss lives in Ventura, which is 40 or more miles from where I live, and her daughter was still up there. What's more, her clothes and other necessities were still in the car. And finally, that car belonged to her father, who passed away about two years ago; his estate is still in probate, so the car did not have a current registration.

The immediate reason for the tow involved a few unpaid parking tickets, but we couldn't help thinking that God was trying to tell us something. Like, say, "Stop driving around on the Sabbath, you two!" Especially me. It seemed unfair that Little Miss had to deal with so much tsuris when the whole thing was really my fault for dragging us out to Hollywood of all places on a Friday night.

We were pretty upset, but we had plenty of time to calm down, walking the five miles back to my house. It was a pretty nice walk, actually; not too much traffic and some nice homes to look at. Over the next week, with a little help from me and from my mother, Little Miss got some important things out of her car, got it registered, paid the parking tickets and got home to her daughter. (It wasn't easy on the poor girl, but she has lots of family up in Ventura and she came through it all right - she's pretty tough for her age, or at least she can act like it.)

My most delighted reflection about that week, though, comes from the fact that Little Miss and I shared my apartment for that whole time, and not only did I avoid feeling constrained, I liked it a lot.

Man, am I ever going to marry her.

Benshlomo says, I love you, Little Miss.

Tookie Dies

2005-12-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows by now, Stanley "Tookie" Williams died by lethal injection early this morning.

The facts of the case are well known, although a commentator on National Public Radio recently refuted Williams' claim that he co-founded the Crips back in the 70s. According to that man, the Crips emerged a couple of years before that, and Williams co-founded another gang on the west side of Los Angeles that later merged with the Crips.

In any case, Williams was there pretty early. He was convicted of shooting four people during a robbery (although he always maintained that he was innocent), spent about 24 years in prison going through the usual appeals, grew to regret his violent past and became an author of children's books designed to turn kids away from gang life. There were plenty of people, mostly Hollywood celebrities and recording artists, who claimed that because Tookie had changed his heart, his life ought to be spared.

Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't agree. He turned down Tookie's appeal for clemency yesterday. He said Tookie's trial was conducted properly, the evidence proved his guilt, he showed no remorse for the crime he committed, and in fact the dedications of his books and various other items showed that he didn't really even feel remorse for any of the violence the Crips perpetrated. (Some say that none of this matters a damn - that the Governator sent Tookie to his death because he's trying to shore up his political support among conservatives.)

Be that as it may, this is my blog and I'm supposed to let you know what I think, right?

Well, I don't necessarily opposed the death penalty in all cases. Like many others, I'm troubled by the fact that most death row inmates are black, and are there because they killed white people, but that doesn't say anything about the death penalty; that says something about the American system of justice, which doesn't work as well as it should.

I can't get too worked up about Tookie Williams, either, to be perfectly honest with you. Assuming that he committed the crime for which he was punished, I'm content with the result; it's a "punishment fit the crime" scenario. If he did not, I can only pray that our system of justice gets fixed in a hurry. If, despite what the Governator says, Williams genuinely repented of his crimes - whether the deaths of the people he was convicted for, or the death spread by his followers in the Crips - that's between him and his God, who does not look at the appearance, but knows the heart. If he did not repent, let's hope that his death effected repentance for him.

Which bring us to the Jewish approach to capital punishment. The Bible teaches that many sins draw execution as a punishment. I know of no obvious common thread; they include various forms of blasphemy, murder, adultery, idol worship, and a host of others. The Bible clearly teaches that, in some cases at least, capital punishment acts as a deterrent to crime (see Verse 20 in particular), but more importantly, Torah text implies that repentance is not enough to provide forgiveness in all cases.

That's a frightening thing to contemplate, but take a look at this. Here's a guy named Achan who commits a sin, disobeying God's command. When asked to confess, he willingly does so. What's more, he doesn't just say "Yes I did that." He calls it what it is - he says "I have sinned."

There are those among us who, when they hear someone sincerely repent in that way, say to us "We should let that person live, because he has repented and now he will do good." Not this time - the Hebrews take Achan out of the camp and stone him. Why? Partly to remove the sin from the people, so that they can get right with God, but certain sages taught something a little different. For some sins, repentance is enough; for others, one must repent and die.

So, because Tookie Williams underwent lethal injection, is he now forgiven? Is he with God now?

Then again, as long as we're talking about execution practices in ancient Israel...

Although many sins draw execution as a punishment, the sages teach that executions in real life were so rare as to be almost nonexistant. Why? In order to sentence a person to death, the ancient Hebrew courts had to hear the same exact story of what happened from at least two witnesses, both of them found to be of exemplary moral character. What's more, they had to testify not only that they saw the sin, but that they approached the sinner first and said "What you are about to do is a sin and you shouldn't do it," and that the sinner went ahead and did it anyway. No wonder the Talmud says that a high court which imposed more than one execution in seven years was considered destructive. Notice, too, that the great Rabbi Akiva with Rabbi Tarfon said "Had we sat on the Sanhedrin [the ancient Hebrew high court] none would ever have been put to death."

So, because disagreement exists as to exactly what Tookie Williams did or did not do, should he have been spared?

Don't ask me to answer those questions, friends and neighbors. This discussion has been going on for a long, long time, and it's not going to stop now.

Benshlomo says, Leave the man alone and talk about what he taught you.

Sometime in New York City

2005-12-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

Twenty-five years ago today, John Lennon was murdered in front of his home.

When I heard the news, in a telephone call from my brother, I seem to remember reacting more or less the way Paul McCartney did; I said something like "That's a bummer." Hardly seems sufficient.

Mind you, at that time, Lennon wasn't such a big deal anymore. His last album, "Double Fantasy", was about three weeks old, and most of the people I knew at the time thought it was average at best, especially considering that half of it consisted of Yoko Ono songs. And despite what her husband said about her, and despite her abilities in other artistic and business endeavors, she can't sing.

Nevertheless, when he died, an enormous number of people seemed to remember what he once meant to them, and his reputation has skyrocketed since.

People now remember not only his music, including the excellences of "Double Fantasy," but his willingness to share himself and his life with those who loved him and his absolute refusal to say anything but what was true, as near as he could manage it. He had talent and guts, he worked ceaselessly at digging himself out of the pit his anger had thrown him into, and he wanted us all to live in peace.

In other new, today Congress extended tax cuts for the rich and extraordinary powers for the FBI to spy on Americans, the President still thinks we can win the Iraq war, the world continues to pay attention to lunatics when it comes to Middle East policy, and America's top diplomat tap-dances so fast around questions about torturing terror suspects that she digs herself and the whole country into a very deep hole.

Benshlomo says, Lennon, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

La-Dee-Dah

2005-12-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Impossibly, Woody Allen is 70 years old today. If you grew up Jewish in America during the 70s, Woody was the guy.

He started out in stand-up, moved into scriptwriting, and eventually got complete control over his films. Every time he issued a new one, it wasn't so much that you had to go see it. It was more like you were already going to see it.

He gave the country an idea of what Jews looked, talked, and thought like, for better or worse. A lot of people probably thought already that Jews were small, weak, bespectacled, intellectual and from New York, and Woody confirmed it all. These days, a lot of us feel pretty ambivalent about his persona; back in the day, we didn't care because he was funny.

And there was the delicious fact that Woody's humor was aimed at his own people; the rest of the world had to catch up with us for a change. Take that scene in Annie Hall where Alvy (Woody's character) and Annie, played by Diane Keaton, are ordering lunch in a delicatessen. Woody, to no one's surprise, orders a corned beef on rye with mustard. Annie orders a pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato. You could tell, by watching who laughed in the theater, which people were Jewish. Or maybe just from New York.

