mission2moscow

In-Q-Tel: Spookily Responsible Investing

2006-12-27T16:29:00.000-05:00

Year's end always makes people think of their investment portfolios, and that makes me think about the unique investment strategy of In-Q-Tel, the non-profit venture fund supported by the CIA.

While the In-Q-Tel name is horribly clunky, the corporate mandate is a big winner in any game of Buzzword Bingo:

In-Q-Tel was established in 1999 as an independent, private, not-for-profit company to help the CIA and the greater US Intelligence Community (IC) to identify, acquire, and deploy cutting-edge technologies. In-Q-Tel's open and entrepreneurial venture capital model gives it the agility - lacking within traditional government contracting approaches - to help the IC benefit from the rapid pace of change in information technology and other emerging technology fields.

In-Q-Tel's mission is to deliver leading-edge capabilities to the CIA and the IC by investing in the development of promising technologies. Because early-stage technologies are often unproven, In-Q-Tel takes the calculated risks necessary to develop, prove, and deliver them to the Intelligence Community.

And the company uses an arresting tag line on its highly informative site: "As outside the box as government gets."

I can't evaluate In-Q-Tel's investment strategies or success, but I like to think of this as a War on Terror version of "socially responsible investing." The folks at the Social Investment Forum probably wouldn't be too keen to list In-Q-Tel as an investment vehicle, even if they could. The Social Investment Forum's perspective is:

Your savings and investments can help create a better world! Our new guide gives you hands-on advice and information to help you put your dollars to work to build healthy communities, promote economic equity, and foster a clean environment.

I would like to see In-Q-Tel reframe its value proposition in these terms, as a declaration of "spookily responsible investing." That would have more punch than cutting-edge, leading-edge, bleeding-edge, etc. Why not:

"Your savings and investments can help create a more secure, terror-destroying world! Our new guide gives you phasers-on advice and information to help you put your anti-jihadist dollars to work to build healthy listening devices, promote interrogation equity, and a foster an environment that's more deadly to terrorists and the evil forces that support them."

Doesn't that work better? Where do I send my check?

Do You Have a Relationship Resume?

2006-10-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Most people on Jdate and other dating sties have a resume for their work life. Lately I've been thinking about the value of a resume for my love life. It makes sense: you go through phone screenings, initial conversations, more formal interviews ("dates") with the goal of getting something valuable in your life. We jump through similar hoops in the quest for finance and romance.

So we can all benefit from a "Romance Resume" to provide to targets here on Jdate. The profile does some of the work, but it doesn't go far enough. "What I've Learned from Past Relationships" can be overhauled to provide much more detail. Think of the great conversations that would start if we could exchange relationship Resumes with love interests here.

What would they look and sound like? Since I'm throwing out the idea, it's only fair that I go first. Here's disguised example:

2005-2006: YettaFromYonkers, New York
Overview: YfY and I formed a dynamic, mutually supportive relationship based initially on our shared interest in kung fu movies. It blossomed through our discussions of children, parents, exes, personality-altering medications, and Jdate experiences.

Key accomplishments in this relationship:

* Social: Successfully took YfY to museums, concerts, and exotic restaurants where we ate with our hands while sitting on the floor.
* Emotional: Provided key support to YfY during late-night crises involving intestinal distress due to visits to exotic restaurants.
* Physical: Can discuss details during oral presentations.

See what I mean? We can all think of our pasts as a series of emotionally enriching engagements that let us develop knowledge and capabilities that will delight our next romantic "employer," so to speak. That will give us all an edge in the competition against all the other job applicants applying for the same job.

Some people aren't seeking full-time romantic employment. They are more like freelancers or consultants, interested in a series of less-defined short-term engagements. An honest, detailed romance resume will make that employment history clear, so readers can evaluate you on that basis -- whether you want to sign up for the whole package with an office and romantic employment contract or a more casual, in-and-out engagement.

And of course your romance resume will include references, so readers can check out its accuracy first-hand. Doesn't that sound fun?

Rescuing the Littlest Angel

2006-09-12T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've been silent for a while. On July 31 I got laid off from the job I had held since February 2002. The blow came unexpectedly for myself and over 30 colleagues. We learned in a four-minute listen-only conference call that our employer no longer needed our communications skills and we'd hear from HR.

The end.

So I haven't been in the mood to blog here, about personal matters. But with the fall, soon Rosh Hashanah, I'll start early on new behavior, including this.

In the aftermath of the lay-off, two collegues and I rushed back to our New York office from Boston, where we were for an assignment. Our other colleagues had already completed the doleful packing of personal items. I found boxes waiting by my office. I knocked some together, flipping flaps to make a tight cardboard fit, then began dumping in books, CDs, Jdate profiles I had printed out, insurance papers and anything else I wanted to get shipped to my home in Connecticut.

After two hours, I was done. I took final photos, said good-bye to friends, took the elevator down 39 floors, walked down Park Avenue, got the train in Grand Central, and came home. I had packed everything, needing only to return on August 1 to turn in my laptop, keys, Diners Club card, and other professional flotsam.

I was wrong. I forgot something precious.

To understand what I left behind, you have to understand my life long before employment, before New York. I grew up in deep South Texas, a heavily Catholic region on the Rio Grande at the far edge of America. College took me far away, then after graduation my career in jouralism planted me in New York. I hardly ever went back.

I did return for high school reunions, which I always enjoyed at the 20th reunion in 1996 I got the award of a ceramic angel for being the most distant alum of Mission High School to return to the reunion. It would safeguard me on my long trip back home.

The littlest angel, as I call it, means a great deal to me. It speaks of an abiding affection among my classmates and me, a token of the place where I grew up, left, and at times returned.

On the day I returned, I took one last look at my office. The boxes were packed and taped, CDs stowed, everything ready for the last journey home.

And then my eye fell on the littlest angel, guarding my possessions from a bare shelf. Somehow, in my rush to pack, I forgot her. There she remained. I grabbed the ceramic guardian and gently placed her in my Lands' End bag for an escorted trip home under my direct care.

How strange -- the one item with the highest sentimental value to me was the very item I forgot. Had I not gotten laid off while I was in Boston, had I not had to return to the office to do paperwork chores, I might have totally overlooked the littlest angel and left her forlornly on the shelf.

But my last trip to Park Avenue connected me again with my ceramic guardian, and we'll watch over each other from now on.

"Rose Colored Glasses," Hitting Too Close to Home

2006-06-22T12:13:00.000-04:00

Radio station WFDU played a country song this morning that hit a little too close too home emotionally. But some country songs do that. I had the presence of mine to jot down enough of the lyrics to find the song. You can hear part of the song on singer John Conlee's website, where you can hear part of the song, which is powerful:

Rose Colored Glasses

I don't know why I keep on believing you need me
When you prove so many times that it ain't true
And I can't find one good reason for staying
Maybe by leaving would be the best for you

But these rose colored glasses that I'm looking through
Show only the beauty cause they hide all the truth

And they let me hold on to the good times the good lines
The ones I used to hear when I held you
And they keep me from feeling so cheated defeated
When reflections in your eyes show me a fool

These rose colored glasses that I'm looking through
Show only the beauty cause they hide all the truth

So I just keep on hoping, believing that maybe
By counting the many times I've tried
You'll believe me when I say I love you and
I'll lay these rose colored glasses aside

These rose colored glasses that I'm looking through
Show only the beauty cause they hide all the truth

That's So Random

2006-06-16T12:05:00.000-04:00

One aspect of parenting I enjoy is to hear the trends and times reflected through my son. Just as I had my G.I. Joes and 007 gear, Shmoikel has his Magic: The Gathering cards and video game systems.

I pay attention to verbal trends, too. Lately the phrase I hear, in various versions, is "That's so random." His mother indicated that he says that to her, too.

Case in point: Last weekend we visited the fabulous Greenwich Library, where I scoop up CDs by the dozen every week. Outside the library stands a metal sculpture of that beloved indigenous Connecticut animal, the long-haired yak. Short, squat, and bronzish, the Greenwich yak mystified Shmoikel.

"Why a yak?" he mused. "That's so random."

This hints that "random" is a synonym for "unexplainable."

To reduce the level of randomness in the universe, I said we should do another sculpture for the library of a "generic animal." It would be non-random, indeed, non-specific entirely, just a generic beast that wouldn't look like anything in particular.

This provoked the hoped-for bafflement and laughter as we attempted to define the characteristics and appearance of a non-random generic creature, with either two or four legs.

And that kind of father-son interaction is not random.

A Sentimentalist and His Samsung

2006-06-06T07:22:00.000-04:00

I've always been sentimental -- I keep letters, pictures, program guides from long-ago, school assemblies. Yet in the digital age, keepsakes can be much harder to hold. A few clicks of a mouse or an errant "delete" button, and something precious vanishes.

I had the feeling for my Samsung cell phone lately. It notes the last 20 calls that are incoming, outgoing, and missed. Since almost all my calls involve people already listed in the phone's contacts section, the call records give me a quick scan of the important people in my life, whom I call repeatedly. Making the list is easy; getting deleted almost impossible.

The calls from Tieta, a woman with whom I've had an tortured on-and-off friendship for over a year, duly showed up in the log, last name first name. After we struck up our friendship again in March, our calls were regular so her name peppered the call lists, both incoming and outgoing. Then they fizzled down to nothing, and in dismay I watched Tieta's name slip lower and lower in the list as other calls came and went. Still, as long as I could check incoming calls and see she really did call me at 3:56 pm on Friday May 19, I had a tiny, silly way of telling myself that, yes, we had contact.

Then on Monday, a friend called and pushed Tieta off the list, from 20th most recent call to oblivion. I had to mourn the moment, which I knew had to arrive. One fragment of a fragment of a fragile relationship vanished, and I do not know if it will ever be replaced by another call that puts Tieta back on the top of the call list.

This time around, at least, I'm not deleting her name from the contacts list. I'm leaving it there, for sentimental reasons.

Newsweek Rethinks "The Marriage Crunch" -- But Whatever Happened to "Luscious and Looking"?

2006-06-01T07:17:00.000-04:00

Digging into its archives, Newsweek magazine has re-examined the data and the daters in its notorious June 1986 cover article "The Marriage Crunch." The article spun statistics in a study called "Marriage Patterns in the United States." Women across America got hit with the "traumatic news" about the relationship of aging and marriage prospects:

According to the report, white, college-educated women born in the mid-'50s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent. Forty-year-olds are more likely to be killed by a terrorist: they have a minuscule 2.6 percent probability of tying the knot.

Newsweek took a fresh look at the article and tracked down 11 of the 14 women interviewed in the 1986 piece, and found eight were married, three were singled, and none divorced. Overall, Newsweek found the marriage odds are much better now.

However, for all the rethinking and reinterviewing, Newsweek ignored the one followup story I most wanted to read.

As background, I'll confess that I saved that issue of Newsweek. I stuck it in a folder I called "The Love File," stuffed to overflowing with magazine articles, photographs, the 1980 wedding announcement of a high school flame thoughtfully sent to me by my mother, "The Mensch Shortage, Or, What Do Women Want?" from the Village Voice of February 1986, a heartbreakingly beautiful picture of Amy Irving on the cover of the New York Daily News Magazine, and much, much more. And Newsweek had its place of honor.

Many of the articles came from New York Magazine. Back before the Internet, its personal ads were the big game in town for singles (in addition to the scruffier Village Voice). Around the time when "The Marriage Crunch" ran, New York made a radical innovation in personal ads -- singles could run their picture with their ad, for a price, of course.

The first pictures broke through the concrete-like wall of anonymity that always guarded the ads in New York. Sure, you could read the terse notices and get a very slight sense of the person, but learning the appearance of the other person had to wait until the slow-motion process of sending a letter with a picture, then waiting for a call, then wrangling a meeting. The process could take weeks. I couldn't imagine the nerve required to reveal yourself with a picture on your personal ad.

Newsweek also took notice of New York's approach. A sidebar article, "The New Mating Games," scanned the techniques of singles, including New York's approach, which cost "$500 for a picture and 12 lines of copy."

What Newsweek did in 1986 was reprint the actual ur-photo ad, the one I remember because I found the woman quite attractive. Under the headline "Luscious and Looking," she wrote copy that seems ludicrously brief by today's epic-length standards on JDate and Match, but Luscious still hit the classic themes and underlying neuroses of urban singles ads:

Divorced, 40, feminine, sexy, slender, 5'2", athletic, successful, great cook, cuddler, Jewish, enjoy intimacy, desire committed relationship. You: 34-45, tall, Manhattanite, handsome, successful, strong, masculine, caring, non-smoker."

The new Newsweek article has nothing about the role of technology in shifting the dynamics of dating and mating. Compared to 20 years ago, men and women have extraordinarily more choices thanks to the Internet. In 1986 Newsweek inadvertently touched on the revolution to come, with a passing reference to "video dating" and the pathbreaking picture of Luscious and Looking. While her photo is utterly demure compared to the bikini-clad vixens who can be found today, Luscious and Looking took the first tentative step beyond anonymity to say, "Here I am, guys. Take a good look."

If I were at Newsweek, I would have got on the horn to New York Magazine and tried to contact Luscious. She's 60 now; what's happened in the 20 years since she bravely shelled out her $500 to break through the columns of type in New York? Is she still luscious? Is she still looking?

I'm Turning Japanese

2006-05-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

I've dabbled in many languages in my life, even an effort to teach myself ancient Greek before I started college in the fall of 1976. Not that I can speak anything besides English -- I'm more a dilettante waiting for the day when I can activate my meandering studies in a real-life situation (as in, get a job that requires me to actually understand, say, Portuguese).

Last week I moved farther afield than ever when I started a five-week Japanese Language and Culture class at my company. I don't know why the class is being offered. It has no bearing on my professional responsibilities. However, my linguistic spirit of adventure had me sign up.

The first week's language segment focused on greetings and the simplest one-stroke letters. Over the weekend son Shmoikel relentlessly drilled me so, incredibly, the polysyllabic words began to make sense. The cartoon pictures that serve as memory aides for learning letters -- "Mt. St. Helens is quiet today" for "he" -- work very well, although upcoming lessons show a strange fixation on cartoons with yo-yos.

Overall, I'm happy to be learning in a structured setting, and I'll be returning my Italian and Hebrew language learning sets to the Greenwich Library so I can concentrate on Japanese.

"I'm Turning Japanese," by the way, was a popular song and video by the Vapors in the early 1980s. The lyrics are painfully relevant, although not to my efforts to learn Japanese:

I've got your picture
Of me and you
You wrote "I love you"
I love you too
I sit there staring and there's nothing else to do

Beneath the Planet of the Nutmeggers

2006-04-19T19:36:00.000-04:00

I take great pleasure in life when I can think, "This is something I have never done before." That happened yesterday when Shmoikel and I went on a cave exploration trip sponsored by the Bruce Museum of Greenwich. Other than a 1971 visit to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico -- hardly rigorous, more a stroll along well-lit underground paths -- I have never entered a cave.

Two dozen of us, split between adults and kids on their spring break, boarded a bus in Greenwich for the 75 minute drive to Litchfield County's Tory's Cave. An instruction sheet told us to wear layers of clothes and bring our own food and water. We were ready, to some extent.

Once we arrived, we met three skilled guides who just returned from a cave trip to Belize. After historical and safety remarks, we donned hardhats with small flashlights taped to them and began the descent. Whatever Shmoikel and I expected, this wasn't it. Rather than a chilly but dry, dark but wide cave entrance, we slithered down a narrow mouth of rock, past stubborn ice (the cave temperature stayes around 45 degrees). Feet first, stomach down, we slid into the unknown. Very fortunately, we had fantastic guides who were patient and knew every inch and rock ledge of Tory's Cave.

Once down, our group of a dozen (the others were doing a park walk segment) heard more cave lore. The kids asked lots of questions about bats. We divided again so one group went to through a crawl space to the "throne room," a silo-like area that extended 20 feet up for a good view. Those of us in the main room waited, while the kids wiggled through the "Lemon Squeeze," a short but tight tube too small for adults (except for one of the leaders). Shmoikel, the intrepid explorer, jumped right in and with some guidance from a girl who had gone before him worked his way out.

The other group returned and we clambered over a watery patch to the throne room. Then -- back to the surface, the same way we came.

This was the tough part. Coming down, we had gravity to get us to the bottom. Now, we had to haul ourselves up holding a rope and clawing for hand and foot holds. A guide gave a tired but determined Shmoikel step by step guidance while I waited below, the last to climb except for the final "sweep" guide.

Back at the surface, I gave Shmoikel a big hug and congratulated him on the considerable accomplishment. Before long he shucked off his drenched sweat pants and socks for track shorts and fresh socks.

We've built a wonderful memory of a father, a son, and a cave beneath the Planet of the Nutmeggers.

When Retailers Give Up

2006-04-19T07:18:00.000-04:00

Twice lately I've gone shopping for basic household items. My default retailer is a local hardware store here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I always try to support the small guys. The results are sometimes discouraging.

First, I wanted an over-the-door towel rack from my bathroom. The plastic one I bought at this store snapped within five minutes. I took it back for a refund. Then I tried Home Depot. After circling the store and consulting a half-dozen orange-aproned associates, somebody told me to go to Wal-Mart. And this was Home Depot! Sure enough, I found a cheap plastic over-the-door at Wal-Mart. Which also broke. Finally, I found exactly what I wanted at Bed Bath & Beyond.

This week I needed a water bottle to take to a cave exploring trip with Shmoikel. Again I returned to my local store. Again, it stocked nothing I wanted. "Oh, the Rubbermaid company is having a lot of problems," a sales associate told me. "Try Wal-mart."

I don't want to try Wal-Mart! At least consult your catalogue and see if you can order the bottle for me. Is it that difficult to satisfy a motivated customer? At what point did retailers give up and send customers chasing to Wal-Mart? I wonder how many sales Wal-mart gets simply because other retailers can't be bothered to stock or order products that they don't always carry?

I didn't go to Wal-mart for the elusive water bottle. Supermarkets didn't have it, and outdoor-goods stores in New York had wildly expensive $10-$12 designer bottles that were outlandish in their costly pretentiousness. Finally, a CVS drug store had exactly what I wanted, a 34 oz. bottle for $1.99.

It took visits to five stores to find that?

Fatherhood on the Margin of Memory

2006-04-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

My parents separated before I was three, and I have not a single memory of my family as an intact unit. Indeed, my father moved far away from my mother, brother and me before I was 5 years old, and I didn't see him for eight years.

Against this background of my parents' divorce and my divorce, my heart sank when my son, not quite a teen, told me he could not remember me living at home, with his mother and him. I moved out in 2002, when he was just past 8. Shmoikel knows me only at a distance, not the dad at home, but the dad on the phone, the dad with his other home.

Fortunately, I've worked hard to maintain a relationship. He may not remember me at the house, but he has a rich store of continual contact. I call every night, even if I'm on a date (what better way to show my solid parenting skills?), and maintain a clockwork-like visitation schedule.

Still, the sadness lingers, somewhere between a bruise and a shiv in my ribs. Surely my son benefits from growing up without the house full of marital tension, but couldn't I have broken the generational curse? I tell myself I've done that in my own way. He knows I love him and care -- a day doesn't go by without that, and our time together is full of hugs and private jokes. So I do the best I can.

And with a gentle reminder, I can bring memories of family time together to the surface. This weekend I mentioned Labor Day 1996, when the three of us went to a beach in Rhode Island. Schmoikel was barely two then, but fully capable of walking bareful on a splintery boardwalk -- and getting splinters in his little feet. We took him to a walk-in clinic to get them removed.