These days, when (for example) the moron Tom Paulin asserts that the Jews have no rights in Israel because they're all invaders from Brooklyn, you have to wonder whether Woody's legacy is such a good thing. And when you notice that Woody gets older and his leading ladies get younger, not to mention his affair with and later marriage to his ex-wife's adoptive daughter, you have to wonder whether someone else might not be a better most-famous-Jew-in-the-world.

Well, his movies since 1992's Crimes and Misdemeanors have ranged from mediocre to acceptable, but he's about to release Match Point. It's his first non-comedy in years, and he doesn't appear in it, so maybe he's realized that he's in a rut.

And anyway, speaking just for myself, I'm prepared to forgive Woody a good deal just for the closing lines of Love and Death way back in 1975:

As to love, well, what can I say? I think, it's not the quantity of your sexual relations, it's the quality. On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it.

Benshlomo says, It's never too late to grow up.

Open Letter to the White House - Border Patrol

2005-11-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

Honestly, I try to understand the statements you make and the principles that lie behind them, whatever they may be. I've been trying my best for the past five years, really I have. Your record remains perfect, though; I can't make head or tail of what you want when it comes to America's border with Mexico.

Let's see - you want more fencing, cameras and patrolmen on the border itself. You want more jail cells. You want a "hard" border, through which no illegal immigrant can come.

You want amnesty for illegal immigrants to stop, but you want some sort of limited legal status for certain workers, who will arrive here for a limited period of time to "fill jobs that Americans will not do."

And you want more green cards issued for legal immigrants interested in pursuing citizenship.

You call this a "comprehensive" overhaul of the immigration law, but your press secretary denies that it signals any change in focus for you.

Got it. Here are a few thoughts:

More jail cells, more cops, more technology, more green cards, more programs, more bureaucracy - in short, more money. Did you notice that there's a pretty expensive war going on? Did you know that the United States is borrowing billions every month to keep it going? I know you grew up rich, and your family has bailed you out of every financial squeeze you've ever experienced, but are you sure this is the best use of your money? Didn't you used to be a conservative once?

That goes for the border, too. Back in February 2004 you said you were a "war president" and that you made policy decisions with war on your mind; has that changed? If the border with Mexico is so porous, shouldn't you have that big expensive Department of Homeland Security patrolling it rather than a bunch of brand-new immigration officers with service revolvers? And if the border isn't really all that dangerous, why are you making speeches in El Paso about immigration when there's a war on?

Speaking of war, some of your allies cry "class war" whenever someone suggests that people in your income bracket should pay their fair share of taxes; I hope you won't take it amiss if I turn that strategy around and point it at you, sir. You want illegal immigrants smacked down as hard and as quickly as possible, you want control over the flood of Mexicans coming here to clean our houses and pick our crops - those peons fit only for those "jobs Americans will not do" - and you want to dangle citizenship like a carrot, presumably in front of those who will fit whatever immigration profile you care to come up with. Some of these notions contain a surprising amount of common sense, Mr. President, but taken together, what are you really doing if not dividing the whole population of a sovereign country into "good Mexicans" and "bad Mexicans"? What is that if not a "class war"? I guess you really are a war president, after all - just not the sort you claimed to be.

And then, with all this guff grabbing front-page headlines at a time when your approval rating approaches terminal velocity, your press secretary claims that this is not a change of focus.

Now, really, Mr. President - not a change of focus when we haven't heard a peep out of you on immigration in years? Not a change of focus when your Social Security "reform" program, that you claimed would be the major thrust of your second term, floats like a dead fish in the political waters? Not a change of focus when Americans continue to die every day in the Middle East, your advisers face grand jury investigations and indictments, and your Congressional allies embarrass themselves by accusing decorated and hawkish war veterans of cowardice? Not a change of focus when the only thing you've done correctly in years is pardon a couple of Thanksgiving turkeys? Not a change of focus - is that some kind of joke? Just how stupid do you think we are, sir?

That's a lot of questions, of course, and I don't suppose you have time to answer me, busy patrolling the Mexican border as you are at present. I understand; playing cowboy like that has got to be more fun than confronting your endless failures. Tell you what, sir - since you seem to enjoy it so much, why don't you just join the border patrol full-time and let someone run the country who knows how?

Fill the Empty Center

2005-11-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

No one can figure out Israeli politics, least of all the Israelis, but it may be that Ariel Sharon knows precisely what he's doing. At this point, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. He's just asked the president of the country to dissolve the Knesset, agreed to early elections, and announced that he will form a third party to the right of Labor and the left of Likud.

Ariel Sharon, a centrist? Is there a new world order or something?

I yield to no one in my support of Israel. Supporting Sharon is another matter entirely. This man's political career outstrips almost everyone else's in point of years, he was a military careerist before that, and through all that time he insisted that Israel's Arabs ought to be expelled. You can imagine what he wanted to do with the Arabs outside of Israel - in the occupied territories, for instance.

This made him very popular in the earlier parts of his career, but as time went on his extremist attitude marginalized him more and more, until by the turn of the century he was done, finished, kaput. Then, when the land-for-peace deal got signed, Sharon publicized his objections by visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a move that so infuriated the Arabs that they immediately gave Sharon all the legitimacy he could want by starting another intifada. As usual under such circumstances, the Israelis responded to this violence by electing a real hardliner to the Prime Minister's seat - in this case, Ariel Sharon.

Well, all right, Sharon spends a few years at his usual strong-arm game, and then suddenly last year he decides to go unilateral, withdraw from the conflict altogether. He starts building a fence between Israel and the occupied territories, and then -

Against all precedent -

Contrary to everything he has ever preached -

He closes up shop in Gaza and pulls every Jew out.

Many of his biggest fans are hugely disappointed, and some even suggest that the army should disobey any order to take Jews off any land. Despite this, the withdrawal goes off without a hitch - a few people are shot, but consider what could have happened.

Nevertheless, his right-wing backers and rivals in his own Likud party conclude that this would be a good time to outflank him, and the other major party, Labor, concludes that this is the time to show who the real liberals are. So Labor leaves the governing coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu makes noise about how Sharon's gone soft, and everything's getting very messy when Sharon decides to cut them all loose and go out on his own.

He used to be a militarist. Then he became a pragmatist. Now he's a centrist. What's going on in that head of his? Is he an old man flailing around? Is he desperate to hold onto power at any cost? Or did he cleverly maneuver the left farther left and the right farther right so he could take over the middle, where most people live?

And what's this going to do to Israel's future and the possibility of peace?

Ariel Sharon used to be the most predictable of Israeli politicians. I can't imagine that anyone, Jew or Arab, will easily believe that he's changed. Maybe he's just playing games. But then again, after all this time in power and after all the blood he's allowed to be shed, maybe he's actually turning into a statesman.

Benshlomo says, When both extremes think you're evil, you may be on the right track.

Notes on the Semi-Literary

2005-11-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

One hundred and forty years ago today, Mark Twain published his first nationally-popular story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," in the Saturday Press. Everybody go read it right now.

Wasn't that great? It was a huge smash back in 1865 and Twain was on his way to a career as an American icon.

Now, there are those who might not consider "Jumping Frog" to be great literature because it's funny. Those are the same people who never vote for comedies at Oscar time, and scoff when museums put up exhibits of comics; they believe in ART, by God, and have no truck with anything so populist as humor.

I'm sure those types will be happy to know that today is also the 77th anniversary of Steamboat Willie's release, and the twentieth anniversary of Calvin and Hobbes' debut. After all, since the three anniversaries occur on the same day, the Mrs. Grundys of the world can ignore them in one fell swoop.

Well, let them. More for the rest of us. It's all great literature.

No, really.

As for the title of this entry, the epithet "semi-literary" does not refer to the works in question, you know. Rather, it refers to those who ignore them, and it's the back 'o me hand to the lot of 'em.

Benshlomo says, A good laugh will teach you a lot more than a lecture.

Open Letter to the White House - Talking Tough

2005-11-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

I'm getting a little worried about you, sir. Over the last few days you've attacked your opposition and two foreign governments with more viciousness than in just about any rhetoric we've ever heard from you, even during the 2004 campaign. And on Veteran's Day to boot. Are you feeling all right?

I know it's been a rough time for you lately, what with your officials being questioned and indicted, your Congressional allies getting into legal and moral trouble, your top advisers silenced, your war going badly, your Supreme Court nominees buried under heaps of Senatorial procedure, your own party turning on you and your approval rating lower than ever. The world you're living in now must not look very friendly, and I suppose it's only natural to lash out.

Let me advise you, though, to restrain yourself if you can. This sort of anger isn't good for you or your poll numbers; it can lead to high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and worst of all, maybe even losing control of Congress in next year's midterm elections if you're not careful.

What's more, there's no point in letting yourself go when your brain trust is otherwise occupied; Karl Rove has clammed up in the face of being called to testify to the grand jury in the Plame matter, Vice President Cheney is apparently on the point of a stroke, and Condi Rice traipses around the other side of the globe. Under the circumstances, this is no time for you to break all precedent and say what's really on your mind, without spin control; you have a tough enough time when you let others tell you what to say.

You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble if you keep this up, Mr. President. Remember what happens when you try to handle your own business affairs. We don't want your presidency to turn into just another item in your long list of past failures, now do we?

All things considered, this would be a good time for you to head back to your Texas ranch, hop on the old bicycle and do some serious relaxing. It's what you do best anyway, seemingly. Don't worry about your privacy; Cindy Sheehan won't be coming round this time, I suspect. She's too busy talking to people who actually have some respect for war casualties' families, she won't bother you anymore. And don't worry about us, we're getting used to you taking more than one day in four off work. Besides, everyone knows the country does much better when you don't mess around with it anyway.

Do Fence Me In

2005-11-16T10:24:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting little item from the London Times of a few days ago. Seems that India is worried about possible terrorist incursions from Muslim Bangladesh, a nation with an increasing fundamentalist presence in and out of government. Al Qaeda allies there recently set off a clutch of bombs all over the country at once.

So what's India doing about this? It's building a security fence, that's what. Remind you of anything?

Yeah, Israel's security fence is an eyesore and a huge inconvenience to those who wish to travel between Israel and the West Bank (to set off bombs or for some legitimate reason), but it has prevented a great many bombings and at least some Arabs like it. It's temporary, adjustable and easily removed.

I have not been able to find a picture of the India-Bangladesh security fence, so I can't tell if it has the same flexibility as the Israeli fence. I do notice that the London Times story makes no mention of attacks within India by Bangladeshi fundamentalists; those terrorists seem to have restricted themselves to attacks within Bangladesh itself.

So let's review - Israel suffers massive terrorist incursions from a fundamentalist Muslim neighbor, builds a temporary, adjustable and removeable barrier to prevent those incursions, it actually works, and the nations of the world kick up an enormous fuss. India suffers no reported terrorist incursions from its fundamentalist Muslim neighbor (it may have suffered a few unreported ones), it builds a barrier of unknown quality as a preemptive measure, there's no report as to what effect that barrier has whether positive or negative, and the nations of the world utter not a peep. (Yeah, the border between India and Bangladesh is well-defined and that between Israel and the Palestinians is not; that's why the Israeli barrier is removeable, dumkopf. It's a non-issue.)

So what else is new?

Benshlomo says, Oh, George Harrison, if you had any idea what your friends are up to...

Cars, Girls and Science Fiction

2005-11-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

Today is J.G. Ballard's 75th birthday.

I first ran across his work in a London airport bookstore - an odd place to find work like his, which isn't exactly aimed at a mainstream travelling audience (although come to think of it, much of his work is about finding the bizarre in the mundane and vice versa, so maybe a run-of-the-mill convenience store servicing those who are really doing something else is just the thing). Anyway, there I found two thin paperbacks, one about a world inundated with too much rain and one about a world lacking any rain at all. I didn't buy them because they looked like good books, you understand; I bought them because they were a matched set. I do things like that. You can read the details of his biography here; suffice to say that history seems to have knocked him off the normal path of life in his early teens and he never bothered to climb back on.

Michael Moorcock started up the British New Wave in science fiction as editor of New Worlds magazine, but Ballard was probably his most important writer. He was certainly the most inventive, kicking off his career with four deeply experimental disaster novels. Read the titles - The Wind from Nowhere, The Drought, The Drowned World and The Crystal World - and you can easily tell what they're about. Read them and you'll find yourself wondering what the landscape of your mind really contains.

That was just the beginning, though. In 1967, Ballard wrote a story called "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race," ostensibly for a project that Harlan Ellison was working on at the time called Dangerous Visions. How the story missed being in the collection remains something of a mystery - you can read Ellison's version in the introduction to Again, Dangerous Visions - but the story itself, remarkably, is exactly what the title says it is, and it bumped Ballard onto one of the most bizarre tracks sf has ever seen. The New Wave was in full swing by then, and Ballard was able to bring out a collection called The Atrocity Exhibition, his first exploration of the nexus point between sex, violence, modern medicine and automobiles. That pathway led Ballard to story titles like "Love and Napalm: Export USA," "Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy," and especially "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" and culminated with Crash a few years later. In short, Ballard's the one who introduced the sf audience to the notion that some people might get sexually aroused by automobile crashes. Once an idea like that makes the rounds, it has to be dealt with, and we've been trying to do that ever since. That alone makes Ballard a writer worth reading.

His more recent autobiographical novels wrestle with his years in prison (Empire of the Sun) and his explorations of and with sex and relationships (The Kindness of Women), and he continues to provide a bracingly imaginative and sometimes optimistic view of the world's end. He thinks about things we'd rather ignore, and while that's not as remarkable now as it was when he got started, it's still a service I'd rather was available than not.

Happy birthday, James Graham Ballard.

Benshlomo says, Anything you can't let yourself face will eventually get your attention somehow.

What God Can Do

2005-11-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

Saturday night is Havdalah, the closing of the Sabbath. The word means "separation". The blessings involved honor God for making distinctions between things - between Israel and the other nations, between light and darkness, between the Sabbath and the six working days. We also say blessings on a cup of wine, a container of spices, and the light of a candle that looks like this:

Someone once told me why the candle has to have more than one wick, but I've forgotten the reason. We can, in a pinch, use two regular candles, as long as we hold them in such a way that the flames merge into one.

Well, this past Saturday, Little Miss asked if we could go to the beach in Santa Monica and make havdalah there. Sounded like a good idea to me, so we packed up and drove down. When we got there, though, we discovered that we had forgotten the candle.

Oh well. Cold night, dark beach, no one anywhere within eyeshot. We lay down in the sand and watched the planes go by and talked about this and that, figuring we'd enjoy the view for a while and then go home for havdalah.

Suddenly we hear this voice: "You guys need candles?"

We sat up, and there was another couple standing over us with two regular candles and one in a glass bowl. By their accents I could tell they were from Israel.

Little Miss asked, "Did you do havdalah?" They looked a little confused, like they didn't know what that was, so Little Miss explained it. They still looked confused.