And you know what? He remembered.

PARODY: Harvard, Yale Team Up to Produce Deluxe Edition of "Israel Lobby" Paper

2006-04-11T23:33:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE: The April 12 New York Times carries an article titled, "Essay Stirs Debate About Influence of a Jewish Lobby." It's worth a look to see how brave Dr. Mearsheimer and stalwart Dr. Walt are holding up to the onslaught of attacks by "the Lobby." Why, they knew they were committing "career suicide in terms of getting a high-level administrative job in academia or a policy-making position," Mearsheimer said. What, provost of King Faisal University isn't good enough for you?]

Just in time for Passover, Harvard and Yale Universities are collaborating on a deluxe edition of the best-selling (in Saudi Arabia) scholastic paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

Announced at a press conference today in Cambridge, Mass., the book promises to bring the Harvard-published pathbreaking research of John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Joseph Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to a wider audience of readers.

The book will feature a lengthy introduction by the boola-boola mullah, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, now a student at Yale following his earlier career as a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Feel the fine Corinthian leather cover, run your fingers over the rich gilt edging of the pages," said Yale president Richard Levin. "Truly this is the most beautiful book, the Gutenberg Bible of modern anti-semitic studies. It simply reeks of quality, and that's the type of project that deserves a Yale-Harvard collaboration."

Levin appeared at the event along with Mearsheimer, Walt, Rahmatullah, and political commentator David Duke, PhD, who contributed a book-jacket blurb to "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

"Jews everywhere, Jews, Jews," observed Duke, recently named the Mearsheimer-Walt Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Harvard, adding, "Jews, Jews, and more Jews. But I like Levin."

The book runs 150 pages and would normally sell for $49.95, but it is being retailed nationwide at only $9.95 "thanks to the gracious support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was eager to bring this serious, rigorous scholastic masterpiece to a broad audience," said Levin, who appeared at the event without his outgoing counterpart from Harvard, recently purged president Lawrence Summers.

The two Ivies plan a major marketing campaign in collaboration with Borders, which recently won acclaim for its brave refusal to carry Free Inquiry magazine's issue with the Motoons. "Borders showed it's the kind of politically aware, culturally sensitive, retailer that we feel comfortable with," said Mearsheimer. "Borders stood up to the Jewish lobby, just like we did. Borders refused to bow down before Jewish pressure groups, with their whiny voices and Holocaust-this, Holocaust-that attitudes. They're the force behind secular humanism, anyway."

Duke agreed and noted that he is giving the paper's thesis a major promotional push on his website.

Following its release, the book will enjoy a second wave of publicity during Ramadan, and it will be distributed in "goodie bags" given to pilgrims making the hajj to Mecca. The New York Times Book Review also plans to highlight the book in its "gifts for the holidays" section in December.

Harvard and Yale's royalties from the distribution of copies purchased by the Saudi government "should make our endowments go through the roof," said Walt.

Levin also expects many Jews to buy the book to "express solidarity with progressive attitudes toward Israel and support for the precious right of free speech."

He added, "I'm so enthusiastic about this book that I'll have Rahmatullah pass out copies of it tonight when he comes to my seder."

Repentence, 26 Years Later

2006-04-02T19:54:00.000-04:00

March 24 marked the 26th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador. Now, one man involved in the murder is speaking out and asking for forgiveness. Alvaro Saravia, an aide to death squad leader and politician Roberto D'Aubuisson, acknowledged his role in the killing. Speaking with El Nuevo Herald in Miami, Saravia used striking language to make his point. Note the response from the current Archbishop of El Salvador:

As to his request for forgiveness, ''that's a moral obligation I have, as a human being, to society, to the Church and myself,'' Saravia said in an interview recently in a Latin American country he asked not be identified for his personal security.

Saravia said he is willing to appear before the Archbishop of El Salvador, Msgr. Fernando Sáenz La Calle, to ask for forgiveness. Sáenz La Calle said the offer brought him surprise and joy.

''God always forgives when there is true repentance and a desire to make amends,'' he said in a phone interview. ``How good it is that someone who bears so heavy a load on his conscience can lay it down and find peace and God's friendship.''

Can anybody imagine a member of Hamas or the PLO ever following Saravia in repenting for their crimes?

How Borders Ignores the Record of 9-11

2006-03-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

People going to Borders book stores asking for the now-infamous banned Motoon issue of Free Inquiry magazine can also ask another question: "What books do you have on 9-11?"

Answer: you will find almost none. That was my conclusion after I visited a huge Borders location in New York, on 57th Street and Park Avenue. Just a few miles from Ground Zero, the store carried not a single book devoted to 9-11 in its first-floor section of New York books, "All Things Local." The ONLY fleeting reference to 9-11 was in FDNY: An Illustrated History.

I wanted to be fair to Borders, so I asked a sales associate where I could find 9-11 books.

She couldn't point me to a specific section, but she mentioned 102 Minutes by New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. She suggested I look in Modern U.S. History and the politics sections.

I spent at least 30 minutes scouring the shelves of history, politics, and even photography. Surely, I thought, a New York Borders would keep a good stock of 9-11 books, through the logic of the local angle if nothing else. But here is all I uncovered:

-- The 9-11 Investigation, on a top shelf where I could barely reach it

-- Here is New York: A Democracy in Photographs

And that's it: as far as I can tell, this store didn't carry Portraits in Grief, New York September 11, not even 9-11 by Noam Chomsky.

To check that my New York visit was no anomaly, I also visited a Borders in Stamford, Connecticut, and also asked a sales associate for 9-11 books. Again, I got steered to 102 Minutes in the Modern U.S. History. I found that, along with:

-- Tower Stories

-- Inside 9-11: What Really Happened, by German's Der Spiegel magazine

And that's it. The whole search made me feel like I had dropped into a bizarro-world bookstore, where the most fateful world-historical event of our times did not occur. A visitor to either store would find it almost impossible to learn what happened that day -- what happened to set in motion the chain of events that led to many other books that Borders is happy to carry, such as plans to impeach President Bush.

The Free Inquiry episode makes a lot of sense in this context. Borders wouldn't want to inflame anybody with pesky photos of 9-11, right?

Cherchez La Femme: The Return of Adrienne Barbeau, My Most Dangerous Woman

2006-03-27T19:37:00.000-05:00

I've known some dangerous women in my life. They combine killer looks with personalities that threaten to chew up any man who cross them. They have hard romantic histories, burdened by bad men that leave them vulnerable and hard-shelled at the same time. Relationships with them promise passion and ferocious high-decibel drama. Dangerous women can cause men to act in strange ways, perfectly captured in the French phrase cherchez la femme.

Growing up in the 1970s, I decided, in my murky adolescent mind, that the ultimate Dangerous Woman was Adrienne Barbeau, co-star of Maude and then featured in lots of b-movies. Something about her grabbed my imagination in a way no other actress of that era did. So imagine my delight to learn she's now starring in the play, "The Property Known as Judy Garland" at New York's Actors' Playhouse. I can now buy a ticket to enjoy my dangerous woman, seen at her most deadly, below.

On Maude, Barbeau played Maude's single-mom daughter, Carol Traynor. One fan site says the character dated and went with men on "weekend business trips." I can't remember any particular episode with Barbeau, but the cumulative effect was impressive. Much later, she bobbed up in my consciousness when she gave birth to twin boys in 1997, at the age of 51.

Barbeau then fell off my radar screen until I learned about the play. Now, I'm curious, in that way you wonder how the decades have treated an individual with an image formed much earlier in your life. The press photos of Barbeau in the Garland play certainly update me, although they probably depict a time-ravaged Garland more than the natural Barbeau. What do you think?

I've moved on since I first fixated on Barbeau. I'm happy to see she's busy with a biography, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, to debut on April 10, and other projects. I'll look for the book, but first I'm going to set aside some time to watch Swamp Thing, the classic showcase of Barbeau and her substantial charms.

News from the Near Future: Yale to Award Honorary Degree to Sirhan Sirhan

2006-03-25T19:35:00.000-05:00

April 1, 2006: Yale University has announced it will award an honorary degree to Palestinian-American activist Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

University president Richard Levin told a press conference, "Sirhan is an outstanding representative of the Palestinian people, a true fighter for the rights of Palestinians to live peacefully in their own homeland. Tragically, he has been a political prisoner of the U.S. government for almost 40 years, simply for acting on his beliefs. While we cannot give back to Sirhan those lost decades of his life, we can give him an honorary degree, suitable for framing."

Speaking via telephone from his home at the Federal penitentiary in Corcoran, Calif., Sirhan said, "This is a great day for the Arabs, the Palestinians, and everybody who ever donated money to Yale University. Their investment is paying off, as Yale extends the ivy branch to victims of political repression such as myself and my spiritual brother Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi." The degree will be presented at Yale's graduation ceremonies in May.

Yale decided to present the degree to Sirhan following what Levin called the "tremendous excitement" surrounding the presence of former Taliban spokesman Hashemi on campus. "Let me tell you, you can't buy publicity like this," said Levin. "Everybody's talking about Yale. I can hear the alumni whipping those checkbooks out to make a big donation. Princeton will have to enroll General Pinochet's grandson to top this move."

Levin will give Sirhan a personal tour of the Yale campus, including a stop at Skull & Bones. Hashemi will join Sirhan to symbolically slit Levin's throat in a mock execution that will highlight the "celebrating our diversity" activities of graduation week at Yale. Levin commented, "I would be honored to be executed by these two fine gentlemen, even in a symbolic manner."

Asked about other events on the big day, Sirhan said, "I'm looking forward to lunch with Jodie Foster."

Suppress Without Mercy the New Trotskyites (in HR)

2006-03-20T19:33:00.000-05:00

An article in HR Magazine last month, "Detecting Hidden Bias," is a most intriguing read. The subhead deftly captures the story's essence: "You may not see it, but it’s probably lurking among your managers—and perhaps even in you."

The article discusses the malign menace of unseen, nigh undetectable bias in human resource departments. Despite the lawsuits, training, online courses, seminars, conferences, and sensitivity efforts, the threat remains -- more dangerous than ever:

According to analysis conducted by a Harvard University-led research team, it is entirely possible that you and your manager are biased—and that you don’t even know it.

Such hidden biases can be disastrous for the employees who suffer as a result of them; they also can damage businesses by leading managers and employees to make flawed business decisions in a number of areas, including hiring, promotion, training opportunities and project assignments. For HR, the task is clear, but daunting: Help uncover and address such bias before problems arise.

That language -- uncover and address mental tendencies that you don't even suspect in yourself -- sounds familiar. Now, what other tendency drove executives crazy and demanded ever harsher efforts to identify, expose, force confessions, and liquidate from an organization?

Then I remembered -- accusations of hiring bias are the 21st century equivalent of being called a Trotskyite in the USSR in the 1930s.

In reality, the followers of Leon Trotsky were routed from the USSR's political life quickly. They had no visibility and no political base against Stalin's terror, with Trotsky himself, the Prophet Outcast in the words of biographer Isaac Deutscher, hurled into exile and eventually assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Still, Stalin found the accusation of Trotskyite tendencies an excellent tool for flaying his hapless allies in the 1930s. He argued that the opposition from Trotskyites and the other despised class, peasant kulaks, only sharpened as their numbers decreased and their overt hostility lessened. The threat went underground and had to be rooted out and liquidated with increasing ruthlessness. The class struggle could never end.

Consider the process of rooting out the threat of Nikolai Bukharin, a favorite of Lenin's with whom Stalin played cat and mouse for years. Here is part of the last plea of Bukharin at his 1938 show trial:

I plead guilty to being one of the leaders of this 'Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites.' I plead guilty to the sum total of crimes committed by this counter-revolutionary organization, whether or not I knew of, whether or not I took part in, any particular act... For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For you ask yourself: "If you must die, what are you dying for?"

The language eerily parallels HR Magazine: Unstated, unconscious tendencies require confessions and a "revaluation." Denial of such tendencies merely confirms their stubborn presence.

The HR Magazine article quotes results of the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center to extract confessions from the New Trotskyites. Nikolai Bukharin would identify with the mindset:

“Bigotry is a persistent social problem in this country, and we can’t escape being socialized in this context,” observes Jennifer Smith-Holladay, the center’s senior adviser for strategic affairs. Smith-Holladay says her own results uncovered a preference for white people—a group to which she belongs—and a preference for heterosexual people, “a group to which I don’t belong.

“I discovered that I not only have some in-group favoritism lurking in my subconscious, but also possess some internalized oppression in terms of my sexuality,” Smith-Holladay adds.

Lesson learned? “In the case of my own subconscious in-group favoritism for white people, for example, my charge is to be color-conscious, not color-blind, and to always explicitly consider how race may affect behaviors and decisions,” Smith-Holladay says.

HR Magazine asks, as did Lenin in a different context, what is to be done? Actually, HR Magazine provides its plan of action uder this headline: "Help for Rooting Out Hidden Bias."

Final note: As far as I could tell, HR Magazine did not uncover a single case of actual bias in action. The article is entirely theoretical.

A Light Unto the Nations, Still

2006-03-19T19:31:00.000-05:00

This is an amazing story. The text is not available via a link to the Independent in the UK, so I'm placing the text here. The message is that beyond the bickering, the intermarriage, the hyper-organization and sub-organization, Judaism has a message for the world that retains enormous, if understated, appeal.

--------

Matthias Goering says: "I used to feel cursed by my name. Now I feel blessed."

The 49-year-old physiotherapist, a descendant of Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, is wearing a Jewish skullcap, with a Star of David pendant round his neck. After being brought up to despise Jews, he has embraced their faith. And although he has yet to formally convert to Judaism, he keeps kosher dietary rules, celebrates shabbat and is learning Hebrew.

In a Jewish restaurant in Basle, Mr Goering enthuses about Israel. "It feels like home," he says. "The Israelis are so friendly." Even when they hear his name? "Yes, they say they're so thankful I've made contact."

With the same name as the former Luftwaffe chief, who committed suicide at Nuremberg hours before he was to be executed, Mr Goering says he did not have a happy childhood. His great-grandfather and Hermann's grandfather were brothers, and that was enough to ensure problems after the fall of the Third Reich. "My siblings and I were bullied mercilessly," Matthias says. His father, a military doctor, was a Soviet prisoner of war, but returned with his anti-Semitic views intact. When times were hard, Matthias says: "Our parents would say to us, 'You can't have that, because all our money's gone to the Jews.'"

Mr Goering left home at 18 to join the circus, but eventually settled down, trained as a physiotherapist, married and had a son. But by 2000 his Swiss physiotherapy practice was bankrupt and his wife had left, taking their son. Broke and lonely, he was close to suicide, and says he prayed for the first time in his life. The same day his prayer was answered: a physiotherapy practice near Zurich offered him a job.

Mr Goering started attending Christian churches, but two years later began his journey towards Judaism. He says God told him "to guard the gates of Jerusalem", despite his name and his family history. "I knew then," he says, "I had to go to Israel."

Other descendants of Nazis have trodden the same path. Katrin Himmler, who published a book last year about the war crimes of her great-uncle, the SS commander Heinrich Himmler, married an Israeli. "It was as if we were predestined to meet," she says.

Beate Niemann, daughter of feared SS Major Bruno Sattler, made an award-winning film, The Good Father, documenting her hopeless search for a man she could be proud of, and tried to apologise to camp survivors after discovering her father had ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Monika Goeth's father was Amon Goeth, the camp commandant played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List, who shot Jewish prisoners from the balcony of his villa. She has spent years seeking rapprochement with camp survivors. "I am completely drawn to Judaism," she says. "Jews were the real heroes. I feel nothing but contempt for those who idolise the Nazis."

"The Godfather" Video Game: The Search for Consequences

2006-03-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

March must be Mob Month: the new season of "The Sopranos" begins tonight, and Electronic Arts (EA) is releasing a video-game version of "The Godfather" on March 19.

The game sticks close to the book and movies, using the real voices of some characters. Set in New York between 1945 and 1955, the game

will offer gamers countless choices for solving the family's problems with brutal violence, skillful diplomacy, or a cunning mixture of both. From mob hits and bank heists to drive-bys and extortion, step deep inside the world of The Godfather -- where intimidation and negotiation are your tickets to the top. Players will use their powers of loyalty and fear to earn respect through interactions with characters in the world. Decisions made by the player in the game will have lasting consequences, just as it was in the mob underworld featured in The Godfather fiction.

As the father of a game-playing adolescent, the game's point makes me queasy. Let's focus on the word "consequences."

In both the Sopranos (which I just started watching on DVD, from the first season) and the Godfather book and movies, violence and power exist within a closed loop. Men get killed, women abused, fortunes made and lost, but everything happens in a sort of moral bubble where actions have no ripple effect outside the world of the criminals. All those charming Mafia activities like loansharking, prostitution, and drugs carry no moral impact beyond the tote board of respect, power, and money.

So when I read about the Godfather game, I wonder, what messages are players absorbing? You win by being the best killer and intimidator? Screen shots from the game show a policeman being thrown off roofs, assaults with baseball bats, people flung into furnaces. In the Godfather movies, Michael Corleone ultimately faces profound consequences, e.g., he leads a miserable life. Sonny's dead, he's killed Fredo, and confession does no good. What respect comes from crime? I'm still discovering on the Sopranos if Tony Soprano's therapy confessions to sexy shrink Dr. Jennifer Melfi lead to any insights (don't tell me!)

I'll grant that this is a still-unrated video game, and not every piece of entertainment need have a didactic purpose. Perhaps buried in the Godfather game are moments of doubt and fear, moral revelations. That does not make for good game play; fortunately, my son is far more into "We Love Katamari" than any violent game.

In the real world, actions DO have consequences. For a prime example, see this riveting article in New York Magazine as part of its Sopranos editorial package. "The Lost Soprano" discusses the case of Lillo Brancato, who starred in "A Bronx Tale" with Robert DeNiro and was in the second season of the Sopranos. He put more time into drugs than developing an acting career, and last December broke into a house with his ex-girlfriend's father seeking drugs. Off-duty policeman Daniel Enchautegui intervened, Brancato's companion killed the cop, and Brancato is now at Rikers charged with second-degree murder.

The article has quotes of startling moral rationalization and blankness:

Lillo feels terrible about the dead cop. “Too painful to talk about,” he says. Still, he’s not sure why it involves him. “I was in the wrong place, wrong time,” he says. Like drugs or acting, murder happened to Lillo. People misunderstand. “It kills me every day, being in here, knowing that I’m innocent,” he says. “I’m not a person who should be here. I am a good person.”

In the real world, Brancato is looking at consequences for his actions far different from what is found in the Godfather game and the Sopranos. At some point, the realization will kick in. Put that in a video game.

PARODY: MTV's "Spring Break Gitmo" Names Cindy Sheehan as Guest Bachelorette

2006-03-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

MTV's smash new show, "Spring Break Gitmo," will feature Cindy Sheehan as its first bachelorette in its "Terrorist Dating Game" segment. In the first episode, three terrorist-bachelors will battle one another to win the affections of Cindy, along with valuable prizes.