Well, we took the candles, the other couple wished us "Shabbat Shalom," and we made our havdalah.

I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for this incident, but I'm not at all sure that the rational explanation is the true one. Two people suddenly appear out of nowhere with exactly what we need, without apparently realizing why we might need them, and ask us if we need them without any evident way of observing that we need candles specifically? Rational explanation or no, I say God was watching out for us right then.

And who knows, maybe they were angels.

Benshlomo says, Don't let's ignore the possibility of miracles.

This Ain't No Party

2005-11-09T16:48:00.000-08:00

Whew. Those asinine initiatives on the California ballot got themselves Terminated last night, and our Governator is looking less like Conan the Barbarian and more like a tired old man. There's fight left in him, I imagine, but he lost on parental consent for abortion, lost on executive domination of redistricting, lost on written permission for union monies to be used in elections, and lost on the five-year wait for teacher tenure.

(I'm not too happy that the loss on prescription drug benefits is drawing next to no coverage, but you can't have everything.)

And, of course, we're all delighted that Democrats won in New Jersey and Virginia, despite a lot of Republican smear tactics and one last-minute Bush appearance. Yeah, Democrats slung their share of mud, too, but what do you expect? Remember what happened to the war hero John Kerry when he tried to maintain some moral perspective in the face of Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth"?

Anyway, there's Kaine of Virginia on the left and Corzine of New Jersey on the right. Congratulations, boys.

And what's the result? Progressive pundits loudly proclaim that this is the end of Republican domination - that the American people are sick of this administration's corruption and bullying. Conservative pundits (and Scott McLellan) loudly proclaim that these election results mean nothing, since (for example) New Jersey "leans to the left" anyway and Kaine in Virginia ran on a conservative platform.

And blah, blah, blah.

I'm a liberal and delighted with these results, but it's a long time until November 2006. Don't let's let the girdle out now, folks.

Benshlomo says, We won. They lost. Next.

When Is Torture Not Torture?

2005-11-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Someone is going to have to explain this to me.

Everybody knows of the disgusting events at Abu Ghraib prison by now, where American "service" people subjected Iraqi prisoners to all kinds of humiliations. At least one Iraqi prisoner has died in U.S. custody. That's not to mention all the prisoners being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without being charged or tried, or these rumors (so far they're just that) about secret CIA prisons in Europe where our spy apparatus, in our name, can allegedly do whatever they want to prisoners without any oversight, by the Red Cross or anyone else. (I have my quarrels with the International Red Cross because of their treatment of Israel, but that doesn't alter the fact that they have a job to do and the U.S. apparently isn't letting them do it.)

With all that going on, Senator John McCain has amended some appropriations bills to disallow any mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Sounds reasonable enough, yes? Not to George W. or to Dick Cheney. They want an exemption from any such mistreatment injunction for the CIA.

Let me repeat - George W. and Dick Cheney want permission for the Central Intelligence Agency to do whatever they want to prisoners in their custody.

Why? Because, according to our President:

Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture.

Notice how subtle? Does he mean that the United States always obeys international law? Or does he mean that when the United States does something, it's legal by definition? The first is an obvious lie, the second a totally specious argument. It's like what former Attorney General Ed Meese said about suspects in criminal cases. Clever, isn't it?

Now, the United States currently faces a destructive, highly motivated and fanatical enemy, and to defeat it we may have to do distasteful things. Israel has had to face that reality for quite a while, and Amnesty International has made quite a stink about it over the last few years. To learn about terrorist activities, Israeli police sometimes use something called "mild coercion," if memory serves. This involves picking up prisoners and shaking them.

If that's what the President has in mind, let me remind him that there's a big difference between that and this:

Benshlomo says, If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, talks like a terrorist and goes steady with terrorists, I guess we'd better cut it to ribbons first and ask questions later.

Never Forget

2005-11-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of the day that the elephant was first used to symbolize the Republican Party. It appeared in a cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly.

As you can learn from the link above, this cartoon was Nast's way of scolding Republican voters for letting themselves get frightened into voting against the party by an opposing newspaper. Ulysses S. Grant was running for another Presidential term, and this paper screeched that if he was elected it would be a victory for "Caesarism". Remember last year when papers faithfully repeated the Republican line that if George W. wasn't elected it would be a victory for terrorism? Remember how the Republican party, and a number of Democrats, let themselves be frightened into stampeding toward a narrow Bush victory?

Harper's Weekly published the above cartoon in 1874, and evidently not much has changed.

Benshlomo says, You can lead an elephant to slaughter, but you can't make him think.

Doll Face

2005-11-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

Last night I went and saw New York Doll, which as everyone knows by now is about Arthur "Killer" Kane, the New York Dolls' bass player. He's the tall blonde guy in the middle.

There will be time to write a review of the movie when it comes out on DVD. For now, I'd like to take this opportunity to mention something about pop music that has intrigued me for a long time.

According to New York Doll, Arthur Kane spent the 30 years following the New York Dolls' breakup in a swirl of alcohol, self-destruction and bitterness at the success (to one extent or another) of his bandmates. After a fall from a third-story window, he converted to Mormonism and got a job in the genealogy center of the temple on Santa Monica Boulevard. The movie shows a soft-spoken (actually stuttering), often confused, even lost-looking big guy riding the bus to work and wondering what the dickens happened to him, until the surviving Dolls (minus the deceased Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan) get an offer to reunite for the big Meltdown show in London. This is the last guy in the world you would ever expect to be playing rock and roll, particularly New York Dolls rock and roll.

On the other hand, the movie's website (see above) tells stories about Arthur back in the 70s stealing bikes with a friend, wrecking hotel rooms, nearly getting his thumb sliced off by a jealous girlfriend, and generally cutting such a threatening figure that he nearly scared the hell out of Johnny Thunders merely by approaching him to see if he was interested in forming a band. In short, just about what you'd expect from a rock star.

It's in pop music more than in anything else, I think, that this kind of radical change takes place. I find myself imagining Arthur Kane, or Stu Cook or Mark Lindsay or even (dare I say it) Cat Stevens, catching a glimpse of one of their early publicity photos, then looking at themselves in the mirror and asking "Am I still that person?" I suppose everyone gets that feeling periodically throughout life, but because pop music has been such a young person's game, I imagine that pop stars whose fame has ended get pulled up short like that most often. Their youths, in some cases, still exist on thousands of photographs and recordings. They lived their early maturity in public, surrounded by people and traveling all over the world. Even Arthur Kane, whose band did not get all that famous, got to go to London. And let's not forget that in some cases, they moved through that very large youth in a drug-fueled haze. I just wonder if they look back on that time and wonder if it really happened, and who they are now.

By the way, there's an essay by Robert Christgau in a book called Stranded, in which he says that if he had to spend a year on a deserted island and could pick only one album to take with him, New York Dolls is the one he'd choose.
(Other rock writers picked things like Astral Weeks and Something Else by the Kinks and Sticky Fingers and even Trout Mask Replica, all good responses to a question that I'm SO glad I don't have to answer.) Christgau said he'd take New York Dolls partly because it contains such a variety of skills. According to him, David Johansen and Jerry Nolan had the most professionalism, which is to say consciousness about what they were doing. Sylvain Sylvain, he said, was a perfectly good rhythm guitarist but not particularly original. Johnny Thunders was an amateur, which was a good thing because it meant he produced truly inspired riffs and lines that a polished professional never could, and that his guitar was therefore the sound of pure inspiration direct from the unconscious. Arthur, on the other hand, lacked both professionalism and inspiration. It was a good thing for the Dolls' sound, said Christgau, but nevertheless what you hear Arthur do on New York Dolls tracks is the sound of an enthusiastic but totally ordinary guy just trying to keep up.