Ashton Kutcher and Courtney Love host the program direct from balmy, palmy, party-down Guantanamo Bay. Each week the show will feature a sexy celebrity bachelorette. Here's the premise: After qualifying rounds, three contestants will compete in several events that measure their courage and stamina. For Sheehan's segment, the wacky challenges include:

-- Wearing Cindy's panties on their heads

-- Spending 24 hours straight logged on to Daily Kos and Democratic Underground

-- Playing the Roy Cohn role in humorous skits written by Tony Kusher

The highlight of the segment -- filmed before a boisturous crowd of detainees and drunken college students -- comes when Cindy lobs hilarious questions at the three contestants, who are kept hidden from her by an on-stage screen.

The multiple-choice questions, meant to give Cindy insights into the personalities of three intriguing young, virile, woman-deprived men, include:

1. "If we had a three-way, we would be joined by: a. Reese Witherspoon b. Rep. Cynthia McKinney c. Khalid Sheik Mohammed d. this saucy blonde beauty."

2. "If former attorney general John Ashcroft suddenly appeared on stage, would you: a. kill him b. prefer Janet Reno c. thank him for providing food, medical care, and housing at Camp Gitmo that exceeds your wildest fantasies." (Note: MTV arranged for Ashcroft to make a surprise guest appearance at the show. Watch the fur fly when he presents the contestants with copies of the New Testament!)

3. "Complete this sentence: There's nothing I like more during a romantic evening than cuddling in front of a crackling fire and roasting: a. marshmallows b. kosher weenies c. Danish cartoonists."

Based on their responses, Cindy will choose one bachelor for a wild weekend at a secluded beach section of Camp Gitmo. The winner will also be sponsored for a green card by Sen. John Kerry and enjoy automatic admission to Yale University through its Terrorist Diversity Initiative.

In next week's episode of "Spring Break Gitmo," bachelorettes Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garafalo take on five lucky terrorists in the "Gitmo Gang Bang Mosh Pit."

HUMOR: H'wood Homophobes Nix Dix Pix; Chix-Lix Flix Clix?

2006-03-06T15:03:00.000-05:00

America reeled last night as the hidden homophobes of Hollywood denied "Brokeback Mountain" its rightful Oscar for Best Picture, instead giving the precious little statuette to "Crash," some movie about race relations in Los Angeles with a title that sounds more like a "Super Mario" racing game.

While Ang Lee got the Oscar for best director and somebody named Gustavo Santaolalla won an Oscar for best score for Brokeback Mountain, the film's supporters expressed outrage at the revenge of the heterosexists.

"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could have sent a very powerful message about the acceptance of gay cowpokes," asserted one observer. "Instead, the academy honored a picture about different ethnic groups getting on one another's nerves."

Director Lee, however, plans to leverage his Brokeback success into related projects. He's now developing a splashy musical comedy about gay mullahs in the Middle East, with the working title, "Naughty Bawdy Gaudy Saudi Second Street."

(Note: Photo below is from "Bandidas," a movie discussed in the rest of this entry. This is a blatant attempt to entice readers to keep reading. Bandidas has a thematic relation to Brokeback Mountain.)

Police units nationwide stood on guard Sunday night into Monday morning in anticipation of rioting groups of Brokeback Mountain supporters. Dawn broke over a troubled America as tension filled the streets from West Hollywood to Tulsa to Presque Isle, Maine. A SWAT squad in Falfurrias, Texas swung into action when it heard a loud noise, but that turned out to be a truck backfiring.

Larry McMurtry, co-writer of Brokeback's screenplay, denounced the decision as an indication of remitting bias against simple plain folks who don't live in big cities. Yes, he really said something like that.

Some astute observers saw this coming from a long way off. Back in December the writer of the "Strong Opinions" blog had this to say:

I’m going to stick my neck out and predict that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN will not win the Oscar for Best Picture, although it will receive several nominations and probably win a couple. I hate to call the Academy prejudiced, but I think they will pick a more conservative film, like MUNICH, and there will be a loud protest that BROKEBACK lost because it was too gay.

The only way the academy can redeem itself is to give Best-Picture Oscar next year to "Bandidas," a pathbreaking Western starring Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek spiced with rumors of lesbian activity between the stars. Observers already spot a groundswell of enthusiastic support for Bandidas among a broad spectrum of a key demographic: straight males aged 12 to 95. The reliable sources at The Jawa Report call it "the kind of gay cowboy film men will be flocking to see."

Mullah's Version of "Get Up, I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine"

2006-03-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, performed the classic version of the song "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," with the powerfully poetic lyrics

Fellas, I'm ready to get up and do my thing
I wanta get into it, man, you know...
Like a, like a sex machine, man,
Movin'... doin' it, you know
Can I count it off? (Go ahead)

But James Brown had better watch his back, 'cause this unidentified mullah looks likes he's ready to throw down and challenge for the crown of the New Godfather of Funky Moves. Check it out, oh kafirs.

I Love It When Psychiatrists Talk Dirty

2006-03-05T14:56:00.000-05:00

Dr. Sanity puts a certain Venezuelan strongman on the couch for gentle probing under the headine: "Chavez: A Case of Castration Anxiety?" She writes,

It is striking, though, how Chavez perfectly embodies some of Freud's early concepts relating to paranoia and castration anxiety. He would make a good case discussion.

Katrina and Free Speech: Making the Connection

2006-03-04T07:23:00.000-05:00

I just found this riveting counter-conventional wisdom discussion of the Katrina rescue efforts by Lou Dolinar. It illustrates what I call the "Flight 93" approach to problem-solving: Get off your tuchus and act, don't sit around waiting for some distant group to rescue you. As the story shows, this applies to members of the government themselves, who acted well on their own initiative. Dolinar writes:

Largely ignored by the agenda-driven national media, one of the largest rescue operations in history saved more than 50,000 people by boat and helicopter. In this Dunkirk on the Mississippi, Coast Guard and other military units, volunteers, and state and local first responders delivered thousands from death by drowning, dehydration, heatstroke, fire, starvation, and disease. The three goats of Katrina — FEMA’s Michael Brown, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and Mayor Nagin — had little if any role; in fact, because local communication was wiped out by the storm, they may not even have known about the scale and success of the rescue operation.

I thought about Dolinar's article in light of yesterday's pro-free speech rally in New York. About 100 people showed up in a city full of supposed free-speech enthusiasts. Islamists can draw hundreds or more for their events, along with mainstream media eagerly waiting for the wild men to go berserk and threaten slaughter (and they always put on a bloody good show for the thrill-seeking media).

I felt sad, but not surprised, that New York couldn't draw more people. That's the nature of public protest in New York. A quarter-million showed up for the August 2004 anti-war rally in New York; maybe 250 lent support to a Darfur rally in New York just two weeks later.

Numbers count, but so do devotion, consistency, and determination to act in the face of overwhelming indifference. One boat, one voice, one call of "let's roll:" let enough individuals find one another -- as we did yesterday -- and resolve for a common purpose, and the results will follow.

Speaking Out for Free Speech in New York

2006-03-03T15:16:00.000-05:00

About 100 stalwart supporters of Denmark and free speech gathered at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York today. Blasting the total lack of interest from mainstream media in an event in a city integral to the Terrorist War, the demonstrators drew approving honks from truck drivers and others on 2nd Avenue. The photos below give a flavor of the event.

One highlight of the event involved moving comments from Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, widow of murdered journalist Steve Vincent. "I came to warn you first-hand of the dangers of Islamic extremism," she said. Ramaci-Vincent is shown below.

In keeping with the country in the spotlight, the event featured some strong expressions of solidarity with Denmark and its culture of cheese and Vikings:

UPDATE: Mary's report contrasts our demo with the anti-cartoon Muslim demo from two weeks ago.

One of the many Protest Babes, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, takes video that appeared on the Internet.

Excuse me, where might I find the Danish soccer fans?

Ah, here are the Danish soccer fans. Danke.

The contrast is obvious.

The language of the Vikings on the streets of New York.

It ain't kosher, but it ain't bad (caption inspired by the great Merle Haggard song of almost the same title)

The Good, the Bad, and the Offensive: Ideas for Placards at a Pro-Danish Demonstration

2006-03-02T16:42:00.000-05:00

I'll be attending a pro-Danish demonstration at UN Plaza tomorrow from 12 noon to 1 pm in New York, outside the Danish consulate. I hope to take lots of great photos of people -- thousands of people, I hope -- raising their voices in defense of Western values.

I've done my part by suggesting text for placards that my fellow Sons and Daughters of Liberty can wave around and, in need be, shove into the snouts of counter-demonstrators. Here you go:

What part of "freedom of the press" do you not understand?

1st Amendment + 2nd Amendment = Victory over Terrorists

Live Free or Die: Good for New Hampshire, Good for America

The Little Mermaid Does NOT Wear a Burkha! (great Photoshop possibility)

A Danish a day keeps Sharia away

Kufirs for Freedom

Hands off the Vikings

We're a Christian nation, but we won't turn the other cheek

The 7th century does not come after the 21st century

Free speech > Religious intolerance

Free speech rulez, repression droolz

Freedom is just another word for everything to lose

Oink if you love freedom (Photoshop alert!)

Calling Martin Luther -- Islam needs you!

Where's Martin Luther when Islam needs him?

Freedom: Where no Islamist has gone before

Get your paws off the Little Mermaid, you damned dirty jihadist! (very mean reference to Planet of the Apes)

Sharia? We don't need your stinkin' Sharia!

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

Scarlett O'Hara to the West: "As God is my witness they're not going to lick me."

"And gentlemen now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us." Shakespeare, Henry V (adapted)

50 United States Always Trump 72 Raisins

All along the watchtower, we're defending the West's freedoms

Proud Member of the Dar al-Harb (Arabic for "House of War," those outside Islam)

I (heart) the Dar al-Harb

Proud to be a Zionist

Hands off the First Amendment (show Uncle Sam about to chop off a devilish hand reaching for a parchment document)

Here are several from "The Lord of the Rings:"

Gimli on Terrorists: They have no honor in life. They have none now in death.

Aragorn to the West: Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you *stand, Men of the West!* (Choose whatever phrase you like)

Galdalf to the West: There is a task now to be done. Another opportunity for one of the Shirefolk to prove their great worth. You must not fail me.

Gandalf to Islamists: Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.

Solidarity, Then and Now

2006-02-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

In 1979, Pope John Paul II returned to his native Poland and held mass before 250,000 people. He spoke words that challenged the atheist ideology of the Soviet Union and its ruling puppets in Poland. According to this report in CNN, the audience responded in a way that directly linked their faith to freedom:

"Therefore, Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography. ... Christ cannot be kept out of this part of the world. To try to do this is an act against man."

"Christ conquers, Christ rules," they sang, hundreds of thousands of triumphant voices. And from among the yellow and white papal flags in the crowd a banner was unfurled that read: "Freedom, independence, protection of human rights."

A year after the Pope's visit, Lech Walesa formed the independent trade union Solidarity, the wedge of opposition to Soviet rule that eventually swept communist governments and the USSR itself into the dustbin of history.

Now, Poles are showing their solidarity again, standing fast and remembering Christians murdered by Islamists, through a campaign called "Martyrs of our Times." In a strong, unapologetic message, they are greatly adding to the growing stream of Western responses to Islamist terror, this time raising a distinctly Christian voice that should be emulated by faiths worldwide.

The details come from this Agence France-Presse story (deleted portions contain the obligatory Islamic braying about "provocation"):

A Christian group in the Polish city of Poznan has put up posters in the city’s trams of modern “martyrs” who have died at the hands of Muslims or in Muslim nations, its head said Monday.

“We did this in the spirit of Christian solidarity with those who suffer for their faith,” said Boguslaw Kiernicki, head of the St Benedict Foundation which was created six months ago.

“Christians in Poland are in a comfortable situation, but there are others in other countries who are not,” he said. . . Some 300 posters are on display in Poznan’s trams, showing Christians who have died in Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia, among other countries.The captions on the posters describe their “road to Calvary” and call on Poland’s predominantly Roman Catholic faithful to pray for “these modern martyrs”

The invaluable Gateway Pundit has more details and examples of the posters.

The pro-Israel group Stand With Us has an outstanding collection of posters and flyers, including, in the spirit of the Polish campaign, this one.

The West Finds Its Voice: Meet Scott Lo Baido, Creative Patriot

2006-02-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

The easiest art in the world involves mixing and matching these themes: President Bush is an evil repressive moron. Christians are fascist simpletons. Laugh at Southerners. Race and gender issues rule. Corporations are scum. Israel is the source of evil in the universe. Throw in some naked bodies and you're on the cover of the Village Voice and other alternative publications in a jiffy -- 'cause you're fighting the power, man.

But the truly transgressive art looks askance at this conventional wisdom and feeds it back in a fun-house mirror reflection. The most visible, assertive practitioner of this kind of art is Scott Lo Baido, who had a New York show at the Tribute Gallery not far from Ground Zero in the weeks before the 2004 election. Here's one example of his 9-11 themed work, called "The New York Giants," featuring Rudy Guiliani and New York police and firefighters:

And in recent days Lo Baido, who calls himself "the Creative Patriot," started a bold new project that will take him to all 50 states.

On Feb. 22, Lo Baido started his 22,000-mile "Flags Across America" tour to raise money through sponsorships for the Wounded Warrior Project. Lo Baido explains it like this:

I will drive to every single one of our fifty states in this great land, and paint a huge American flag on the rooftop of a building in each of those states. I would also like to shake the hand and personally thank as many of our brave Veterans as possible.

My Dream is to promote patriotism in the grandest way where so many will see. I want to support our troops and welcome them home with an appreciative view from the sky. I would hope that my efforts might inspire others to be Creative Patriots. But most importantly, I will honor the veterans who gave me this creative opportunity and in return, thank them for the greatest gift to civilization…….. FREEDOM!

The project ends in New York on Sept. 8-11.

Lo Baido combines his artwork with a large dose of Abbie Hoffman-like street theater to get his points across. This article from CNN (!) mentions some of his greatest hits, and shows "Have Faith," his one painting guaranteed to cause apoplexy among certain audiences (hint: it involves President Bush and Osama bin Laden):

LoBaido, 38, was arrested in 1999 after throwing horse manure at the exterior of the Brooklyn Museum of Art to protest its display of a painting of the Virgin Mary festooned with elephant dung.

"I'm expressing myself creatively," he said as police led him away that day.

Last year, LoBaido was arrested for hanging a large American flag on an awning outside the French Consulate as a sign of protest for what he considered France's contempt for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. He is on one-year probation.

You Ain't Nothin' But a Jihad Dog, Killin' All the Time

2006-02-26T16:24:00.000-05:00

The West continues to find its voice, now singing through the Velvet Prophet:

With or without fluorescent paint, few things are as quintessentially kitschy as black velvet paintings. But many political leaders in Europe and the United States seem to agree with the Pope and the Islamic community that free speech is what's truly out of style. In response to this officially endorsed cultural intimidation, an international group of brave human rights activists have created the Velvet Muhammad to demonstrate that "free speech is never in poor taste."

The Prophet, who shares a remarkable likeness to the King, can be viewed in all his finery at www.velvetprophet.com - or soon, in the offices of several major Islamic organizations. The Velvet Prophet team is giving original, hand-painted Velvet Prophets to several of the groups inciting rage in Muslim communities. Gift recipients include Jamaía Islamiya, Arab European League, Muslim Council of Britain, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Islamic Defenders Front, Islamic Circle of North America and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. These organizations, which were appalled by a few cartoons, will see for themselves that the Prophet looks much more dignified on black velvet.

(The Photoshop illustration below does not show the Velvet Prophet Himself (Quaaludes be upon him), but it does depict the loving devotion of a pre-orgasmic Tupelo honey for the King.)

The Velvet Prophet is also available to mere infidels. Global citizens who support freedom of expression and oppose the spread of culturally oppressive forms of Islam are hanging their very own Velvet Prophets in homes and businesses. If some true believers wish to murder us all for the sin of being human, at least give us the freedom to laugh about it.

All profits from the sale of Velvet Muhammad paintings, shirts and prints go to non-profit organizations that either support free speech or work against the growth of radical Islam.

Velvet Prophet organizers, suitably concerned about security, are keeping their identities secret. Whomever they are, they have bravery, along with great scholarly skills to unearth the eerie secret connections between the King and the Prophet. Consider the amazing "coincidences:"

* Both have a cult-like following.
* Elvis built his career on rock. Muhammad built his career on a rock.
* Millions of pilgrims flock to Graceland. Millions of pilgrims flock to Mecca.
* Elvis served in the military. Muhammad led the military.
* Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Muhammad also came from nowhere.
* Both had a real taste for virgins.
* Both live forever in velvet.

Paradise for me would be Velvet Prophet on the wall and Bubba Ho-Tep in the DVD player.

Jews Against Israel:" March of the Self-Flagellators

2006-02-25T16:21:00.000-05:00

Emanuelle Ottolenghi has a stellar piece in the Jerusalem Post with the pithily accurate title "Jews Against Israel." Ottolenghi, who teaches Israel Studies at Oxford, discusses the Jews who eagerly line up to trash Israel and all those other Zionazis who don't toe the correct line. He writes:

These self-flagellating Jews crave acceptance and recognition. Their views are moot inside the Jewish world, since they have, by and large, lost the argument against the Jewish mainstream and its commitment to Israel. Having been rejected by their fellow Jews, they put their venom to the service of Israel's enemies as a way of regaining a place in the sun.

Is it any wonder that they can win a debate about Jewish identity only when Israel's enemies define the terms of engagement, and have last say on the outcome?

Read the rest.

The West Begins to Find Its Voice Against the Orcs

2006-02-24T16:13:00.000-05:00

In the battle of media imagery, the Islamists are the clear winners -- by default. Their demonstrations bristle with placards threatening bloody mayhem on the West. I take them seriously. By contrast, the West has remained mostly supine, relentlessly self-flagellating and fearful of being branded racists or imperialists for defending the truths we hold to be self-evident.

I've always wondered, when will the people of the West (and those who live by Western values) raise their voices to defend free speech, the rights of the individual, women, real tolerance, free enterprise, and other fruits of the past 250 years? Cartoons spoofing Mohammed, while a brave example of free expression, are not enough.

The West is beginning to find its voice and speak up against the Orcs. Evidence of a forceful, unapologetic Western response is becoming visible. Finally.

The first kudo goes to psychatrist Pat Santy, who blogs under the name Dr. Sanity. Santy created a simple placard, text against a yellow background, responding to an Islamist poster in New York. Another blogger photoshopped her text and came up with this:

This is important, because visuals count in our media age. Groups like Protest Warrior know this and have created signs that drive leftists completely batty (I know, since I joined PW at the August 29, 2004 counter-protest at the NY anti-war rally and saw the kind of frothing rage PW signs provoke in closed-minded individuals). In the face of an insane opponent, sharply worded and aggressive pro-Western statements are sure to provoke sputtering rage.

More evidence of the West, rising:

1. Writer Christopher Hitchens organized a rally held today in support of Denmark in Washington, D.C., which attracted about 200 protesters. The posters were mild, but they made the point that Americans are supporting the Danes. Here's one group of pictures, and here's another group that gives an inkling of a delightful twist on protest posters: note "Submit to Havarti" and "Kierkegaard Rules," as well as the Lego themes.

The Washington event inspired a one-man demonstration of "sammenhold" (solidarity) at the Danish consulate in Boston, as shown here.

2. Even as a write this, I'm getting emails from Protest Warriors about organizing a pro-Denmark rally in New York this weekend. Although I've only attended one PW event, I've always admired the group's aggressive, in-your-face approach, although I think PW could use some fresh posters.

3. In Australia, federal treasurer Peter Costell had these pithy comments, as quoted on the Cybercast News Service:

Australian Muslims already unhappy with Prime Minister John Howard's criticism about Islamic radicalism are bristling at even tougher comments from the man likely to succeed him, who says any Muslim immigrant who can't accept Australian values should leave.

Anyone wanting to live under Islamic law (shari'a) might feel more comfortable living in countries where it is applied, such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, federal Treasurer Peter Costello said in an address to the Sydney Institute, a think tank.

In a pledge of allegiance, immigrants taking on Australian citizenship declare: "I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey."

Costello said that anyone "who does not acknowledge the supremacy of civil law laid down by democratic processes cannot truthfully take the pledge of allegiance. As such they do not meet the pre-condition for citizenship."

Any Muslim planning to immigrate to Australia should first consider its values.

Good on ya, Peter!

4. In a most encouraging development, demonstrations are planned for March 4 in Madrid and March 25 in London. Two Londoners who blog under the name Voltaire are planning a March for Free Expression. Voltaire's site has a clear statement of principle that frames the contrast between the West and its attackers in exactly the right terms:

The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time. The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock. We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same. We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.

And so begins, slowly, the rise of a Western voice against the madness.

JDate Opens the Kimono

2006-02-23T01:03:00.000-05:00

JDate is the site subscribers love to hate -- creaky technology, lackluster customer service, and weak quality control that lets scammers from Ghana (or someplace) send out email after email. But if you're Jewish and not Orthodox, it's just about the only game in the electronic shtetl.

Still, there's another side to consider: JDate the business. It's part of Spark Networks, a company with a new listing on the American Stock Exchange (trading under the ticker symbol LOV) and public financial results. Spark released its fourth quarter and year-end results on Feb. 16, providing insights into the size and performance of both JDate and Sparks.

Let's take a look as JDate opens the kimono, as they say on Wall Street.

First, how big is JDate? Membership numbers in the press are impressive but vague. A sponsored link on Google by JDate refers to "500,000+ Singles." This article from the Los Angeles Times claims 600,000 members, or "one in 10 Jewish singles."

Those figures don't indicate the number of paying customers -- the kind who can write and respond to emails, the big spenders, if you will. Here's the straight scoop:

Average paying subscribers for the Company's JDate segment were 73,700, during the fourth quarter of 2005, an increase of 8%, compared to 68,500, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, average paying subscribers for JDate were 70,500, an increase of 1%, compared to 69,800, for the year ended December 31, 2004.

By that measure, going with the 500,000 base JDate mentions in its Google ad, at any one time only 14 percent of profiles come from paid members. No wonder so many messages go unanswered -- the odds of one paying member writing to another paying member who has the ability, if not the inclination, to respond are low.

Financially, JDate's contribution to the Sparks revenues stacks up like this:

The Company reported fourth quarter 2005 revenue for its JDate segment of $6.8 million, an increase of 10%, compared to $6.2 million, in the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, JDate segment revenue was $26.0 million, an increase of 9%, compared to $23.8 million, in the year ended December 31, 2004.

So the revenue growth moved up with the increase in subscribers, rather than through an increase in subscription rates. The last time JDate raised its rate was in the summer of 2004, from $28.50 to $34.95. An interesting statistic would be the average length of subscription; do people pay for a month and stop, or keep paying month after lovelorn month?

However, JDate is spending more to acquire those subscribers. The release says,

Direct subscriber acquisition cost(4) (SAC) for the Company's JDate segment in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $12.25, an increase of 15%, compared to $10.68, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, SAC for the Company's JDate segment totaled $12.70, an increase of 57%, compared to $8.09, for the year ended December 31, 2004. "SAC metrics for JDate are not an apples-to-apples comparison when you consider the marketing mix has shifted from a primarily online, direct marketing effort to one that now includes a wide mix of offline initiatives focused on continuing to strengthen the JDate brand," stated [Sparks president and CEO David] Siminoff. "Because of these efforts, we proudly feel that, within the Jewish community, JDate has become a verb."

Sparks defines SAC as "total direct marketing costs divided by the number of new paying subscribers during the period. This represents the average cost of acquiring a new paying subscriber during the period."

Finally, JDate numbers suggest that the growth years of online dating may be over. Average paying subscribers for the years end Dec. 31 zoomed from 50,700 at year-end 2003 to 69,800 at year-end 2004. However, that number hardly budged over the next 12 months, reaching 70,500 at year-end 2005.

Over the same period, that SAC number discussed above almost tripled, from $4.39 in 2003 to $12.70 in 2005. So JDate is paying more to keep subscriptions at a steady level. Overall Sparks performance for the fourth quarter and the year show flattening performance:

Reported revenue for the fourth quarter of 2005 was $16.6 million, a decrease of 3%, compared to $17.1 million, over the same period in 2004. This decrease is primarily the result of lower AmericanSingles revenue due to a significant cut in marketing expenditures for the website, designed to improve its contribution margin. Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2005 was $65.5 million, an increase of 1%, compared to revenue of $65.1 million, for the year ended December 31, 2004.

Read the full release, because it provides even more numbers on JDate and other Sparks sites, with enough corporate jargon -- "2005 was a turnaround year in which we made significant strides towards right-sizing our cost structure" -- to make you a winner at Buzz Word Bingo.

"Chinatown" Enchantment

2006-02-19T22:20:00.000-05:00

When I saw Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" when it was released in 1974, the music haunted me as much as the story. "I Can't Get Started" and "The Way You Look Tonight" hinted at a world of music and emotion beyond the Top 40 sounds I heard on KRIO and other AM stations. In those pre-VCR, pre-Internet, and almost pre-FM days, I could only depend on fragmented memory to retain the shimmering music. I didn't even know the names of the songs.

I just knew I had to have the soundtrack.

As an adult in New York, I scoured record stores and could not find it, for any price. As great and honored as the movie was, the soundtrack simply did not exist.

As with my need for love, I never stopped searching. Finally, during a backpacking month in Europe in September 1984, I spied a Japanese import version at Virgin Records in London. I bought the album (back in those vinyl days) on September 29 for a king's ransom of 17.99 pounds and VERY carefully brought it back to the U.S. I have it to this day, and it remains a listening delight. For proof of my purchase, see below:

I only regret I didn't scoop up every single copy. I did a Google search for the Chinatown soundtrack and discovered it remains unavailable, although the movie itself is typical video-store fare. On Amazon, prices range from $127 to $250, for what seem to be CDs. How can that be? In this age where every digital blip can be found, why does the Chinatown soundtrack remain so scarce and pricy? It must be the rarest of my hundreds of albums, not counting albums with the vocal stylings of the like of Jerry Lewis, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, or a battered version of the Rolling Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request" with the groovy 3-D cover.

My favorite rarity, after Chinatown, is a "beautiful music" album from the 1950s featuring a young Mary Tyler Moore in a beauty-contest outfit and high heels gracing the cover of "Million Sellers" by the renowned Lew Raymond and the Hollywood Studio Orchestra. Now doesn't that look like Mary? Those legs! That smile!

A Handy Guide to Holy Honorifics

2006-02-18T10:57:00.000-05:00

As the Cartoon Jihad spins along, I am noticing how newspapers refer to Mohammed. The name itself rarely stands alone. The New York Times likes "the prophet Mohammed," while other papers probably go with "the Prophet Mohammed."

Islamists make a big deal out of their respect for other prophets, like Moses and, um, Issa. I heard one man babbling about that on TV from the protest at the UN yesterday. Having grown up among the God-fearing Southern Baptists of Hidalgo County, Texas, I instantly thought, "Dude, you're all wrong. His name ain't Issa. That's disrespectful to the max. You want to play the prophet-respect game, you'd better get with the right nomenclature."

So the next time an Islamist wants to spout off on his love for the other prophets, he'll make a much better impression if he uses terms that resonate in the West. Let's start with Issa. "Jesus" works OK. "Jesus Christ" carries a little more heft. "Jesus the Christ" has a more antique, Greek-novelist sound, but it still gets the point across.

But to really rise and shine and get your Religion of Respect message across among that key Southern Baptist constituency, Islamists had better wrap their vocal cords around "My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Now that's got a real nice ring to it, right up there with "the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)." From McAllen to Terlingua to Crawford to Amarillo, that phrase will win you friends and influence people. Attending Friday night football games wouldn't hurt your cause in Texas either, but that's a lesson for later.

That's just for beginners. You surely want to make nice with your audience of the Hebraic persuasion, like me. References to "Ibrahim" grate on my big floppy Jewish ears. So try the correct pronunciation: "Avraham" or "Avroham," or, if you're in a cousin-kind of mood, "Avi" will work. Moses -- you'll do best with "Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses Our Teacher)." And if you want to chant something that would show true respect to Moses, add "Am Yisrael Chai" to your play list for the next riot, I mean, peaceful demonstration.

Finally, the concept exists of an American civil religion. I agree with that idea, and have always considered the President the living embodiment and executor of this faith, which runs in a direct line from the Mayflower Compact through the Bill of Rights, Gettysburg, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Dallas Cowboys playing football on Thanksgiving Day, the Air & Space Museum, and on to annual Giving of the Word, otherwise known as the State of the Union address.

In my religion as an American, the President must be treated as a prophetical character, with no excessive criticism. He can be drawn, but only in a flattering manner suitable for framed portraits in the White House. Thus, any publication or group that defames Our Prophet the President, the Living Avatar of American Justice and Liberty, must be firmly rebuked and educated in the proper nomenclature, lest the wrath of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights rain down upon thee like fiery darts of chastisement.

You respect our prophets and we'll respect yours. Case closed.

I'm not holding my breath.

Scholar Lipstadt Signs on as Judge of Israeli Anti-Semitic Toon Fest

2006-02-18T10:56:00.000-05:00

(Note, this is a real story)

Showing she has a sense of humor as well as great courage, professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University has volunteered to serve as a judge of the Israeli anti-semitic cartoon festival discussed earlier.

Lipstadt wrote to contest organizer Amitai Sandy, "I have lots of experience dealing with antisemites and deniers. [I was sued by denier David Irving in a Brit. court and won a smashing victory.]"

Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory, wrote on her own blog,

I am exhausted by all the sturm and drang of Butz, Irving, AAUP, and others. [I never thought I would string those two names with the AAUP. For details on AAUP see previous post of February 10th.]I think I need a breather, so I have decided to volunteer to be a judge in the Jewish cartoon contest. There are few people who can judge antisemitism better than I. [Not an accolade I claim proudly.]

So, bravo to Professor Lipstadt and here's hoping she enjoys her break. I can't wait to see what other Jews join her in speaking up for free expression and Jewish humor.

Frank Rich has yet to comment.

HUMOR: Orthodox Rabbis Demand Cartoon Characters Observe Laws of Family Purity

2006-02-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

Asserting that "those imams are on to something," a radical fringe of Orthodox rabbis rampaged through Brooklyn demanding that married female cartoon characters observe "tohorat ha-mishpacha," These Jewish laws of family purity make couples refrain from sex during a woman's period and a week afterward.

"Our religion demands total subservience to its minutiae, and this is the right time and place to speak up for our right to run your life," said a spokesman for Rabbis Obsessed With Women's Bodies (ROWWB). He asked to be identified by his street name, "Rabbi Diddy," or R. Diddy.

"Every time we open the comic pages of Newsday we find rampant immorality and that must stop," said R. Diddy as the group marched through the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, terrifying liberal shoppers at the Food Co-op. "Ours is a religion of peace and we will be peaceful as long as you totally comply with every aspect of our system."

The rabbis demanded that cartoon strips refrain from showing characters having sex or even touching while the women are niddah, or unclean.

ROWWB's first target is the strip Cathy, in which characters Cathy and Irving consummated their long-time romance last February with a widely hyped marriage.

R. Diddy explained, "His name is Irving, Cathy spends lots of time on the phone talking to her mother, she obsesses about her weight. Bubbele, they're Jewish! We wish them a long life of happy and imaginative shtupping -- including, I might add, in the reverse-cowgirl position -- but they've got to make some major changes. Our rebbitzins are already setting up a calendar for Cathy to show when she needs to hit the mikvah."

Artist Cathy Guisewite, who started the strip in 1976, is reportedly interested in the idea and may even put Cathy in a sheidel (wig) worn by pious married women. Some observers believe husband Irving is growing payeses (sidecurls).

Asked about future targets for rabbinical rage, R. Diddy said "Brenda Starr" is "far too immodest and needs to stop that delicious sparkle in her eyes."

He also expressed concerns about "Rugrats," noting, "Those kids are getting too old to have mixed-sex play. We'll be contacting the artists to demand separate-sex panels."

ROWWB ended its march in front of the Park Slope Food Co-op, chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, immodest toons have got to go." They then distributed copies of the book "A Hedge of Roses" to curious shoppers.

After skimming the book, one bitter Jewish husband exclaimed, "You mean we can have non-stop sex for two weeks every month? Sign me up for that!"

Oy Gevalt: Israeli Publisher Announces Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest

2006-02-14T23:17:00.000-05:00

(Note: This is a real story, not a spoof)

Who knows from anti-semitism better than the Jews? An Israeli publisher has announced a contest involving anti-semitic cartoons, vowing to show the Iranians how it's really done.

Amitai Sandy, graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix, said in a release, “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

Sandy is promoting the contest with several logos, including this charmer:

The contest has been announced today on the www.boomka.org website, and the initiator accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Sandy is now in the process of arranging sponsorships of large organizations, and promises lucrative prizes for the winners, including of course the famous Matzo-bread baked with the blood of Christian children.

(Another note: If this story proves to be a hoax, mission2moscow will publish an update.)

PARODY: Iran Announces Holocaust Cartoon Festival; NY Times' Frank Rich to Serve as Judge

2006-02-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

The Iranian government has announced the rules for its much-anticipated Holocaust Cartoon Festival, details here.

That's the fact. Here's the fantasy:

In a related development, the New York Times columnist and cutting-edge social critic Frank Rich has enthusiastically signed on as a judge of the festival.

"I'm excited by this tremendous opportunity to stand up for free speech. The Iranians are going to show Americans what the First Amendment is all about," said Rich. "It's about time that somebody paid attention to the terrible decline of quality in Holocaust and anti-semitic artwork. These genres have suffered greatly from the relentless assault on artistic expression by the Bush Administration."

In fact, argued Rich, anti-semitic art has been in an "alarming" freefall "since the classical era of the 1930s and 1940s."

"Some of those artists were astoundingly hip and edgy, and very post-modern in their use of ironic images and juxtapositions," argued Rich. "They remind me a lot of Warhol, Basquiat, early Rauschenberg."

Brushing donut crumbs off his tweed jacket during an interview at his sprawling New York co-op, Rich said German artists perfected the genre "during a time of great social ferment, you know, the New Deal, the WPA, fuel-efficient 'green' Volkswagens, autobahns, those gorgeous black German uniforms, great Broadway musicals, lots of interest in stuff like nationalism and socialism."

"European Jews were isolating themselves in gated communities at the time, turning their back on the rich diversity of life in Europe," added Rich, "and many ignored this wonderful explosion of creativity around them, but Germans did their best to distribute anti-semitic art in these all-Jewish communities. That was the Germans' way of speaking truth to power."

Asked about his expectations of the Holocaust Cartoon Festival, Rich said he hoped to find works that would capture the "shock of self-recognition" found in the best of what he called "avant-shoah" artwork.

"A viewer should see these works and recognize their wry truths about himself, or at least recognize his bubbe and zayde," explained Rich.

He will also write an introduction to an upscale coffee-table book of the collected submissions to the festival. It will be published in English, Farsi, and French editions. The Times will feature the book in its holiday gift-giving guide.

"The Vagina Monologues:" Secret Tool in the Struggle Against Terror

2006-02-12T13:32:00.000-05:00

Only 48 hours remain until Valentine's Day, and the excitement is building. Love is in the air -- actually, that's the smell of burning Valentine's Day cards, courtesy of . . . oh, take a good guess. First they came for the cartoons, then the Valentine's Day cards, and after that? I'm betting that the Islamists will aim to squelch that other emerging Valentine tradition, Eve Ensler's beloved "The Vagina Monologues," which "explores female sexuality and strength through individual women telling their stories." Not just a play, VM has become an entire movement built around this month's V-Day activities.

From an Islamic perspective, VM is an ideal target for repression and a fatwa, because it has so much to dislike.

(Truth in blogging alert: I have not seen the play, so I cannot comment fairly on its content. And as a man, my vagina exists only in my mind.)

First, of course, Ensler is Jewish feminist, so that ultimately puts her on the wrong side of the Islamic bed, no matter how strenuously she opposes the War on Terror and carries the moonbat torch.

Second, female sexuality in and of itself has long been seen as an enormous threat to the underpinnings of Islamic society. Any cultural work that presents female sexuality in a positive light will have the patriarchy frothing.

Third, the play's entire ideology takes direct aim at the sexual dynamics of Muslim countries (among others). The V-Day site says,

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery.

When honor killings and execution of rape victims are social norms, then VM has to be profounding disturbing.

To her great credit, Ensler has taken VM to Muslim countries. As a force that gets Muslim women to think and speak out and demand their rights, then VM serves as a wonderfully subversive weapon that attacks the roots of terror. Free the women, and the pillars of oppression shake. One article from 2003 says,

The other V-Day spotlight this year is on Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Ensler recently returned from a visit to Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, accompanied by V-Day's special representative to the region, Hibaaq Osman. Osman works with women's groups in Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine with a particular focus on bride burnings, female genital mutilation, honor killings, sexual assault, rape and other gender-based violence that are pervasive in much of the region.

For example, Ensler has met with Irshad Manji, the "Muslim refusenik" author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith." Say what you will about Ensler's politics but she walks the walk as well as talks the talk. That's Ensler on the right, below, doing her famous Linda Ronstadt impersonation.

Finally, in light of the Cartoon Jihad, VM is bound to become a battle in the clash of civilizations because it includes verses from the Koran. Oh no! Watch your back, Eve! When the Malaysian government refused to license VM for performance there, discussion groups pointed to verses as a major problem. This comment from 2002 perfectly illustrates the arguments:

I'd like to comment on the Editor's statement that the license for Vagina Monologue was probably refused on the grounds of sexual connotation. I beg to differ. I'd like to think that it is the insensitivity of quoting some Quranic phrases off the Quran by non-Muslims and interpreting it out of context that made them do that. I'm no Saint here but I believe that we should draw a line between what is truly artistic and what is just plain propagandist. I think the same would have been done if one were to put up a play and have people quoting the Bible and deconstructing it as the play flows. Tit for tat. How's that?

(Again, I haven't seen VM, so I don't know what Koranic verses it contains, or the context.)

This is setting up a colossal event: Eve Ensler vs. the Jihad, the Vagina vs. the Sword of Misogynistic Intolerance. Which Eve will step into the ring? Will she be Free Speech Eve, standing up for the western values that make possible a work like VM, an avenging Valkyrie with a vibrator, or will she be Dhimmi Eve, bending over in fear to her brutal Muslim masters and removing offending passages from her play?

I'd like to think that Ensler would come down on the side of liberty, whatever her disgust with the U.S. government. But I could be wrong. She may join CNN, the New York Times, the increasingly odious Bill Clinton, and many others in kowtowing the new line.

And if that happens, it's OK. Submission has its temporary benefits. To paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, they like you, Eve. That's why they're going to kill you last.

The Open Center's Catalog: What, No Imams?