Well, David Johansen (a pretty unimpeachable source) disagrees. He wrote, from a tour stop in Europe, "[Arthur's] bass playing and presence were the heart & soul of the NY Dolls and the secret ingredient of our sound." Maybe that's why he rarely moved or let his face assume any particular expression onstage; he didn't have to.

Benshlomo says, Some things change and some don't.

The Grumpy Peacemaker

2005-11-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

This is the tenth anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

He spent 27 years in the Israeli army, eventually becoming its Chief of Staff. He also served as Minister of Labor, Ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister twice. He's the one who authorized the raid on Entebbe Airport on (I had forgotten this) America's 200th birthday. He's also the one who signed an accord with Yasser Arafat during the Clinton administration, and later negotiated a peace treaty with Jordan.

Some traditional Jews thought that Rabin's efforts toward peace, which involved the establishment of Palestinian autonomy in certain territories as a first step toward establishing a Palestinian state, endangered Jewish lives, and that therefore Rabin was a criminal according to Torah law.

Talmud describes a certain sort of person called a "rodef", or pursuer, in the volume called Sanhedrin, Chapter 8; someone running after another to kill him. It is a Jewish duty to prevent the rodef from doing this, even if it means killing the rodef himself. What's more, if one causes damage or even kills an innocent bystander while going after the rodef, one is not liable for that damage.

As I say, because Rabin's efforts toward peace could have endangered Jewish lives, some rabbis said that he was a rodef, as though he were actually pursuing certain parts of the Israeli population with the intent to commit murder. I don't know that any rabbi came right out and said Rabin should be killed, but some religious student named Yigal Amir took them seriously and assassinated him ten years ago today.

God knows whether the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians would have been better if Rabin had lived (I'm inclined to doubt it), but I'm still sorry he died, and I'm even more sorry that a Jew killed him.

I can't remember the Hebrew word for the characteristic that endeared him to Israelis; it refers to that look of distaste on his face as he shakes hands with Arafat. He doesn't like what he's doing, but he knows it's necessary and he's not pretending that it's anything more. Israelis, unlike Americans and many other peoples, prefer it when their politicians don't pretend to enjoy things they'd rather not do. It's a kind of rough-edged sincerity that Rabin had in spades.

Benshlomo says, We may never love the Palestinians, but one day we may be able to live with them in peace.

Washington Stunt Show

2005-11-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

I love this - the Democrats grow some balls at long last, corral the Republicans in closed session to demand some answers on Iraqi intelligence finally, and Pat Roberts calls it a stunt.

Remember a couple of weeks ago, the Republican "leadership" in the House held a vote open way past deadline so they could pressure representatives into voting their way? Plus all the other legislative folderol we've been treated to over the last five or so years? Remember why they refer to Tom DeLay as "the Hammer"? I suppose that, rather than a "stunt," we're to call this normal behavior?

Call me old-fashioned, but this seems a little inverted to me.

Benshlomo says, Bring on the stuntmen.

Who Gets into the World to Come?

2005-11-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

I just received this dispatch from MEMRI, and it's worth a response.

This isn't the place to discuss the Sheikh's entire interview, nor his own office's denial (wow). What brought me up short was this statement:

Al-Qaradhawi further claimed that Christianity and Judaism, like Islam, maintain that members of other religions will not enter Paradise. But Islam places certain conditions upon this fate of non-Muslims...

Needless to say, I do not speak for Christianity. Parts of the Christian Bible lend credence to what the Sheikh said; on the other hand I've heard rumors that some Christian leaders allow for the possibility of non-Christians entering Heaven.

I do, however, know something about Jewish belief, and the Talmud clearly states that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World to Come. That's precisely what the Seven Laws of Noah are for - check them out.

Clearly, I am ignorant of Islam, though I hope to remedy that circumstance with the help of the MP. Equally clearly, the Sheikh is ignorant of Judaism. And if he is ignorant of Judaism, what can we expect from lay Muslims?

Benshlomo says, Know your enemy, and maybe you'll make a friend.

How Not to Watch a Movie

2005-11-02T10:32:00.000-08:00

As I often do after watching a DVD, last night I looked up Maria Full of Grace on Roger Ebert's website, on the L.A. Weekly, and on Amazon to read the reviews and see what others thought.

The movie is about a young Colombian woman, dissatisfied with her lot in life (as any sane and semi-intelligent person would be). She quits her job on a flower plantation, dumps the young man who impregnated her, and stumbles into employment as a "mule," smuggling heroin into New York by swallowing sixty-odd pellets of the stuff and hoping she gets to her destination before they start emerging, or worse, breaking open.

James Marston's script carries its politics lightly; this is a story about people, not policy. It's not a masterpiece, but I was quite moved by the look into what forces (from economic desperation to personality flaws) might push people into endangering themselves like that. Then I turned to Amazon and found this. (Don't read it if you want to see the movie.)

In close to two hours, D. Holte failed to notice anything about the characters, the theme, the plot, the cinematic design, or anything other than the last few minutes. Why? I suspect it's because he's on the lookout for anything that will confirm his political point of view, whether it makes sense in context or not.

SPOILER:

Having undergone a terrifying, lonely few days in which she learns that her actions have consequences, Maria decides to remain in the United States and try to make a better future for herself and her child. Yes, she lacks the proper visas and is therefore here illegally, but she has seen that life in New York is not so very different from life in Colombia, that people exist who will help her lead an honest life, and that there is hope for her.

D. Holte notices only that she remains in the country illegally, declares that for that reason she has no sense of responsibility, and even goes so far as to speculate (against all the evidence of plot, character and theme) that she intends to set herself up independently in the smuggling business. He doesn't see a human being when he looks at the character of Maria, he sees only his own biases.

That's a shame, and the fact that he decided to share his shortcomings with the Amazon-reading public is even more of a shame.

Benshlomo says, Some people should stick to political pamphlets and avoid anything with more nuance (yes, that word).

Saint Ann

2005-11-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest piece of nonsense from that demure, wholesome Christian girl, Ann Coulter.

You can read her dyspeptic utterances for yourself, of course, but the gist of it seems to be that the evil shmoo Karl Rove is a now-unnecessary burden to the utterly innocent Bush administration and a man to be pitied, that the liar Scooter Libby dropped suddenly out of nowhere, and that the legal attempt to put a stop to the criminal Tom DeLay proves nothing about his bullying and blithe disregard for the law, but rather proves that liberals are a bunch of - get this - fascists.

We'll get to our logical refutation of this delirium in due course, but for now, let's consider Ms. Coulter's alleged Christianity, shall we? How do we know that she is a Christian, other than by her own declaration?

She advocates not only war, but as vicious a war as can be prosecuted.

Her fame is based almost entirely on her ridicule and hatred of her political, cultural and religious opposition.

You can see for yourself that she loves immodest clothing, and she certainly loves to express herself in the strongest (not to say rudest) possible terms. Not that I'm complaining about her appearance, necessarily, but it's not what one expects from a woman who claims to follow Jesus.

In short, like so many members of this administration and their apologists, she professes one thing and does something quite different.

With apologies to those who believe in the living Christ, I think Jesus is probably spinning in his grave every time this woman opens her mouth.

Benshlomo says, I'm a better Christian than Ann Coulter, and I'm Jewish.

Looking Up

2005-11-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

On this date in 1512, the public got to see Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time.