2006-02-12T13:31:00.000-05:00

The New York Open Center's winter-spring program catalog delights readers with its array of spiritual courses. The catalog covers a huge range of faith traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Western Spiritual Traditions, African American Culture, Latin/Caribbean Programs, Native American Traditions, Tibetan Studies, and Shamanism.

The Open Center's courses are taught by priests, rabbis, mystics, an initiated elder of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso, curanderos, and more.

Hmmmm, one major faith tradition seems to be missing. Now, which could that be?

Islam, of course.

For all its strenuous inclusiveness, the Open Center doesn't so much as breathe a mention of Islam, other than a table of contents listing for "Sufism/Islam." That offering is a course called "The Sufi Path of Self-Transformation: The Teachings of Rumi, Hafez and Attar." The course description says nothing about Sufism as the mystical version of Islam.

Frankly, I'm disappointed that the Open Center couldn't find at least one guitar-strumming, sandal-wearing vegan imam who loves Allah and Gaia and all their creatures and hates the Jews only a little bit to teach a course. Of course that would be a course in "Jihad as Inner Struggle," since it can't mean anything else. There's not a single imam like that, even in New York? Detroit? Copenhagen? Maybe in Berkeley.

Maybe they're all otherwise occupied these days.

The Longest Perspective: Crimes of the Ishmaelites

2006-02-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

Rabbi Lazer Brody, a/k/a Rabbi Rambo, provides an intriguing religious perspective on the Islamic uprising. Putatively about cartoons, the current violence involves much more and continues a line of conflict extending back thousands of years--the ancient enmity of the Ishmaelites against the Children of Israel. He writes,

In Hashem's world, what a person reaps is what he or she sows. For such a long time, Ishmael has been the purveyor of anti-Jewish hate for hate's sake alone; it was only a matter of time until the bully would get a taste of his own bitter medicine. We all knew that Ishmael has always been a big bully, but we're astonished at how big a cry-baby he is!

Read it all, and the rest of his fascinating site.

Russian on Cartoons: A Big "Da" to Free Expression

2006-02-12T13:28:00.000-05:00

Here's good news on the cartoon war front: The Sakharov Museum and Public Center in Moscow is going to exhibit all the Danish cartoons next month.

Plain-speaking museum director Yuri Samodurov said, "We must show the whole world that Russia goes along with Europe, that the freedom of expression is much more important for us than the dogmas of religious fanatics." A few more details here.

Russia has a critical role to play in the crisis, and this shows at least some Russians are ready to fight hard against totalitarian thinking, under which they so greviously suffered.

As they say in Brighton Beach, bolshoye spacibo, Yuri.

Nightmare Scenario: Beslan Goes West

2006-02-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

On the frantic morning of Sept. 11, 2001, my panicked thoughts turned to my son, then a student at a Jewish day school. The day erased the predictable order of life; was he in danger? Would another wave of attacks threaten Jewish institutions such as schools?

Nothing happened that day, but the dreadful events at a school in Beslan, Russia, in September 2004 confirmed that terrorists have utterly no qualms about attacking children. Over 330 were killed in the bungled rescue effort, half of them children.

Now, the rhetoric and violence are escalating with the cartoon convulsions. The West has shown remarkable restraint in the face of attacks and violent threats. My fear is that, spurred on by their blood-lust against enemies all around, Islamists will play out another Beslan scenario as the outrage that will snap the West's muted reactions to Beslan, the London bombings, French riots, and other provocations. Against this background, the U.S. response to 9-11 was an anomaly.

Even the Russians -- never dainty in their response to attacks -- avoided revenge, despite great speculation that that would happen. [If I'm wrong on this, please correct me.]

This new wave of Islamist demonstrations and calls for death and beheading are raising the level of violence, both in rhetoric and action, with the burning of embassies and murder of a Catholic priest in Turkey. It strikes me that the Islamists are baiting the bears, daring them to respond. Can it be that they're disappointed with the still-orderly and rational Western approach?

Already, Islamists are using images of children in their response to the cartoon wars, such as a drawing of Anne Frank in bed with Adolph Hitler.

Think of the nightmare scenario that would link cartoon demands with unbearable pressure points. Say terrorists take over a school in Denmark or Holland, or multiple locations.

Then they issue a statement: "Turn over the cartoonists for Islamic justice within 24 hours or we'll kill the children. We're prepared to die ourselves." In fact, the first part of this theoretical statement has already been issued in the last few hours.

Then what? Beslan showed the ability of terrorists to act exactly on these threats. Talk? Attack? What's the level of acceptable casualties? The rhetorical heat is unbearably high, the Islamist steam engine ready to blow up and it could blow in such a direction.

If such a scenario plays out -- even more so than train bombings or embassy burnings -- then an all-out War of the Worlds will draw closer than ever.

Islamic Cartoon Psychotic Break: New Battle in an Old War

2006-02-04T08:54:00.000-05:00

The Islamic cartoon frenzy focuses on Europe rather than the U.S. In the past week, European newspapers began to print the 12 cartoons from a Danish paper, each reprinting stoking the rage of the Muslim street. U.S. papers, however, showing the kind of spine that contributes to their collapsing circulation, are acting as one giant quivering jellyfish in not printing the cartoons. According to trade publication Editor & Publisher,

Although most American papers have covered the issue, with many running Page One stories, most contend the cartoons are too offensive to run, and can be properly reported through descriptions.

One exception, E&P says, is the New York Sun.

Not even those raucous "alternative" weeklies like the Village Voice have printed the cartoons. Stories and pictures of Janet Jackson's top falling off at the Super Bowl? President Bush as vampire? Hey, no problem there. But graphic film footage of 9-11? Mohammed cartoons? The U.S. press suddenly acts like the culturally sensitive version of Brave Sir Robin.

I can't say I'm surprised. U.S. institutions have a bleak history of buckling under from pressure from Islamic groups. Even "24" cracked last year. I know about this record, because I joined a protest against one of the most notorious episodes.

In 1988, Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses and soon faced a death sentence from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. In early 1989, Barnes & Noble and other big booksellers removed Satanic Verses, pleasing Islamic censors and outraging supporters of the First Amendment.

Protests against B&N included a rally organized, if I recall correctly, by the National Writers Union, a group I belonged to during my years as a freelancer. At the time, I worked in an office at 545 5th Avenue in New York, just three blocks south of the site of the protest, at the big B&N store at 48th Street and 5th Avenue. So I was happy to join the hundreds of people who showed up to shout "Shame!" at the store and raise our voices for free speech. Our contribution helped change corporate minds, as this report notes:

several bookstores, including Waldenbooks, B. Dalton Bookseller, and Barnes and Noble, pulled copies of his controversial book, The Satanic Verses, from their shelves. However, other bookstores used the incident to call attention to the ongoing struggle against censorship by promoting the book, and the [American Booksellers Association] took out ads protesting Iran's attempt at intimidation. The chain stores reversed their policies within a few days, in part because of a consumer demand for the book. Two bookstores in the United States were firebombed apparently because of the book, but there were no injuries.

While the book remains available and Rushie is still alive, the fall-out of the episode shows the deadly serious nature of Islamic protesters. In 1991, three translators of The Satanic Verses were attacked; one, Hitoshi Igarishi, was stabbed to death.

I would never discount the threat of Islamic violence. However, collective action in Europe now clearly shows the fault lines -- who supports freedom, who demands silence and subservience. Those lines exist just as much in the U.S., perhaps not so brightly as in Denmark, Holland, and elsewhere, but they are emerging. The cartoon wars are drawing those lines, like it or not. This quote sums up the situation well:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

What Does the Torah Tell Us About the Super Bowl? Plenty.

2006-02-04T07:48:00.000-05:00

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn. has produced a detailed Torah analysis of the Super Bowl and its contestants. Based on the names of the teams -- Seahawks and Steelers -- he deduced the winner and even the point spread.

It’s not easy for me to make a prediction in this, a rare non-Patriot year. But since I’ve almost always been right (my personal favorite being Pats-Rams in 2002), I must meet the challenge. So who will it be: Steelers or Seahawks? The fact that I am typing this on a Microsoft program (and the Seattle owner has those ties) shouldn’t influence me, since my computer also has a steel frame.

Scroll down to the "Annual Super Bowl Prediction" headline, midway through Rabbi Hammerman's Shabbat-o-gram.

Sprint's "Sticking It to the Man" Ad: Revolutionary Marketing

2006-02-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

The best ad on TV for several months comes from Sprint, promoting its Fair & Flexible Plan for cell phones. You know the one: an executive talks about the plan and smugly says it's his way of "sticking it to the man." The wide-eyed lackey says, "But, sir, you ARE the man."

"I know."

"So you're sticking it to yourself."

Pause. "Maybe."

The leap of 1960s jargon into the corporate world, a living embodiment of "the Man," and the perfect timing of the exchange all make this a wonderful, memorable spot. I never tire of seeing it, and I think Sprint realizes it has a hit because the ad keeps running. I hope Sprint has the sense to expand the theme and unveil some surprises at the Super Bowl this Sunday.

Sprint may be on to more here than it thinks. The more I see of the ad, the more I realize its truly revolutionary nature. It took a while for the subtext to emerge, but now it all makes sense:

This ad is the "Brokeback Mountain" of cellphone marketing. Without doubt, Sprint has crafted most joyfully homoerotic marketing pitch now on broadcast TV.

Here's why:

First, the plan itself. "Fair and flexible" sure sounds to me like "consensual and acrobatic," letting viewers know we're in the presence of two people who dig each other and are master woodsmen. I wouldn't be surprised if "fair and flexible" is already cropping up in the "Casual Encounters" section of Craig's List, abbreviated as FnF.

Second, the whole notion of "sticking it to the Man" has quite overt sexual connotations, mostly gay but also straight. Back in the 1960s it might have have had somewhat, um, hostile overtones, but with a little mental readjustment it simply speaks of spirited rutting.

Third, the characters in ad. Obviously this is a master-tutor situation. There's the wise older man talking with his eager, muscular "assistant" (the suit hides the buffed physique, but trust me, the young guy has washboard abs).

Fourth, consider that the older man is sitting down. What corporate executive ever sits down? They're always going to meetings, making speeches, riding up and down elevators. They never have time to sit down at their desk unless . . . unless . . . well, does the 1998-esque phrase "presidential kneepads" ring any bells? He must have a second assistant!

Fifth, the closing dialogue practically screams that these are men who are comfortable with their sexuality. The assistant says, "So, you're sticking it to yourself."

And the executive says, "Maybe."

Of course, he's modest, but a man who can talk to other men about "sticking it to yourself" ought to be doing a talk show with Phil Donohue, he's so sensitive and in touch with himself. He knows how to do what a man knows how to do.

I can't wait for the Super Bowl, to see if Sprint takes this campaign to the next, logical level. Even without a follow-up, however, Sprint deserves a lot of credit for this ringing affirmation of gay pride in mainstream marketing.

Now if Sprint would just do a version with Cybill Shepherd and Scarlett Johansson.

D.P. Camp Gaza, July 2006: News from the Near Future

2006-01-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

Displaced Persons Camp Gaza, July 4, 2006: Initially, the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections last January caused some nervousness among Palestinians. They heartily agreed with the plan to throw the Jews into the sea, but the other aspects of Hamas' platform didn't sound so pleasant.

By March, the Hamas program began to take hold with Shari'a, sex-separated schools, an end to all Western music and cinema, mandatory burkas for women and the confiscation of all shaving equipment for men. The daily beheadings of hold-out Fatah members further heightened unease. Some Palestinians secretly called for joint U.S.-Iraqi intervention to stop the killings. And not a single Jew had been thrown into the sea.

The great revolt began the night of April 12, as Jews celebrated the first seder of Passover. Gazing at dynamic, tolerant Israel so close but unfathomably far away, tens of thousands of Palestinians spontaneously rebelled against Hamas' plague of blood in the most dramatic way possible. They decided they would become Jews.

Later, many people swore they saw the "Angel of Life" sweeping through the refugee camps. Within days, thousands of Palestinians fled to the borders of Israel and declared they were willing to immediately convert if they could then be admitted to Israel. The move enraged Hamas, which attacked the new refugee camps, but heavily armed Fatah members repelled most of the attacks.

One of the new converts explained his determination to become Jewish despite the furious assaults: "Better to die a Jew than live like a schmuck under Hamas."

Accustomed to sudden surges of immigration, the Israeli government reacted with calm efficiency. Absorption and security officials fanned out through the camps, such as D.P. Camp Gaza, to interview families to weed out infiltrators and determine the sincerity of the conversion. Engineering crews built emergency mikvahs to handle the wave of conversion ceremonies.

By May, hundreds of Chabad's most seasoned shluchim appeared throughout the camps to organize and instruct the new Jews. Before long, stickers saying "We Want Moshiach Now!" written in Arabic appeared, along with blue tzedaka boxes.

By June, with ulpan and religion classes proceeding smoothly, the Judeo-Palestinians were definitely getting the knack of their new faith and culture. For example, the first synagogue in D.P. Camp Gaza bitterly split into two opposing factions over the issue of gay rabbis. The first bar mitzvah was a big success, disrupted only when a Kalashnikov rifle accidently discharged during the kiddush (no injuries were reported).

Reaction in the U.S. was mixed. David Letterman tickled his audience at the CBS Late Show with his "Top 10 Plagues Wished Upon Hamas" (number 1 was Suha Arafat).

Abraham Foxman of the ADL sent out an urgent fund-raising appeal that said, "I am deeply troubled by the conversion of thousands of Palestinians to Judaism. This is nothing less than the latest diabolical plot by the Religious Right to CHRISTIANIZE America! Send in your donations now!!"

Notaries public throughout D.P. Camp Gaza are busy helping the converts legally change their names. Most of the converts adopted Hebrew names as part of their plan to enter Israeli society. Some, however, opted for names associated with American Judaism as a way to distinguish themselves and perhaps garner more support from the U.S.

One couple for example, went from being Ali and Yasmina to Harvey Fierstein and Barbara Streisand. Barbara told Kesher Talk, "Ali -- excuse me, I mean Harvey -- and I are huge fans of Broadway musicals. And, believe it or not, 'Yentl' has always been incredibly popular at Palestinian video stores. So it seemed natural to honor these Broadway legends." Harvey added, "I've already got us tickets to see 'Spamalot' when it plays in Tel Aviv. Barbara's plotzing, she's so excited."

An informal survey found that other Judeo-Palestinians are now calling themselves Philip Roth, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tony Kushner, Ron "Hedgehog" Jeremy, Madonna, Kinky Friedman, Sara Michelle Gellar, Alan Greenspan, Judge Wapner, Jack Bauer, Fran Drescher, and Montel Williams.

Informed that Montel Williams is not, generally speaking, considered a Jewish name in the U.S., one man replied, "Montel, Shmontel, as long as they let me in."

Conversations with a Spook: William Colby, the Spy Who Played Computer Games

2006-01-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

In March 1996, I interviewed William Colby, former Director of Central Intelligence, for a profile in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Colby was Class of '40). Only a month later, however, Colby died in a boating accident in Maryland. Due to Colby's death, PAW never ran the article on the venerable and controversial spymaster. The profile appears here for the first time.

William Colby, the Spy Who Played Computer Games

Seasoned by decades of espionage work during hot and cold wars, William Colby ’40 knew he had to be thoroughly prepared before embarking on his latest assignment in the wilderness of mirrors. A professional would do no less. So Colby, Director of Central Intelligence from 1973 to 1976, started playing computer games.

“I looked at ‘Return to Zork,’” recalled Colby. “I went through enough of it to understand how it worked.”

Colby’s Zork play helped him understand the intricacies of interactive entertainment while he served as a consultant on the development of Spycraft: The Great Game, a $49.95 computer game marketed by Activision Inc. of Los Angeles, which also markets the Zork series of adventure/role-playing CD-ROM games.

The project teamed Colby with former KGB major general Oleg Kalugin, whom Colby knew from the post-Cold War conference circuit. Kalugin gained fame in the Gorbachev era when he resigned from the KGB and switched to the pro-democracy side in Russia. Starting two years ago, they shared their espionage experiences with writer James Adams, who worked the material into a script.

“The basic thrust of the project was two things,” explained Colby. “First, that it’s time for Russians and Americans to work together on intelligence matters. There are common enemies and problems. We wanted to look at the future rather than the past. Second, we wanted to be somewhat realistic about what intelligence is all about.” The game revolves around the assassination of a Russian presidential candidate.

Colby picked up the theme from there: “You, as the CIA case officer, are chosen to find out who did it, because the U.S. President is next on the hit list. You work with the Russians on it.” The search involves drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, and other perils. Besides briefing Adams on spycraft, Colby and Kalugin both stepped in front of the film cameras to appear in the game. Colby’s part came naturally to him: “My role is as a senior counselor to the player. I tell him he’s wrong, or suggest he try different things.”

The chance to educate game fans to the realities of espionage attracted Colby to the project when an agent (the Hollywood kind) approached him on behalf of Activision. “It seemed like a way to get to a new audience that didn’t know about intelligence,” said Colby. “I want the general public to understand and support that we need good intelligence and we can find new allies.” While it has what Colby terms the “bang-bang” elements─eliminating double agents, rescuing hostages─Spycraft confronts players with the intellectual and ethical challenges facing spies.

“You have to know who’s telling the truth and who is lying,” he said. Colby faced all of the challenges in his long career, starting with his work as an OSS agent in Nazi-occupied France and Norway in World War II. He served in Sweden, Italy, and Vietnam from 1951to 1962, when Allen W. Dulles ’14 [2006 note: Dulles was a member of the Princeton Class of 1914] was Director of Central Intelligence (Colby noted, “He would have loved the game. He was very much a hands-on intelligence officer”). He was chief of the CIA’s Far East Division from 1963 to 1968, and director of the agency from 1973 to 1976. Since then he has served as a consultant, lecturer and lawyer, and written the books Honorable Men and Lost Victory.

Colby sent his former employer early outlines and scripts of Spycraft, following the terms of a contract he signed with the CIA to let the agency examine anything he writes on intelligence matters. “They finally said, go ahead. I know what I can say and can’t say,” he explained. “the only thing they look for is does this reveal any secrets we should be keeping.”

Activision reports strong sales of Spycraft, and in April Colby took part in an online chat session on Activision’s Web site to answer questions about the project. Colby is already thinking about material for a sequel that’s under discussion. After all, the great game never really ends.

'24' Alert: George Mason is Definitely a Jew

2006-01-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the recent essay revealing Jack Bauer's Jewishness, correspondent Fausta of Bad Hair Blog gazed thoughtfully at the ever-expanding CTU Memorial Wall of Honor in LA and wondered whether the late George Mason might also be Jewish (that's George at the right in the photo, going mano-a-mano with Jack Bauer).

Fantastic idea, Fausta. And you know what? You're right. George Mason IS (or was, anyway) Jewish. Here's why.

One strong factor point to George Mason's Judaism is that he is undoubtedly related to this well-known fellow. My sense is that their grandmothers were second cousins.

During his time at CTU, seasons 1 and 2, Mason was a highly ambiguous character, at least in the beginning. As LA director of CTU, Mason clashed with Jack Bauer and had a history of financial chicanery, both of which made him a prime candidate as a mole.

However, like Judah in the story of Joseph, Mason revealed himself to be a man with a deep sense of self-sacrificing decency. During season 2, Mason is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation as CTU tries to stop a nuclear bomb plot. He realizes instantly he's a dead man, but rather than moan and kvetch and spend his final hours downing Jell-o shots at Hooter's, Mason reaches out to his estranged son John and reconciles with him before his fateful last assignment as a stow-away.

Mason, brilliantly played by Xander Berkeley, emerges from the back of an airplane that Jack is flying with a nuke to a remote area of Southern California. In a moment of supreme composure and duty, Mason boots Jack out (with a parachute, of course) and pilots the plane himself and saves millions of lives. I'm pretty sure I heard him reciting the Sh'ma as the plane headed deep into the mountains.

Here's an erev shabbat salute to George Mason, our landsman.

(And besides being a mensch, you know George was Jewish because he was also a generous macher and a MAJOR supporter of this institution.)

Fantasies of a '24' Obsessive: Jack Bauer is Jewish!

2006-01-20T21:14:00.000-05:00

The fifth season of “24” blasted off last Sunday and Monday on Fox, packed with four hours of non-stop mayhem. As a 24 obsessive since the very first episode in 2001, I constantly scan the show for any Jewish angle.

The casual observer sees plenty of skulking Middle Eastern killers, but almost nothing in the way of overt Jewish presence. 24 approached matters of Jewish identity in season 4 with a brief appearance by a sniveling lawyer with a Jewish name who ran into the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) headquarters representing a terror suspect. On the surface, that's it.

What’s a Jewish 24 fan to do?

I thought carefully about this during the season premiere. After a glass or two of slivovitz, my mind refocused and suddenly 24 emerged as the most Jewish show this side of “Fiddler On the Roof” with Harvey Fierstein. Hang with me here:

1. Jack Bauer, brilliantly played by Keifer Sutherland, is Jewish because his real name must be Yaacov Bauer. His last name suggests a back-story with roots as the scion of a mittel Europa dynasty of rabbis and scholars. Jack himself holds an English lit degree from UCLA, so you know underneath the tough exterior is a sensitive soul who reads 19th century romantic poetry and loves cuddling up to watch movies based on Jane Austen novels.

2. Jack Bauer’s approach to counter-terrorism work shows Talmudic subtlety worthy of Rabbi David Small in Harry Kemelman’s rabbinic detective series. After careful thinking that can last at least 15 seconds, Bauer comes to logical conclusions and carefully explains them. In season 1, for example, he executes and beheads a drug dealer as part of a plan to get close to a terror suspect. Bauer tells a colleague who is skeptical of his unorthodox (!) methods, “That's the problem with people like you, George. You want results, but you never want to get your hands dirty. I'd start rolling up your sleeves.” Hillel himself could not be more pithy.

3. Jack Bauer loves his family. Throughout 24, Jack Bauer’s work intertwines with children, especially his trouble-prone daughter Kim, played by the luscious Elisha Cuthbert. Jack always does his utmost to help Kim out of jams, even if he has to kill, kill, and kill some more. As a good Jewish father, Jack gets to know Chase Edmunds, a CTU agent in love with Kim, although he struggles with Chase's relationship with the hot but ditzy Kim. At the end of season 3, he has to cut off Chase’s hand to stop something horrible from happening, but Chase is a surprisingly good sport about this. What a son-in-law he’ll be! I’m sure Jack, Kim, and Chase will work out any lingering issues in family therapy. Perhaps that will happen in a special episode called “24: The 50-Minute Hour.”

4. Jack Bauer has a Jewish sense of time. Except for the first episode, which began and ended at midnight, every season begins at some other time, usually in the morning. This is almost like the Jewish concept of time, in which the new day begins at sunset. Jack’s string of “the longest day of my life” does not follow the western concept of new days.

5. Jack Bauer can sustain loving relationships with women. The cliché that Jewish men make good husbands (or at least good boyfriends) absolutely applies to Jack Bauer. Jack reconciles with his estranged wife Terri in the first season, and rescues her several times. True, she is murdered at the end of the first season by the evil CTU mole Nina, Jack’s former lover, but Jack feels really bad about this. In season 4, Jack sustains a wonderful relationship with Audrey Raines (played by Kim Raver), daughter of the Secretary of Defense, who is still married to Brit financial wizard Paul Raines. The relationship suffers a bit of a bump, I’ll admit, when Jack tortures Paul, decides he’s OK, and then, after Paul is shot, lets him die in an operating room because Jack forces doctors to tend to a wounded Chinese scientist with super important information. But Audrey is back for season 5. The smoldering glances of long-suppressed passion are about to erupt. I am confident they’ll find time to work through their issues and maybe end the season at a Basherte couples weekend to celebrate their love. I foresee Jack reciting “Eiyshet Chayil” to Audrey by hour 23.

6. Chloe O’Brian is Jewish. Granted, this technology genius's name doesn’t sound Jewish, but that is just a red herring to throw off audiences unattuned to Jewish signals. Chloe is brilliant, a rule-bender, socially awkward at times, and has a dazzling instinct as a stone-cold killer of the bad guys. Chloe’s greatly expanded role in the new season befits her status as an audience favorite.

In her big moment in season 4, Chloe shoots a man in self-defense and has this memorable discussion with colleague Edgar Stiles, who is also, I’m sure, a Member of the Tribe:

Edgar: You okay?
Chloe: I'm fine.
Edgar: Is there anything I can do?
Chloe: I said I'm fine! I am trying not to think about what happened, I'm gonna process it later, okay?
Edgar: Sure, fine.
[walks away]
Chloe: Edgar, I appreciate your concern. I really do. Just when I shot that guy, I thought I'd go all fetal position. But the truth is, I didn't feel anything. At all. I hope I'm not some kind of a psychopath.
Edgar: Well, he *was* trying to kill you.
Chloe: Yeah, but still!
Edgar: Maybe it's a delayed reaction kinda thing. Maybe you'll freak out about it in a few days.
Chloe: I hope so.

Get this woman on JDate ASAP!

7. Edgar Stiles is Jewish. Hey, he's got an honors degree from New York University. Maybe he grew up in the Five Towns. Another nebbishy techno-geek, Edgar shines with his love for his mother. When a nuclear bomb exploded near her home in Season 4, he desperately wanted to leave CTU to rescue her from the radiation. But his mother urged him to stay at work and, with tears in his eyes, he agreed. Such a good Jewish son!

8. Tony Almeida is Jewish. Don’t let the name fool you. Tony has to be Sephardic. His savoir-faire would make him a JDate favorite, as when he discusses a day at the office with his ex-wife Michelle (deceased as of the first minutes of season 5), saying, “So, uh, what are we saying here? If we save LA from a nuclear bomb, then you and I can get together for dinner and a movie?” Tony's character is so important to the show that he warrants his own fabulous fan site.

9. Ryan Chappelle is NOT Jewish. Try as I might, I can't find a Jewish angle on Ryan's character. He was Jack's boss as regional director of CTU. He was, anyway, until Jack had to execute him. Jack felt sorry about this, as did Ryan. I could develop an Abraham-Isaac Akeda comparison, but that would just seem forced. No angel came down to stay Jack's hand.

Conversations with a Ghost: The Abbie Hoffman Interview, Conclusion

2006-01-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

In 1986 I interviewed 60s radical Abbie Hoffman. Never before published, the edited transcript now appears through the magic of the Internet. This is the final installment.

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

--------------------

Mission2Moscow: Do you ever get tired of being ABBIE HOFFMAN, in capital letters?

Hoffman: Very much, yes. Being underground, if I heard the name I just ducked immediately, I got scared. So I still don’t like to hear it today, to this minute I don’t like to hear the name. But fame can give you access. You can call up people, they don’t hang up. Well, it’s an OK name. I’m proud of what I do – and did.

Mission2Moscow: How do you like to relax?

Hoffman: Orgasms. I’m trying to figure out how to make it last longer than three hours (shrieks of laughter). Believe me, international revolution, that’s how you do it – three-hour orgasms.

Mission2Moscow: Your mother called you an excellent bowler. You were a jock back at Brandeis.

Hoffman: Sports? Let’s see, tennis. I love playing pool, going to pool halls and shooting pool. And I like watching sports on TV. I love arguing with the television. I spend about three hours shouting at the TV. It gets me in good shape.

Mission2Moscow: Are you a vegetarian?

Hoffman: No, do I want to see my shit green all the rest of my life? I’ve been on long fasts. In prison it’s very easy. If you’ve had burrito surprise in a maximum security prison, you’re ready to fast. But I’m not a vegetarian and I’m not sure I’d let my daughter marry one.

Mission2Moscow: In other times we’ve talked, you’ve always brought up the networking person’s name. Have you ever wanted, in your juvenile delinquency moments, to go down to the Palladium and put a cream pie in his face? [2006 note: The Palladium was a night club in New York where Jerry Rubin held networking parties in the 1980s.]

Hoffman: It’s funny about that. I’ve only been cream pied once and he did it to me. And I hated it. It happened in a debate.

Mission2Moscow: In your autobiography you described the two of you as still close friends then. Does that still apply?

Hoffman: What I wrote about Jerry Rubin, being friendly with him, that’s a mistake. We’re not friendly. This is not because of what he does. I don’t even know what the hell it is. Networking? It’s got people coming and they exchange business cards and they want to get laid, I guess. So that’s cool. But he has decided to put his ideas into the political arena, and I have to deal with him as a public personality, not just as a private person. What am I supposed to do about somebody who says he picked out his wife because she wouldn’t feel guilty about wearing a fur coat and getting in and out of limousines? Now I’ve got 30 or 40 quotes like that from Jerry Rubin that I would just whip out in the debates and he’d say that’s a lie – but they’re all true. He will say that thing and then he will turn around and not connect it. There are no connections. That’s what’s so lousy about being born again.

I just couldn’t believe that introduction (to the Whole Life interview with Rubin). It said the book he wrote about his insights were sincere. Every single chapter was the latest fad. If it was Werner Erhard [2006 note: Erhard was the founder of the est training] it was in, if it was Rolfing that was in, and then that was wrong and this was it. This is so crass, so petty, so nouveau riche, so disgusting.

Mission2Moscow: You sound disappointed.

Hoffman: People who want to make money in this society are literally a dime a dozen. It’s not that I’m disappointed in Jerry as a human being. He paid his dues. I’m disappointed in the kind of political things he feels he has to do to make his way and brag about going to restaurants where George Steinbrenner and Donald Trump hang out. God, I’d be afraid I’d get some kind of disease.

Mission2Moscow: Is Judaism part of your mentality?

Hoffman: I’m not about to deny my Judaism, and I’m not about to let B’nai B’rith and real hawks on Israel define what Judaism is.

Mission2Moscow: How do you define it?

Hoffman: A way of life. A way of championing the cause of the underdog, of not being afraid of being a dissident, almost a permanent outsider.

Mission2Moscow: Like a prophet.

Hoffman: You mean “et.” Proph-ETS.

Mission2Moscow: Proph-ETS, right, the Jeremiahs and Isaiahs of the world.

Hoffman: The ones who went for broke, as opposed to . . .

Mission2Moscow: The ones who wound up broke.

Hoffman: Who wound up broke. I cannot conceive of winding up any other way but broke.

Mission2Moscow: Is there anything you haven’t done, that you would like to do?

Hoffman: I want to go to Bali, and I want to go back to the Amazon. I never want to go to Europe again, that’s for sure. I want to go to Africa and Asia, the developing worlds. If I had my way, right now, OK, no shit, all things considered, if I was financially secure I would be out of this country. I would be gone, you wouldn’t know Abbie Hoffman. Now we’re dealing with the truth. He has enough money, he’s out of there. I’d be in Nicaragua, that’s where I’d be. I don’t know if I’d be carrying a gun or driving an ambulance, but I’d like going there. I like Nicaragua.

Conversations with a Ghost: The Abbie Hoffman Interview, Part 2

2006-01-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

This continues my 1986 interview with Abbie Hoffman.

The introduction can be found here.

Part 1

-----------------------

Mission2Moscow: You once said that politics is swaddled in “perhapses.” What do you think is the biggest perhaps for you – personally or politically?

Hoffman: Maybe the drug bust, going underground. The world of Latin America would have been known to me only through the media. It wouldn’t have been known so much from direct contact. Never mind the direct experience of somebody who worked and lived there as a fugitive. Also, the battle on the St. Lawrence River as another person, as Barry Freed. It would have been very easy for me to avoid it, but seeing, in a sense, my true identity come out, that I am a community organizer, that when I see a way to beat the powers that be, when they are about to commit an injustice, I just have to act. I don’t know how to sit there and watch it go by, or rationalize.

I was tested in the underground. I was tested by having my kids forced to live on welfare. My ex-wife Anita –who is a hero of mine, who when faced with the choice, very bright, could have become a yuppie, could have developed her career like that – chose instead when she was broke to form the Downtown Welfare Advocate Center here in New York, which has remained one of the best advocate centers for welfare mothers in the country.

Mission2Moscow: If you hadn’t gone underground, what would have happened in the intervening years before you resurfaced?

Hoffman: Everyone has this fantasy of opening a small restaurant. I love cooking. I do al the cooking here.

Mission2Moscow: A lot of Spanish food?

Hoffman: I have an excellent way with huevos rancheros and can make Mexican paella. You know the article where I posed as Playboy’s restaurant critic (to gain entrance to top European eateries)? I got all the recipes in my head. That’s the contradiction of life. The lefties can’t understand great cooking. Hedonism is wasted on the left.

Mission2Moscow: What’s the difference between a Jewish woman and a shiksa?

Hoffman: I’m trying to figure out an answer to this without getting into trouble (laughter, then pause). I’ve experienced love a couple of times it’s not something I choose to live without. This Hebrew Jewish warrior image of myself as lonely community organizer, dollar a year, ready to go into any community, fantasies of fighting in the mountains, in Nicaragua, the Spanish Civil War . . . I’m basically a romantic and I can do this because I am in love. If I wasn’t in love I’d probably go into business.

Mission2Moscow: “Come back to the drug company, Abbie, all is forgiven”? [referring to Hoffman’s time as a sales representative]

Hoffman: Or pharmaceuticals. More a restaurant, more marketing,, more like you-know-who is doing these days. It’s nice that you haven’t dropped the name of . . . the other one. More like the other one is doing.

Mission2Moscow: Oh, no. I think he’s passé. The whole project is kind of boring.

Hoffman: Good, good, good. But if you’re an organizer you know how to bring people together. Maybe I’ll promote soccer in America, or like “Hands Across America.” I can do that stuff. That would be a natural tendency for my talent, although my political sensitivities just say, “no way, this is too mainstream.”

Mission2Moscow: You talk about being in love on different levels when it involves Jews and more currently goyim. (Hoffman’s two wives were Jewish, and he now lives with a gentile). Is there a cultural difference between Jewish love and gentile love?

Hoffman: It’s very hard to put this in ways that are not going to make Jews appear more intelligent, because you want to say things like gentile love seems more instinctual, it seems more like loyalty, whereas me, the Jewish male, just constantly seems to be flying about every minute. That may be the difference between the heart and the brain, but they all sound sexist and religious and a bit off the mark. This is a hard question to answer to be both honest and politically correct.

Mission2Moscow: Just try honesty.

Hoffman; Why? (laughs) What the hell does honesty get you? It’s better to be politically correct. Let me put it this way: There is a difference, and trying to figure out what the difference is, is certainly part of the attraction. And I’m not sure I’ve figured out what the difference is. We’re talking about a very unusual woman, a woman who has literally saved my life three times.

Mission2Moscow: Why do you call her your running mate?

Hoffman: It’s an interesting non-sexist term. Lovers sounds a little like the 30s, roommates – not exactly roommates. Partner, I don’t know. But running mates, ‘cause they know we’re running around all the time, so she’s chosen. She’s a very big hero of mine and has a more developed concept of justice than I do.

Mission2Moscow: What are your kids like? Did they grow up to disrespect authority?

Hoffman: Yes.

Mission2Moscow: And they still do that?

Hoffman: Yes.

Mission2Moscow: How do they do that?

Hoffman: Well, they don’t work for corporations. You’re not going to find them in corporate America, you’re not going to find them on the Upper East Side. You’re not going to find them constantly thinking about upward mobility and status.

Mission2Moscow: What do they do?

Hoffman: My oldest son (Andy) is an artist. He makes things very artistically: jewelry, earrings, he’s very good with his hands, extremely good for a Jew (laughs). And he’s married. My daughter (Amy) just graduated from Hampshire College and works as a paralegal. She has a job, but in the social movement. She was an activist in the Jesse Jackson campaign. I wouldn’t call her an activist, like me. The youngest kid (america) has that potential. He’s determined not to register for the draft. He is determined to make his mark in the world as a rebel. Whether it is a good rebel or a bad rebel is something we discuss a lot.

Mission2Moscow: Are you a grandfather?

Hoffman: Not that I know of. I keep thinking about what a surprise that would be to so many people – including myself – because most people still have me pegged at the terrible twos. I’m certainly still a juvenile delinquent in a way. This becomes very complicated, by the way, because my youngest kid has a touch of the juvenile delinquent about him.

Mission2Moscow: How so?

Hoffman: He gets in trouble with the law.

Mission2Moscow: What’s he done?

Hoffman: I ain’t squealing.

Mission2Moscow: Does this tickle you, or concern you as a parent?

Hoffman: Of course it concerns me. It has to do with the lecture of the good rebel and the bad rebel. Robin Hood was a good rebel because he didn’t take for himself. So I don’t want to stifle my kids’ rebellion against authority but I want to see them use that rebellion in a positive way, that’s all.

Mission2Moscow: It sounds like that’s a tough thing to accomplish.

Hoffman: Bringing up kids is not easy. I often will turn to my kids while we are having little frictions and say, “Do you think this is easy? What the hell would you do if you were on this side? What would you do?” And then they laugh, they kind of like that.

Mission2Moscow: What did you tell your children about drugs?

Hoffman: Which drug? I’m very specific. You mean recreational drugs?

Mission2Moscow: Cocaine.

Hoffman: I think every one of my kids has tried cocaine. I think they’ve all tried recreational drugs. I am a philosopher about that. I tell them drugs have positive and negative sides, they can be dangerous, but it is one of the things mass society is lying about right off the bat and the only way they are going to come to terms with this honestly is to do what your own conscience dictates.

Mission2Moscow: Marijuana.

Hoffman: Two have outgrown drugs. One’s used marijuana. The youngest kid, he’s sort of California cool, you know, he’s like, uhhhh.

Mission2Moscow: (regarding Hoffman’s 1973 arrest for involvement in the sale of three pounds of cocaine) Was there a death wish at work there?

Hoffman: There was probably a wish to disgrace myself more than death. Well, maybe death. Those cops had the gun, they said, “You want to run for it, go ahead.”

Mission2Moscow: They said that to you?

Hoffman: Oh, yeah, they said that a lot of times. I was really tempted to go down in bullets, right at that moment. You see yourself as a criminal.

Mission2Moscow: Was this just another caper when they arrested you?

Hoffman: No, it was much more serious, but I was on cocaine, so I was pretty zonked. As I reflect back, sure, it was shameful. I was very ashamed. I didn’t like to have to be forced into a situation where I had to bring so much pain to myself and to my family and friends. I had to walk through the fire, really. I just disappeared. I would have been the last one to say we would be sitting here just like this and I would be Abbie Hoffman again. That was gone forever.

Mission2Moscow: So you’re not addicted to anything now?

Hoffman: No. Except psychologically, like good movies or good food or good sex. I should tell you right off, I’m glad I got busted.