If a premier like that happened in this day and age, of course, you would have had a huge red carpet flanked by gold ropes heading into the Chapel, with plastic-smile celebrities in ridiculous clothes waving to the screaming mob as they plowed through epileptic flashbulb stuttering as they sailed in, grabbed a cocktail and yelled into each other's ears over electronica so loud it could induce an earthquake, and shielded their eyes from more epileptic strobe lighting. Considering that the paintings in question depict scenes from the Bible, maybe that wouldn't have been such a good idea. Maybe it isn't now.

What do you suppose the Sistine Chapel ceiling's opening looked like? No strobes, no cocktails, no celebrity red carpet or paparazzi or screaming fans, but other than that it might have been quite similar. Maybe the wealthy of Rome strode through the door in their most ridiculous-looking clothes (and they could look pretty bizarre) and tried to impress each other. People are always more concerned with others' opinions than with God's, until they train themselves to think differently.

My favorite story about the Sistine Chapel paintings concerns Mozart, oddly enough. It seems that he was on a concert tour with his father when he was just a genius kid, they visited the Chapel, and young Wolfgang loved the music in there so much he went home, wrote it down and played it for himself. Someone heard him and figured he must have stolen the music from the Chapel and made a copy, since no one could possibly remember a piece like that after one hearing, and especially since everyone who walked into the Chapel stared up at the ceiling and Michelangelo's paintings before they did anything else. Of course, Mozart (being a genius) had not stolen the music; he'd really remembered it, just as he said, and when the Pope found out about the incident he was so impressed he gave the kid a medal.

I've never seen the Chapel in person. Maybe one day I'll get the chance. Meantime, happy birthday to the paintings and thanks for the many years of joy.

Benshlomo says, Art needs love too.

Alito, Shmalito

2005-10-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

George W. has nominated Samuel Alito for the United States Supreme Court, to replace his previous choice, Harriet Miers. Apparently, this is the best the man who declared that he was "a uniter, not a divider" can do.

Leaving aside for the moment what Mr. Alito's ability, experience and anticipated legal thinking might be, I am once again utterly disheartened by this administration's meanness, for lack of a better word. Based on the people he's come up with so far, it seems that George W. Bush can find only two types of nominees; a thoroughly unqualified middle-of-the-road type, or a radical conservative. That's it. Either reactionary extremists or nonentities. That seems to be the way the President of the United States views his constituency - that is, you and me.

Benshlomo says, sigh.

Take Us Out of the Closet, Mr. Sulu - Warp Factor Two

2005-10-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Well, whaddya know - George Takei is gay.

(Okay, the picture is a little obvious, but the guy did prance around shirtless on Star Trek, so what do you want from me?)

This is as good a time as any to reiterate something I've been saying for a while. As an observant Jew, I find homosexuality troubling, but at the end of the day I figure someone else's sexuality is none of my damn business. On the one hand, the constant obsession of the religious right regarding the so-called homosexual "agenda" appeals very much to my sense of humor; on the other hand, there are times when I wonder why the gay community insists on making me know that they're gay. Other than they themselves and the people they love, who cares? (There are lots of answers to that question, of course, but we'll get to that some other time.)

Having said all that, I must admit that I was surprised at this news about George Takei. I never would have guessed in a million years. My next reaction was to ask "Why am I surprised? Do I think I can tell who's gay just by watching them?"

Well, yeah, sometimes.

Regardless, I can understand why Takei decided not to come out for all those years. In his Frontiers interview, he points out that he spent quite a long time in a Japanese interment camp during World War II, and an experience like that could easily give a child the idea that any difference is shameful, whether one is Asian, gay or both. Perhaps his coming out means that he has gotten some peace for himself.

It's a pity for us Trekkies, though, that he didn't get the chance to deal with his sexuality on the show itself. Maybe it was a little early for television to feature a gay character - apparently it still is - but since the whole point of Star Trek was to demonstrate the possibility of tolerance and differences in humanity's future, a gay helmsman would have been a nice touch. Like Spock said, life consists of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations".

Oh well, better late than never. Congratulations, Mr. Takei.

Benshlomo says, Looks like someone turned off my "gay-dar," and that's just fine with me.

A Visit Last Night

2005-10-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

I've got a friend who's been living on the street for a some time now. He needs a lot of help, and he asks me for favors pretty often. If I were a genuinely saintly person I'm sure I'd do as he asked without a twinge, but as it is I sometimes find his requests annoying or inconvenient. When I have those feelings, they are of course invariably accompanied by feelings of guilt. You know, thoughts like "How can I complain, even inwardly, at the chance to help someone in need?" Especially considering that he's always gracious when I turn him down, and he always pays back the money he borrows.

About a year ago he got arrested. He says a couple of store employees were harassing him, he defended himself, they called the cops and the cops found mace on him, which was a big no-no since he was on probation. He asked me to pick up the stuff he had on him when he was arrested before the city destroyed it, so I did that.

A couple of months ago I got a call from a medical social worker saying my friend had been beaten pretty severely in prison at Chino, including a metal bar to the head, and was recovering in the hospital. And why did I get the call? Because he'd used me as a reference upon his arrest. No idea where his family is.

So last night he suddenly showed up at my door. He looked a little like this:

I'm serious, man; his right eye had been pushed halfway down his cheek, and he also had an enormous gash above it. I think a piece of his skull had to be removed.

He had a cab driver with him who wanted to get paid, so I gave the guy some money expecting that he'd take my friend and his bags wherever he wanted to go, but the jerk just drove off. So while we were getting his stuff together, and he threw me a couple of looks that plainly said "Can I stay with you?" and talked to Little Miss (who has done counseling with prisoners and the homeless and has a heart for the disregarded that just about moves me to tears), I got myself to an ATM and got some more cash. Then Little Miss called another cab and off he went to his old haunts. First, though, he turned to Little Miss, pointed at me and said "He's a great guy."

I'm in a complete swirl. I spent $80 on him that I can't afford very easily and that, in his current state, I doubt he can pay back, and he kept me up till all hours getting him on his way so that today I'm wandering around half-asleep, but then he compliments me very nicely, accepts what I can give him and doesn't ask for anything more. I'm irritated, flattered and worried sick, and I don't know if I want to see or hear from him again or not. And while all of this is going through my head, I also have to say to myself "Hey, man, where do you get off feeling sorry for yourself when this guy's got no money, no shelter and a piece of his head missing?"

Benshlomo says, The Good Lord moves in strange and wonderous ways, you'd better believe it.

Bye-Bye Harriet

2005-10-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well, Ms. Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the United Status Supreme Court. Here we see her, as usual, a step or two behind her chief; do you suppose her offer to withdraw was just another way of following him? Gee, I wonder...

I've been reading some of the comments on this incident. Kos thinks she lost because of simple incompetence; it's not immediately clear to me just why he thinks she bowed out, but it seems like he thinks she just came to the realization she couldn't win after her dismal performance on her questionnaire and with the Senators. Slate points out that this withdrawal gives the White House an excellent issue with which to distract the country from the possible upcoming indictments in the Plame case. Krauthammer evidently thinks that, whatever the real goings-on behind the scenes, the president's partisans can make the case that it was a fight over document privilege.

I'm not as well-informed as these folks, but all that really means at the moment is that I have no mandate to prove my conjectures, so here goes: I think Harriet Miers submitted her withdrawal because, in private, Dubya asked her to. He may be angry about having to ask, but everybody knows that nothing gets out of his office without his say-so on pain of immediate political death. What's more, whatever her virtues, Ms. Miers has spent a good many years as another one of Dubya's lap dogs; asking us to assume that she's retained the ability to think independently in his presence is laughable.