Mission2Moscow: Yes?

Hoffman: There were certain adventures I had along the way underground, seeing what the world was like as another person, just being an observer rather than someone who is so much a participant. You walk into a room as Abbie Hoffman, this isn’t a room. You walk into a room as somebody else with a vague past, who doesn’t have much money, you’re seeing a completely different reality. That was an incredibly important experience philosophically, psychologically, in terms of the way I look at the world, as something apart from my own personal experience. I met Johanna, and that wouldn’t have happened unless all the other things happened. And we’re just very happy together. I’m just very happy and lucky.

Conversations with a Ghost: The Abbie Hoffman Interview, Part 1

2006-01-13T13:08:00.000-05:00

In 1986 I interviewed 60s radical Abbie Hoffman for a New York publication. The edited transcript, taken from five hours of conversation, never was published. Thanks to the Internet, Hoffman's wit and energy can now be read by a new generation. The introduction to this piece can be found here.

Hoffman: I was just surprised last month to get a call from Walt Disney to use me in a commercial to plug their latest movie, Ruthless People. It’s funny to get a call like that.

Mission2Moscow: Are you going to do it?

Hoffman: I turned it down, no.

Mission2Moscow: Why did you turn it down?

Hoffman: They wouldn’t let me see the movie, for one thing. But there is a big difference. These things, like being called by Walt Disney, or being on the Phil Donahue Show or talk shows, speaking to large numbers of people. I am used by the U.S. Information Agency as propaganda around that world that this is how much free speech we have. Probably 90 percent of the readers of Whole Life believe – believe the fact that I’m giving this interview here – that you are interviewing me, I’m on the cover, that I am a self-proclaimed dissident, that I am anti-state, that I have a point of view that may be in the minority of the people who are thinking out there in the world, but certainly a minority view here, that the fact that I’m allowed is free speech.

I’m not one of those people. I don’t believe that at all. You’re asking me the questions, you’re framing it, I’m stuck between the ads. We have the best information money can by, and that’s it. Period. We don’t have the best information.

Mission2Moscow: You once said you thought Walter Cronkite was the best newsman or the most . . .

Hoffman: The most trustworthy. That’s just a general image he’s concocted in America. I would never give the system that much credit. When I say the best, I mean it in this context. I would say Ted Koppel of Nightline has the best talk show on TV – news talk show, but I’m describing something in a narrow context – which is pro-corporation, which is anti-Russian, which accepts certain premises like the fundamental principle of our thinking is the key to keeping the Western alliance together, which is to maintain national security through strength of weaponry. Which, with, that God exists, is alive, is a Christian, that drugs are the devil, that Communism is the devil, that history is irrelevant, that anecdote is important, that accepts the system that will say the strongest critic that is allowed out there is somebody who will say, “Well, there are some things wrong with America, but it’s 90 percent OK.” That’s what you’re allowed as a critic. That’s not a dissident. I am a self-invention. This is not an invention of the media. You cannot be an American dissident. It is simply not allowed. It is like being an American refugee. You cannot renounce this system. It’s just now allowed. You are just like an ungrateful, spoiled brat who wasn’t breast-fed, or who doesn’t really mean it.

Mission2Moscow: You mentioned avoiding free speech. The issue of pornography has come up a lot these days, the Meese Commission and all that. Are you afraid that political stuff is going to be the next target?

Hoffman: Obviously, it always is, it is already happening. It’s no secret to me that the Dead Kennedys are one of the most political groups in the country. That’s why Jello Biafra (its leader) is on trial for his genital poster (included in an album). It’s avant-garde and the radical politics generally – not always – tend to go together with that. That’s why the left is split. When you have Women Against Pornography saying, “I don’t find anything wrong with being in camp with Edwin Meese,” a guy who says his goal is to dismantle the Miranda decision. You have this contradiction of looking in an adult porn store and everyone behind that grimy window looks like Edwin Meese (laughs). I mean, who are they talking about anyway?

If the left was left to sell left-wing politics to the United States, it’s like sell deep-freeze units to Eskimos. There is no market for those kinds of ideas. There hasn’t been since maybe the 1930s, when the unions had their day. In the 1960s what happened was that a kind of generalized leftist politics occurred at the same time as the sexual revolution as the breaking away from the puritan ethic – the puritanical anal restrictive attitudes towards sex, drugs, rock and roll, general kind of thinking about life. Some other kind of thinking that there were other ways out there. So if that’s taken away, you are left with a movement that is not particularly well versed on selling anything because it comes out of an academic tradition and you really have nothing much to sell.

Mission2Moscow: For the past five or six years you have been involved in Central American and environmental activities. How so?

Hoffman: I’ve taken four trips to Nicaragua and I’ve brought more than 100 people there. I also speak at workshops and conferences and in my regular campus lecturing. I probably speak more on this issue than anyone else in the U.S. and to larger numbers of people.

Mission2Moscow: When was the last time you were there?

Hoffman: Last August, September (1985). I’m on the phone once every two weeks to Nicaragua talking to friends there. I belong to a service, Agenda International, through which I get a week’s summary of everything printed in every major American newspaper on Nicaragua. I get International Barricada, which comes straight out of Nicaragua.

Mission2Moscow: Did you met with Daniel Ortega when he was here in New York?

Hoffman: I was away, actually. I’ve worked on visits. I stayed at their house once. I feel like I know these people well (Nicaraguan leaders), in a very close way. These are 60s people. These people were there in their way, the way we were in the streets of the USA. And they were influenced by many of the same cultural experiences: they wore long hair, they smoked dope, they wore bell bottoms, they listened to rock and roll, their thinking is anti-ideology, as was ours in the 60s. But this has to be put into the context of what anti-ideology means given a Latin American education. It’s a different experience.

Mission2Moscow: Had you been in Nicaragua before the revolution, when you were a fugitive?

Hoffman: No, but I had been in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and since then in El Salvador. I lived in Mexico two and a half years and speak the language. Also, when I was a fugitive I met many Chilean refugees because they all had headed there. I have a sister who has lived 27 years in Mexico, and I am in love with Latin America. I was recently in Peru, Ecuador and the Amazon. I love to be in Latin America. It is the developing world.

Mission2Moscow: You’ve said that you still see yourself as a community organizer. Is that still the self-image?

Hoffman: Yes, absolutely.

Mission2Moscow: is there a living to be made these days as a community organizer?

Hoffman: Only very very, small numbers of people can do what I do in this society and support themselves even in the middle . . . well, this is not a palace [referring to his apartment on E. 34th Street in New York). My total worth is easily under $50,000. I’m sure I’m worth much more dead than alive. Younger organizers have a much harder time economically. The economics of the 60s – I was getting $40 – movement wages were $40 a week and you were OK. You had a good time and didn’t worry about money or anything, or careers or rent. People could volunteer themselves to a movement and scratch around at the surface and figure out how to get by. Today, that’s extremely difficult.

Mission2Moscow: You mentioned the Walt Disney ad. Do you find yourself turning down an awful lot of offers? Do you feel conflict sometimes between something that might make you commercially more comfortable and principles? You talked about how people will say, “Abbie, we’re going to make you a star, endorse this album.” Does that still happen?

Hoffman: Yes, it happens. When you fight against the system and give it as much thought and fight as hard on a pragmatic, practical level as someone like myself or any of the anti-war leaders, if you want to turn around and cash in – I’m not even talking about the fame, I’m talking about how the system works, you know how the system works! If you understand the system well enough to challenge it so effectively, it’s pretty easy for you to turn the switch.

The advertising moguls on Madison Avenue – if I went, that’s where I would go. Obviously, it’s Madison Avenue. I have a certain way with words and you can make unpopular things popular. It’s nothing to then turn around and use that ability to market things and to use your basic knowledge about human motivation and what moves small and large groups. My fantasies about being a millionaire are only in terms of winning a lottery or something like that.

Mission2Moscow: You’re comfortable then, and that’s enough for you?

Hoffman: No, I wouldn’t say that. No, because I am middle-aged and you’re not comfortable when you’re middle-aged. You have your middle-life crises. But there were a lot of points in my life over the last 10 or 12 years when I did not have to become engaged in the social battle and I chose to be engaged. It is in my nature. On two occasions I became physically ill when I did not choose to interact.

Mission2Moscow: You’ve said that generally the lifespan of an activist is about two years and after that the pressures become too much. And you’ve been doing it for 25 years! Where did the longevity come from?

Hoffman: Aside from the fact that I’m the son of God, or that I come from the planet Krypton . . . Human beings on occasions tend to get depressed. On the left you have a romantic vision of human nature. That is, it doesn’t have to be rich and poor; there doesn’t always have to be injustice and inequality; that human beings can enter a situation like the existentialist warriors they are and they can alter history with their own being. So that’s a rather romantic view.

Now, when you are depressed and you have this view, there is a strong tendency to translate that depression into your politics and so you become disillusioned. On the right they don’t have to have that because individual greed . . . there is a certain fatalism that there is always going to be rich and poor, you know there are certain things built in where the world doesn’t have to be just. So they can deal with emotions like depression a lot easier, politically. On the left it becomes a complicated problem.

Mission2Moscow: So you think it’s because you have been able to deal with depression over the years?

Hoffman: Not necessarily just that I have been able to deal with those things, but that I’ve been able to understand what is politics and what is human nature. And that you have to have a certain distance, a certain sense of humor that you develop a certain sense of spacing over the years. I don’t expect enormous social change right now in the US. In fact, I expect change for the worst. The difference between my optimism in the 80s and my optimism in the 60s is that in the 60s it was more generalized than it is now. Now it is more refined, much more specific. You have to be more specific about our questions about where there is hope and where there is not much hope.

Mission2Moscow: You talked once about how long hair has lost its social bite.

Hoffman: Doesn’t have any bite? My kid who’s a punk, america, is 15 years old, and says the hippies are the ones you’ve got to run from, man.

Mission2Moscow: What does have social bite these days?

Hoffman: If the choice is between punk and yuppie, I’ll take punk. In terms of culture for white people, that’s the choice. I sense another choice, but it may be a cop-out. I sense that the counterculture of the 80s is Latin culture, so if people want to learn the counterculture language, or the alternative culture or the hippie language, you learn Spanish. You travel to Latin America, you go to Nicaragua, you check it all out, you eat Latin food, you listen to the music. When you ask me what has bite, I have to go to the developing world to get my answers. I can’t get them in the United States.

It’s not that activism is not on the rise in the U.S. It is. I see people doing good work, they do it in a different context. They are hedging their bets with their careers. I meet somebody like Mitch Snyder (Washington, D.C., activist for the homeless) and I say, “Oh, this is great,” and he tells me he is 42, and I say “Uh-oh.” Maybe we’re two years away from national organizations and leadership in our next generation. I can’t wait. This is lonely what I do, this is lonely work. It is lonely. [2006 note: Mitch Snyder committed suicide in 1990, a year after Hoffman.]

The Functional Value of Heartache

2006-01-08T17:51:00.000-05:00

Adult dating involves set narratives, similar to job interviews. Two people make an acquaintance and, as they proceed, start talking. Initial conversations often are rituals of standard questions posed, reliable answers proffered. If the elusive chemistry exists, the masks slip down so the less polished self emerges. The real connection begins then.

The masks slipped quickly last spring when I met a woman I'll call Tieta. From our first encounters, online on JDate and then in person, I sensed something special about her -- and, as important, about us. We revealed bits about ourselves that very few others know. I allowed plans for what we could do, what we could be, to form in my mind. That's what happens when somebody touches the reptilian boy-girl attraction node deep inside me.

It didn't last. Tieta thrashed in a spider-web of complications involving parents and exes that thwarted our relationship, so we constantly took one step forward and two steps back. Finally, she decided to take the two steps back and no more steps forward. She abruptly left me to thrash on my own. I could only take tiny solace from edits she made to her online dating profile, where she wrote, "Sometimes you meet the right man at the wrong time."

Months later, the heartache of Tieta remains with me in a surprising way. Our experiences became part of my dating narrative. I never expected this to happen. I'll talk to some degree about my marriage or my nuttier dating adventures, but I never talked about Tieta because the whole sequence was so baffling and hurtful, so close to my dreams and expectations of what life could indeed hold.

But I am finding that heartache carries a functional value. That value emerges in response to questions that lately women have been asking. For my part, I never ask women about their dating experiences, online services to which they subscribe, anything that crosses into the realm of "none of my business."

However, some Jewish women are very curious about this side of my business. Have I had a steady relationship since I got divorced? Do I date much? What's my online experience been like?

The first time a woman asked me whether I'd had a steady relationship since my day in divorce court on Black Friday, June 13, 2003, I didn't know what to say. I finally said I had known different women, made some good friends, but nothing really serious had happened. Buzz! Wrong answer for this woman, who expressed concern that I may not be very serious in the pursuit of romance.

Afterward, I thought about what she asked, what I said. Treating this as a "it's none of your business, honey" question may not be the right approach. What was she truly asking? What have I truly felt and experienced? I decided the questions are anything but casual. They aim to sound out my past and intentions, what I'm seeking, whether I'm merely a male hummingbird sipping the nectar of available blossoms, or whether I'm serious about this business of romantic cross-pollination.

Before long the issue arose again. This time, I was ready. Tieta and I did have something potentially serious, and I'll be damned if I downplay what it meant -- what it meant for me, anyway. Combining honesty and discretion, I replied, "Yes, I had something that looked very promising. We really connected. But the timing just wasn't right. Her life was complicated. It just didn't work out."

That basic response may evolve, depending on the question and the amount of tequila involved in the conversation. Women ask, and they deserve an honest answer. Now I have one, spoken through gritted teeth and showing hard lessons taught by Tieta. If not asked, I won't bring up the topic. But if asked, I have a narrative that shows I am indeed capable and serious.

Bubba Ho-Tep: An Outstanding Addition to the Lee Harvey Oswald Film Collection

2006-01-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

Long-time readers of this blog know well my academic interest in cultural works referencing Lee Harvey Oswald. Several psychiatrists have traced this obsession to repeated viewings of Oliver Stone's JFK at impressionable times in my life.

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce an outstanding addition to the collection of Oswaldiana: Bubba Ho-Tep, a beloved low-budget movie about a decrepit Elvis (or Elvis imitator) wasting away in an East Texas nursing home. Another resident is President John F. Kennedy -- or, at least, an elderly black man who insists he is in fact JFK, diabolically disguised by Lyndon Johnson. The two team up to battle an evil mummy who's terrorizing the good citizens of the Shady Rest Retirement Home.

JFK, played by the late, great actor Ossie Davis, decorates his room with pictures of Oswald, Jack Ruby, and others. The centerpiece is a Dealey Plaza scale re-creation, including -- be still my heart! -- a "Lee Harvey Oswald Depository Playset, complete with Sniper’s Nest," according to an interview with art director Justin Zaharczuk. In fact, here's a picture of Oswald from the playset:

Bubba Ho-Tep itself is a fantastic movie, one that gives me hope in the ability of some filmmakers to stress intelligence and emotion above fancy F/X and useless "talent" from Young Hollywood. From the delirious title to the stunning performance of Bruce Campbell -- who IS Elvis, or at least a great aging Elvis impersonator -- Bubba Ho-Tep works. Sure it drags in places, but this is that rare movie that digs itself into your consciousness. It deals with topics many American films avoid, such as aging, male friendship, finding dignity in the presence of death, and, of course, the omnipresence of mummy attacks in East Texas.

The movie is a southern-fried cri de coeur, an innovative variation on the Dylan Thomas poem that starts

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I like to think that nursing-home Elvis had Dylan Thomas in mind when he snarled at the evil mummy in a cowboy hat, "Nobody fucks with the King, baby."

The Cinematic Record of the World Trade Center

2006-01-03T12:30:00.000-05:00

In his new movie Munich, Steven Spielberg shows two Israeli Mossad characters talking with the World Trade Center in the background. I haven't seen the movie, but I'll take the word of Philadelphia Jewish Exponent editor Jonathan Tobin, who wrote,

"Spielberg even uses an image of a still-standing World Trade Center to punctuate a scene in which Avner rejects Israel to lead us to falsely think 9/11 might have been avoided had America also abandoned the Jewish state.

With Oliver Stone and others preparing 9-11 movies, I've become curious about the cinematic treatment of the WTC. Spielberg takes a forboding approach while Stone deals head-on with the day itself. My interest comes from a different angle: how did the WTC figure into earlier movies, and can those films be seen without a shudder? Is the WTC simply there, part of the background, or in some Spielbergian sense do the towers add another layer of meaning and dread that viewers understand only in retrospect? One thorough list of WTC film references can be found here. I wonder how movies set in New York -- both before and after that day -- will deal with the attack. One way or another, the towers will be there, if only by their absence.

The thoughts came to me after, by sheerest accident, I flipped TV channels and found 1983's Trading Places, with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd. The scene showed the two characters striding across the WTC plaza on their way to a business appointment. Akroyd turns to Murphy and says,

"Nothing can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you're about to witness."

My stomach lurched at the line. It was just one of those things, something humorous dipped in blood by time's passage. If readers can suggest others, I'll add them and give you full credit for the tip.

The Property Rights Controversy over "Ushpizin"

2005-12-31T00:18:00.000-05:00

Two Saturdays ago I saw that the "Israeli Club" at a large synagogue in Fairfield County, Conn., would be screening the hit Israeli movie Ushpizin. I showed up, only to find a bar mitzvah party ending and no movie screening -- not that I could find, anyway.

Had I attended the screening, I might very well have become a direct participant in a simmering controversy regarding the movie: well-intentioned but illegal screenings of Ushpizin in shuls and other places. Capitalizing on the growing appeal of this breakthrough film, the screenings violate copyright law and the property rights of the U.S. distributor of the film, Picturehouse, a joint venture of HBO and New Line Cinema (both units of Time Warner).

I learned of the problem of illegal screenings through a full-page ad for the film in the Dec. 23 issue of the Jewish Week in New York. The ad announced Picturehouse-sanctioned screenings at the Yeshiva of Flatbush on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. The ad caught my attention with a statement under the headline, "An important note from the filmmaker and distributor of Ushpizin." It read:

The Creators of the Award winning movie Ushpizin call for your assistance. Please support the filmmakers and enjoy Ushpizin in movie theaters, and avoid illegal screenings. The movie is still in theaters in the USA and any DVDs of Ushpizin are unauthorized. Piracy is against both civil and Jewish law. For more information about the US release of Uspizin, please visit www.ushpizin.com.

To make the point even clearer, the bottom of the ad says, "Leading Torah authorities have ruled that unauthorized use of the Ushpizin is contrary to Halacha (Jewish law)." Surely this is the first time such a notice has appeared on a Time Warner film. Neither the ad nor the Ushpizin website provide specifics about the authorities and their rulings.

Messages boards at the official website, however, sizzle with discussion of the ethics of such showings. One post asserts, noting the "arbitrage" of copies of the product from one market (Israel) to another (the US), that "distributors are going to have to adjust their own model to accommodate the current reality of the global marketplace." Another, more specific post frantically requests guidance from Picturehouse:

A Jewish organization is planning to show Ushpizin in a room in a hotel at the end of a weekend retreat. The DVD was purchased legally from Israel. There is no charge for tickets and THERE WASN'T EVEN ANY ADVERTISING THAT THE FILM WOULD BE SHOWN. A lawyer has told us that we are within our rights to show the film, but we would like to confirm that it is alright with you.