That's just a guess, of course. Whatever's really going on in there, I still feel a thrill from the Dark Side of the Force as I watch this administration duck and cover.

Benshlomo says, I have respect for my enemies if they're respectable.

Open Letter to the White House - Doing Your Job

2005-10-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President:

I see that a reporter recently asked if the geometrically-increasing revelations of misconduct in your administration bother you at all. Your response, if Time Magazine has it right, was "There is some background noise here...but the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to." As usual, sir, you are completely out of touch with what the American people think. We know you don't read, but don't you even watch television?

Leaving that question aside for the moment, I should begin by expressing my relief at hearing anything at all from you recently. I was beginning to think you were sick or something; there's been barely a word from you since Hurricane Katrina hit and you told your buddy Michael Brown that he was doing a great job. Considering the uproar that foot-in-the-mouth statement provoked, perhaps you finally wised up and decided to keep your trap shut for a while; I certainly would in your shoes. It's more likely that, with so many of your brain trust appearing before the grand jury or under indictment, you simply didn't have anyone to tell you what to say.

Given all that, I can't quite locate the source of your statement that the American people expect you to do your job. If it's true that you decided on your own to clam up after Hurricane Katrina, what motivated you to open your mouth at a time like this? If it's true that you stopped talking because the people pulling your strings were busy, why didn't you wait for their schedules to clear before you donated that comment? In any case, sir, what in God's name possessed you to say something so inane?

Expect you to do your job? It should be obvious from the poll numbers that by now, the last thing most Americans expect is for you to do your job. You might have gotten away with a whopper like that a year ago, or even this past summer, but the corruption and incompetence of your administration are at present so blatant, I'm a little surprised you have the audacity to appear in public at all, let alone talk to reporters.

And as for the "background noise" crack - well, Mr. President, it's hard to imagine what you would consider to be foreground noise. With your deputy chief of staff, your Vice President's chief of staff, and your Vice President himself under suspicion of blowing an American intelligence agent's cover, not to mention the bumbling of your various cronies during national emergencies, you relegate all these dangerous and desperate crises to the status of mere annoyance? America is rapidly losing confidence in you, your administration, its own capability to deal with breakdowns and its very sanity, and you describe this terrifying state of affairs as though it could be tuned out in favor of something more important? Like what? At least at your second inauguration you had a program of sorts, however misguided. What exactly do you conceive this job of yours, that the American people expect you to do, to be? Giving another soft government job like Supreme Court justice to another buddy of yours, whether she can do it or not?

As one of your employers, then, allow me to educate you as to exactly what job I expect you to do. I expect you to keep your various promises, including the one to immediately fire any member of your administration who breaks the law. I expect you to deal with the facts of life on the ground in Iraq, in New Orleans, in Florida and everywhere else, whether you find it pleasant to have those facts presented to you or not. Indeed, I expect you to receive unpleasant reports cheerfully. I expect you, based on those reports, to generate and quickly implement workable strategies to fix problems and to protect the lives and property of American citizens. When your plans fail to produce the desired results, I expect you to change plans at once, and to at all times adopt the advice of knowledgeable people whether or not they are friends of yours or loyal to you. Failing all this, I expect you to express your commitment to America's health and success by resigning in favor of someone more able than yourself.

Well, we all know what it's been like lately, don't we, sir? I want your resignation and I want it now.

Good night, Sister Rosa

2005-10-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

I guess everyone knows by now that Rosa Parks died yesterday at the age of 92.

I hope everyone knows what she did, though I doubt it. What's so remarkable about the incident that brought her fame was its simplicity. In some ways, Cedric the Entertainer got it right in Barbershop:

Rosa Parks ain't do nothin' but set her black ass down.

Let's talk a little about this: Folklore would have us believe that Mrs. Parks one day in 1955 quite spontaneously refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person. She thereby broke the law and got arrested, and when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates got wind of it, they initiated a boycott of Montgomery buses that lasted well over a year and touched off the Civil Rights Movement.

This isn't true, exactly. Historically, Mrs. Parks was no naive innocent caught up in a historical movement that was ready to pop with or without her. Unlike many participants in the bus boycott, she was not a domestic, but a skilled seamstress with some college education, and she had been working for the NAACP for some time. The plans for the boycott were ready when she got on that bus; before that, she had frequently surrendered her seat. Romantic as it sounds, Rosa Parks did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus; if she had, the Civil Rights movement probably would have died of starvation before it ever got started.

And then there are those who find Mrs. Parks a little less than admirable in some respects. At the very least, it's a little ironic that she, who made her name by boycotting the Montgomery bus system, came again to public attention by boycotting the NAACP. Why? Because the man who recited the line "Rosa Park ain't do nothin' but set her black ass down" was hosting the NAACP Image Awards that year! Can you say "feet of clay"?

Well, but what did we expect, utter saintliness? Rosa Parks, like most heroes, was a flesh-and-blood human being who did something brave and noteworthy once because it was time. Perhaps, as a Caucasian, I have no right to call her "Sister". Then again, as a human being, perhaps I do.

Benshlomo says, I'm waiting for the next Rosa Parks.

United How?

2005-10-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

The United Nations is 60 years old today.

Ever since the organization was founded (and even before), there were those who said the whole thing was a lousy idea, since there was no way the United States would let itself be dictated to by a bunch of no-account, scratch-farming and maybe even (gasp!) dark nations.

There are those today who assert that the United Nations has become hopelessly bureaucratized, if not downright corrupt (which can be pretty hard to argue with).

Many Jews have lost faith in the United Nations because it constantly passes resolutions condemning Israel for doing this or that - for defending itself against terrorist attacks, say - while remaining so quiet over Arab atrocities you can hear crickets chirp all over Manhattan. Others have lost faith in the United Nations for other reasons.

Heck, there are even those who assert that the United Nations basically doesn't exist.

When I invited the United Nations to respond to these charges, here's what it said:

So nu, I don't do such a good job sometimes. You'd like better maybe World War III?

Well, okay, it's got a point. The original idea behind the U.N. was to provide the nations of the world with a forum to talk out their conflicts and reach agreements amongst themselves without the necessity of going to war. Does it do that? Not really. But, if I may address those who would like the U.N. to be dismantled for that reason, or who would like the United States to withdraw from membership: You got a better idea? Besides war, I mean?

Well?

I didn't think so.

Benshlomo says, Okay, U.N., I've run interference for you - now will you please go clean up your act?

Happy Birthday

2005-10-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

According to James Usher, the bishop of the Irish Protestant Church back in the 1650s, God created the universe on the evening before October 23, 4004 B.C. That means that the Earth is not more than 6,001 today.

Remind you of anything? Pretty soon we're going to have to require teachers to read a statement to that effect before they teach students that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Can't wait.

Benshlomo says, If you ask me, Mother Earth doesn't look a day over 5,750.

If I Had an Iftar

2005-10-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I have been working up a project to bring Jews and Muslims together for a series of parties - once every quarter, say. I found a Mulsim man who's interested in the same thing. I'll refer to him as my Muslim Partner, or "MP" for short.

He and I finally met last night. It's the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which devout Muslims fast during all daylight hours. There's a feast each evening, needless to say; it's called the iftar. Last night my MP invited me to a very large celebration indeed at the Islamic Center down near USC.

The similarities and differences between his community, his beliefs, his practices and mine are fascinating. For instance, a couple of times during last night's program, someone stood up and chanted a selection of Muslim scripture from memory. In Judaism, although we often memorize sections of Torah, we generally don't memorize the chant that goes along with them; it was explained to me that when it comes to the written scripture, the rabbis consider it wiser to read from the written text even if we have the section memorized. I expect to learn a great deal more from my MP in the future.

After speaking with him, though, I had a moment of doubt. He told me about the attitude of most Muslims toward Jews, and it's everything I was afraid it would be; suspicious, closed, angry and ultimately prejudiced. The people I met at the Islamic Center welcomed me without hesitation, but my MP tells me that that attitude is pretty rare.

What's worse (to my mind) is that I see the same habit of thought making inroads among the Jews. Few Jews that I know hate Muslims, although some do. More depressingly, more and more Jews think of Muslims with deep resignation, as if they had no ears.

There's a lot of work to do, clearly. At least, though, I have now confirmed that my project is one worth doing. If nothing else, my own nervousness at finding myself among a group of Muslims, warm and friendly as they were, is enough to show that the conversation between us could use some refinement.

My heartiest thanks to my MP for the lesson. Now let's go out and change the world, shall we?

Benshlomo says, There's nothing like sharing food to make you feel friendly.

Brought to You by The Conspiracy Channel

2005-10-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed this rundown of Jewish conspiracy theories by Joshua Neuman, co-author with David Deutsch of The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies. The ludicrous nature of the "worldwide Jewish plot to take over the world" is not a new observation, of course. The first time I ran across someone poking fun at the idea, it was Dave Berg, famous for the "Lighter Side" feature in the old Mad Magazine. What he said, in his book Roger Kaputnik and God, was something like this: "They say there's a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. What I want to know is, so how come I'm not getting a piece of the action?"

My own version of the idea goes like this: They say the Jews control the world media. When you consider how much the world seems to hate Israel and the Jews, you have to say that if the Jews control the world media, we're doing a lousy job.

Maybe the most relevant thing about the whole mishegas, though, is what it reveals about the Jewish community.

We've been called a "stiff-necked people" ever since Biblical times, by no less an authority than God Himself, and anyone who's had dealings with Jews knows how true that is. A worldwide Jewish conspiracy? When's the last time you met a Jewish family with the singleness of purpose to sustain a conspiracy? Or even to plan a party?

As Abbie Hoffman said of the Chicago Eight, when informed that they would be charged with conspiracy: "Conspiracy? Hell, we couldn't agree on lunch!"

Benshlomo says, Not to worry, folks; the Jews are too busy arguing to bother you much.

Sunofagun...

2005-10-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

I'll be damned if someone didn't link to this blog! Everybody go check out Axinar's blog at once, do you hear?

I've had one or two intelligent comments posted, but this is the first incident I would consider to be a genuine echo (check out the epithet under my name up there if you don't know what that means).

By God, this Internet thing actually works!

Benshlomo says, Am I showing my age too much?

Art for Art's Sake

2005-10-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

Not that they have much to do with each other on the surface, but today marks a couple of important anniversaries.

Twenty years ago today, the first Blockbuster Video opened in Dallas, Texas.

Back then you could rent video at any one of a number of stores, but Blockbuster quickly became the first really well-known national rental chain.
This would be more of a cinematic footnote than anything else, except that shortly thereafter Blockbuster helped to kill the NC-17 movie rating by refusing to carry any NC-17 movies, cutting those films off from an enormous revenue stream and discouraging the studios from making intelligent movies (or any movies, really) on adult themes. We see the results: Movies are becoming more juvenile all the time, and Roger Ebert gets more grouchy. Back in August he gave "no stars" to two movies in a single week - he never had occasion to do that before. You think he would have had to do that if the NC-17 rating were still viable? If he had some decent pictures to review on adult themes, you think he would have bothered with "Chaos" and "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo"? (I know, "Chaos" had an NC-17 rating. That just proves my point; thanks in part to Blockbuster's idiotic policy, the rating has become a garbage can.) All together now:

Blockbuster, Blockbuster, sis boom bah!
Homogenized movies, ha ha ha!

(Best I could do on the spur of the moment.)

On the other hand, today is also the anniversary of Walt Kelly's death in 1973 at the age of 60.

Now, here was a guy unafraid to take chances. He was just a cartoonist, and a strip cartoonist at that. And a strip about funny animals, to boot. Nevertheless, he got in more trouble with his syndicate over political commentary than anyone until Garry Trudeau showed up.

One thing that interests me about Kelly is that he and Al Capp drew enormously popular strips at about the same time, Kelly's "Pogo" to Capp's "Li'l Abner". More on Capp at the proper time, but the comparison is instructive. Kelly and Capp, as I say, were contemporaries.
They could also draw better than 99% of anyone who has ever published a strip (sorry, but it's true). Their comics took place in the American South, though in widely different locations (the Ozarks vs. the Florida Everglades), and had a populist bent. Yet Kelly was a liberal and Capp was a conservative.

Maybe these two anniversaries have something in common after all. They show that there's room for all kinds of variety in America until something comes along - something corporate or sensationalistic or commercial or chicken or what have you -and steamrollers the whole thing.

Benshlomo says, We have met the enemy and he is us.

The Secret Life of Plants

2005-10-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again; every few days there's a new Jewish holiday. Tonight, we begin the festival of Sukkot.

This is the week during which we eat all our meals in a temporary booth (a "sukkah") roofed with greenery, the sort of dwelling that our ancestors used during harvest season. The very strict actually sleep in these booths every night, unless it rains.

Some years ago, in fact, a rabbi invited me to his house for lunch during this holiday and finished his meal indoors because he felt unwell. He quoted a passage from Talmud to explain: This week is called "The Time of Our Joy," and everything we do is calculated to make us happy. Therefore, if dwelling in the sukkah makes us unhappy for some good reason, we are to move indoors. Indeed, according to Talmud, if the weather is sufficiently damp to dilute our bean soup as we eat in the sukkah, that's enough reason to go in.

But what makes this the time of our joy? Several things, of course; nothing in Judaism has less than four explanations.

First of all, in ancient times, all peoples celebrated the harvest, since it showed that there would be enough food to keep the people alive for at least a year. We have faith in God to sustain us, of course, but we're not stupid.

Second of all, as we wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus and before entering the Holy Land, we lived in temporary huts, like the sukkah. God took care of all our needs during that time; the midrash goes so far as to say that for forty years no one's clothes or shoes wore out. The sukkah reminds us of that time when God cared for us directly.

Third of all, the truth is that God cares for us even today. It's less obvious because He does so by blessing the work of our own hands, and we might easily fool ourselves into thinking we don't need God to care for us anymore - that we do it ourselves. So during this week we move into flimsy huts that would go over in a good stiff breeze, to remind ourselves that God still cares for us in everything we need to live and thrive. That's good news.

Fourth of all, the greenery on top of the sukkah brings to mind the Clouds of Glory upon which we will one day ride back to the Holy Land in the time of Mashiach. The gaps in the greenery also let us see the stars at night, to remind us of our heavenly protector. That's very good news.

So why shouldn't we be happy?

And then, during this week, we take four plants into prayer services with us: the citron, the palm, the myrtle and the willow. In Hebrew, that's the esrog, the lulav, the hadassah and the aravos. The whole construct is also called a lulav. I first learned about this tradition when I was a kid, back in the Middle Ages, and I didn't understand the rationale. In some ways, I still don't.

On the other hand, when I first went to an orthodox Sukkot service and saw all the men, each with his lulav. It looked to me like they were each holding a spear, only a very peaceful spear. It smelled wonderful, too. With my lulav adding to the feeling of togetherness and the garden smell, I felt more joined to my people than maybe at any time before.

So I still don't quite get it, but so what?

Benshlomo says, God's waiting for us in the garden.