The debate spilled over to other websites, moving beyond questions about the movie to comments on ethical practices among the haredim. Cross-Currents had several comments, including a well-informed statement from Jessica Rosner of Kino International. Dozens of learned and acrimonious comments can be found in the discuss at Mentalblog.com.

The debate is healthy, in that it provides a teachable moment, if you will, about property rights and ethics. Let's hope the Jewish community hears the pleas of Picturehouse and respects the distributor's intellectual property. It would be a shame if illegal showings siphon off money that could otherwise go to encourage similar Jewish film productions. THAT would be shanda.

Ironically, the week after I almost stumbled on to the dubious synagogue showing, I met a friend to see Ushpizin at a theater on Broadway in New York. My friend arrived a bit late, so we switched to another feature, about a well-known Jewish writer, you know, the author named Capote.

Oh, you mean Truman Capote wasn't Jewish? Boy, have I been misinformed!

Family Matters, Past and Present

2005-12-27T16:28:00.000-05:00

A favorite memory of my late mother, gone 22 years next month, is her fierce financial correspondence with her older sister Charlotte, in Tyler, Texas. Their weekly letters traded news about their investments and the gyrations of Wall Street; Mom groused a lot about a company called Overhead Door. Charlotte was a steel-nerved stock-market ace, creating her own price-trend charts and knowing to the second when to turn on the radio in her kitchen to catch the mid-day market report on KRLD in Dallas. When Charlotte attended my 1980 graduation from Princeton, she reached stock-picker nirvana by meeting Professor Burton Malkiel, who wrote the book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street." She even had Malkiel autograph her copy of his book.

My mother lacked Aunt Charlotte's zest for trading, but she did OK. When she died in January 1984, she left equal amounts of her portfolio to me and my brother, Mission2Houston, 100 shares of each stock to each of us.

During my marriage, the unrelenting pressures of repairs to Hell House on Hickory Drive and bouts of unemployment pried 95 percent of the bequest from my fingers. But I succeeded in retaining a handful of shares of almost everything, to keep the legacy alive in even a diminished form.

These thoughts came to me with force last week when I had a letter from one of the companies, TXU, formerly Texas Utilities, informing me of a stock split. My 50-plus shares magically became -- through no active effort on my part -- 102 shares. More than a financial bonus, the split returned one more part of my life to where it stood before so much went grievously haywire, turmoil resulting in the another split.

My mother died 10 years before my son Shmoikel was born. To think of her makes me think of him in certain ways. Today on my walk through long northern exit of Grand Central Terminal I saw a suburban mother with two daughters. One, about 10, proudly swung her own fuzzy-pink purse. The other, maybe 7, held her mother's hand as they embarked on a holiday adventure in the city.

I looked on the family bouncing along, then realized the days of needing to hold Shmoikel's hand are gone. He's 11 now and can negotiate between the cars of a parking lot, and look both ways before crossing a street. How often I used to say, "Now hold daddy's hand while we cross the street." That toddler is now the video game playing, sci-fi DVD watching, Frisbee tossing adolescent. His mother and I have successfully nurtured him past the crossing-the-street stage, so now we are moving daily into new stages.

And I like to think my mother's lessons and support are right there with us. Her legacy, in many ways, will be Shmoikel's.

Miracle on 47th Street: A Heartwarming Holiday Encounter

2005-12-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I took a late-morning train into New York. A young woman sat beside me with a rolling suitcase. Once she got arranged we started talking. She lives in Connecticut and was going into the city to meet her boyfriend of the past four years. He now lives, temporarily she hoped, in North Dakota. Let's call her Maria Theresa (not her real name).

They were meeting at a hotel across the street from my office, and she said they wanted to go look at engagement rings, in the famous Diamond District on West 47th Street, where Orthodox Jews run most of the stores. The place totally shuts down on Friday afternoon.

"I figure we can go look tomorrow," she said innocently, referring to Saturday.

"Um, you might want to go today," I told her. "They're, um, religious Jews who don't work on Saturday."

This surprised Maria Theresa. "Not even during the Christmas season, for the shoppers?"

The question gave me pause. Visions of pious Jews in elf hats danced through my head, with their merry cries of "Hoy, hoy, hoy, come on Bubbelah buy her that ring so we can lock up shop and get to Kabbalat Shabbat services."

I finally said, "I don't think they'll be open. Maybe one or two, but don't get your hopes up. He can always take you to Tiffany's."

She smiled at the Tiffany's reference, but underneath I sensed her alarm at the potential for holiday disaster. The ring-shopping window of opportunity was closing fast. Once we got to Grand Central I checked my watch. It was only 1:30 pm. "Look," I said encouragingly, "the guys on 47th Street should still be open until maybe 4 pm. Go to the hotel, grab your boyfriend and get right over there."

Maria Theresa liked this idea and I steered her out the time-saving north entrance of Grand Central Terminal and walked her to her hotel on Lexington Avenue.

"If you go now, you should have time to look around at different stores," I said. "You want to give yourself plenty of time. It's a big occasion. It's not like you're shopping for chicken gizzards."

She appreciated my guidance in the mysterious ways of New York's specialty retailers.

"Anything I can do for the cause of love," I said, as she went her way and I went mine, two souls thrown together for a New York minute.

"I Am Jewish": A Response

2005-12-23T08:02:00.000-05:00

A rabbinical friend recently forwarded a thought-provoking email to me. It came from Rabbi Carol Stein in California and read, in part,

I am preparing to teach a course at the High School for Jewish Studies in San Diego this coming semester. The course is entitled "I Am Jewish" - the last words spoken by the journalist, Daniel Pearl, before his death at the hands of his kidnappers in the Middle East. I am hoping to guide the students so that they too can make that same statement proudly and with an understanding of what "being Jewish" means to each of them. I ask your help.

Please take a few minutes to write a few sentences or a few paragraphs explaining what you mean when you say "I am Jewish." Of course, there is no "right" answer -- being Jewish means different things to each of us. Some of us may think only of the religious aspect -- some the cultural or social or gastronomic.

Below is my response to Rabbi Stein's request.

We live in a lonely world. Families scatter, friendships are hard to forge, what we hope will be permanent slips away and we don't know where to turn. "I am Jewish" orients me in this social chaos; being Jewish provides a faith, a community, and comfort that justice will ultimately prevail in the world.

Sometimes while waiting for the commuter train I imagine God standing beside me, aware and concerned and always, always ready to listen. I close my eyes to sense the world swirling around me, sounds, winds, smells, and God is there, too. To paraphrase Deuteronomy 30:14, He is very close. The gates of repentence are always open; I need only approach them.

Wherever I travel, if a synagogue can be found I know I can expect familiar rituals, friendly faces. And I have found them, in places like McAllen, Texas; Dublin, Ireland; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The accents change, but the essential welcoming community of Jews remains. Being a Jew means I belong.

Finally, being Jewish gives me confidence in the future of the world. Some people may consider me superstitious or hopelessly unhip for this, but I take seriously the 13 Principles of Maimonides. The last two principles assert, with perfect faith, in the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. Those principles make sense to me, with their vision of justice and reunification with Jews who came before us, as well as Jews of far distant generations. My duty as a Jew is to act -- here, now -- in ways that will bring this vision closer.

Jewish Policy Forum: Staring into the Abyss That is Iran

2005-12-16T14:03:00.000-05:00

Some of the sharpest thought leaders among Jewish conservatives gathered at the Jewish Policy Center forum on Sunday, Dec. 11, at the West Side Institutional Synagogue in New York. The theme that sliced through the two-hour discussion: what can be done, if anything, to counter the onrushing nuclear capabilities of the frothingly anti-Israel leadership in Iran.

Panelists Daniel Pipes, Mona Charen, and Michael Ledeen (all members of the Board of Fellows of the JPC, a non-profit Washington think tank that takes a Jewish and conservative perspective), grappled with the question raised by moderator Michael Medved who asked, aping the tone of liberal arguments, whether the threat of Iran has been left to fester while the U.S. pursues the war in Iraq.

"I don´t totally disagree with you," said Pipes, noting the Bush administration has been "overly ambitious" in Iraq" and that he hoped the U.S. would "reduce our intense engagement" for a larger Iraqi role. He said Iraq is "looming as the key issue of the next couple of months" and that "the Bush Administration, frankly, has not been up to speed."

Ledeen pushed the perspective further back, arguing that "Iran has been the central issue from the beginning, but nobody wants to deal with that. Iran has been the key sponsor of terrorism."

Ledeen, who thinks Iran already has nuclear weapons, described the Iran leaders as "they{re crazy but they are not stupid." They have been able to act because no western government has acted to stop the regime, despite the West´s knowledge of Iran{s plans and statements.

"It´s like watching a psychodrama in slow motion and we know the outcome, Ledeen said in the most sobering moment of the afternoon. "We´ll have to go after the Iranians." The framework for that is not a war against Islamic fundamentalism, but rather part of the older war against tyranny, with Ledeen noting that 70 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, hence suggest a willing audience for pro-democracy efforts by the U.S.

Any thinking about moves against Iran always involve Israel, the relentless focus of Iran´s plans. Will Israel attack, as it did against Iraq´s nuclear facilities in 1981? Will Israel team up with the U.S. or do the dirty work needed on behalf of the U.S., and more distantly, the supine Europeans?

Ledeen, again, provided the strongest thoughts, doubting that the U.S. or Israel would attack Iran and also doubting whether such attacks would even work, since he thinks the two countries lack non-nuclear weapons that could stop the Iranian program.

Ultimately, he said, nobody can know the consequences of an attack on Iran, or another attack on the U.S. Hence, the abyss looms, with no sense of its depth or a bridge across it.

The session, before a crowd of about 300 people, touched on other issues as well, beginning with the mock-liberalesque questions from Medved, who described himself as "a punk liberal activist (who became) a loveable conservative curmudgeon."

Responses to Medved´s questions showed the range of beliefs among Jewish conservatives, with pointed disagreements with the Bush Administration´s performance. Pipes expressed his concerns about Iraq, and when asked about tax cuts, Mona Charen said that Republicans in Congress "have failed to take the spending problems as seriously as they should," which she found "disappointing."

"Republicans have lost a tremendous amount of moral authority by not sticking to their principles" of tax cuts and lower spending, she said.

Panelists also lamented the Jewish bashing conservative Christians in the U.S., led most vocally by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. Ledeen commented, "Picking fights with Christians is insane. Christians are more pro-Israel than the Jews are." Charen echoed the point, noting, "So many Jews side with people who have nothing good to say about America. I find that reprehensible."

Howard Stern? Feh. Let's Talk About Abbie Hoffman.

2005-12-12T22:41:00.000-05:00

The well-lubed publicity machine is now squirting out dispatches on the meaning of Howard Stern's move from WXRK (K-Rock) in New York to Sirius satellite radio on Janury 9. I have nothing of contemporary interest to add to the discussion, since I stopped listening to the radio show years ago and never had any interest in Stern's TV show. I still follow his career out of nostalgia for the days 20 years ago when I was a huge fan of him on WNBC and then K-ROCK and even had the incredible opportunity to interview him -- about his back problems and healthy lifestyle.

Around 1986-1987 I did celebrity interviews for a groovy publication in New York called Whole Life Times. Somehow WLT snagged an interview with Stern to talk about his involvement with the Alexander Technique. I drew the assignment. Like other journalists, I found the off-mike Stern polite, cooperative and amused by the on-air alter ego. That was before he got divorced and became the gargantuan King of All Media. The package of articles was a huge hit for Whole Life.

Far more memorable and haunting is another Whole Life gig: my interviews with 60s radical Abbie Hoffman in 1986. Like Stern, Hoffman was a media master, but with a far different bent and messier life arc. The interview coincided with his short-lived radio show on WBAI in New York, Radio Free USA.

Knowing Hoffman's skill with the press, I realized the only way to get a decent, insightful interview would be to go beyond the sound bites. Like somebody who's been on too many first dates, an oft-interviewed celebrity has a ready answer for all the predictable questions. With his quick wit and well-known persona, Hoffman had a celebrity armor as thick as anybody in Hollywood.

So I read every book of his I could find, along with articles on him. The research served me well during our five hours of interviews at his apartment on East 34th Street.

Too well, in fact. The sheer bulk of material slowed down the transcription of the audio tapes, and led to a price disagreement between Whole Life and the transcriber. By the time the job was done and paid for, the editor-publisher judged the material too dated. Hence, my interview with Abbie Hoffman never appeared.

Until now.

I saved the tapes, saved my research, and saved my introduction and the edited interview. I probably have the raw transcript someplace. The lack of this historic material from publication always grieved me, because Hoffman and I both worked hard to get a good interview. He had to think, and that was an exceptionally satisfying moment in my career.

Until I started this blog, I never could see a way to get this amazing encounter in front of people, in any format. Now, I can. Everything exists only on paper; the floppy disks on which I typed the material on my Tandy 1000 computer are long gone. To give readers a sense of what we discussed, I have included here my list of questions (as I wrote them), along with my introduction to the interview. I will type of parts of the interview itself later. Until then, enjoy this fossil from my career, when I sat down with history.

I cannot write this entry, or think about the subject, without a wave of sadness. For all the life force and energy Abbie Hoffman projected, he was a troubled man, diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. His depression cropped up obliquely in the interview and finally the bi-polar demons took full possession of him. Hoffman killed himself on April 12, 1989. He was 52 years old.

Interview Questions

1. details of radio show. How get started, how view it.
2. goals. Ever done it before. Format, approach.
3. see it pushing back limits of free speech. How.
4. music show? If dissemination is a key, is Capt. Midnight a hero?
5. once said you’re better on radio than tv. Why.
6. called Cronkite best newsman. Who’s tops now. Any politicians you have high respect for?
7. if it flops how would you react.
7a. what are your thoughts on current censorship efforts. Concerned politics will be the next target. Ever debated War Against Pornography types.
8. besides radio show what are current projects efforts.
9. can you make a living doing that.
10. still see self as a community organizer.
10a. wrote that life of activist is two years before they burn out. How have you continued.
10a. Wrote that long hair lost its social bite. What has social bite, impact now?
10b. wrote that politics is swaddled in “perhaps.” What’s biggest perhaps in your career?
11. has there been an evolution in your thinking? How?
11a. Once called Amerika just another Latin dictatorship. Still believe that?
11b. impressions of Nicaragua.
11c. is thwat we do there any less justifiable that what Soviets do in Afghanistan.
12. still believe in value of ripoff, credit card theft, violence as a way of getting attention, trashing? Reflect the period or general principles.
13. difference between stealing from corp. and rich old lady on Park Avenue.
14. personal stuff. Turning 50. big deal or no?
15. how old are your children? Teach them to disrespect authority, even yours? Apply lessons to them? Status of relationship. Do activists make good parents.
15a. Your father never spoke of intimate things. Have you tried to avoid that with your children.
16. Are they political or yuppies or what?
17. do any go to Brandeis?
18. ever in touch with Jock Mahoney or Martin Peretz?
19. how did you explain drug bust to your children?
20. what did you tell them about drug use?
21. what exactly happened. Newsweek had some facts. What really happened, and why? Charges, plea, time served, lessons learned.
22. change your views on cocaine? Wrote at one point that coke wasn’t bad. What about crack.
22a. parallels between you and Stephen Bingham.
23. things that were unclear: when did you and Anita get divorced?
24. what was the famous sexist comment?
25. said you and Rubin were still close. Still true?
26. comments on Wenner, Hayden. Were the books a way of settling scores? What do they think about you.
27. Looking back on the attention, celebrity, do you have a private self left? Ever stop being ABBIE HOFFMAN and just be Abbie Hoffman?
28. how do you relax. Still a jock? Tennis, bowling.
29. are you a vegetarian, work out.
30. role of Judaism. Touched on it in books. A faith, a culture.
30a. difference between living with Jewish and gentile women.
31. talked about Maslow, influences on you. Who have you influenced?

Introduction to the Interview

Thanks to those guys named Reagan, Regan, North and Poindexter, Abbie Hoffman now operates on a fresh jolt of energy. Ollie’s Follies have focused interest on US skullduggery in Central America, long a passionate concern of Hoffman.

“The shock hasn’t set into the American psyche yet because, with Nixon, nobody liked him for 30years,” Hoffman told Whole Life recently. “With Reagan, here’s somebody who led people up the mountain, then kicked them in the teeth.”

People were talking to Hoffman recently on another matter – anticipating his 50th birthday on November 30, one of those “an era passes” events. That’s changed, as his views on Nicaragua and the Central Intelligence Agency take on fresh urgency. “it’s nice to reach the age of 50 and see Ronald Reagan drop 17 points in the polls the day after your birthday,” he noted. “They’re talking to a prophet. It’s so lucky. I can be a rebel for the next 25 years.”

Hoffman has already logged a quarter century of rebellion. And if ever an individual stuck to his beliefs through hell and high water, it is Abbott Howard Hoffman, the favorite son of Worcester, Mass., and cousin of Sydney Schanberg [2005 update: Schanberg writes the Press Clips column for the Village Voice]. People familiar with Hoffman’s exploits in the 1960s probably focus on the big events – the anti-war protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the conspiracy trial of the Chicago Seven after that, Washington rallies, Hoffman’s drug bust and the years underground.

That’s the tip of the iceberg. The full story is more complex and interesting. A history and education round out the portrait. The grizzled, pugnacious Hoffman draws on them when you ask him a question. He’ll have a thoughtful and detailed answer, with plenty of context. And if you don’t want to hear all the nuances, he’ll tell you anyway.

Hoffman began to flee the mainstream by the age of 13, hanging out with neighborhood toughs at pool halls and bowling alleys. He studied psychology at Brandeis University, where faculty members included Herbert Marcuse, Irving Howe, Max Lerner and Hoffman’s favorite, Abraham Maslow.

At the same time, Hoffman’s college days coincided with the 1950s and all that implied. Hoffman wrote in his superb 1980 autobiography, “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture,” “Sex was cut short just before going all the way. Dope was nonexistent. Politics were minimal, and Brandeis,, even at that, was considered ‘avant garde.’ Avant garde! The other campuses must have been real numb-numb joints.”

Nonetheless, he moved beyond the era’s conformity. Summer work on a defense plant assembly line gave him first-hand knowledge of the “proletarian class” concept. Touring Europe in the summer of 1958, he stumbled onto his first political demonstration in Paris and earned his first beating by police. In March 1959 he was spellbound by “the best speaker I ever heard,” a triumphant Fidel Castro addressing 80,000 in Harvard Stadium.

Politicization continued during graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. In May 1960, he was swept up in a riot outside a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee (the late, unlamented HUAC) in San Francisco. Recalling how normal life seemed just blocks away from the rumble, he recalled, “No one seemed aware that the century’s most turbulent decade had just begun.”

The personal intruded. Hoffman returned to the East and married girlfriend Sheila when she got pregnant. Son Andrew Michael was born December 31, 1960. Daughter Amy followed in 1962. It was an unhappy six-year union, during which time Hoffman worked at the Worcester State Hospital for three years. The experience convinced him “the problem lay out there. Beyond the walls.

He became involved with the American Civil Liberties Union and worked in New York a while for Walter Reade Theaters, becoming the first manager of the Baronet-Coronet Theater, across from Bloomingdale’s (he was fired after a disastrous opening night). His last job was covering part of Massachusetts for Westwood Pharmaceuticals. That lasted three years, but his heart was really in working for civil rights through the Worcester chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“There was something about singing freedom songs in a black church, stomping on the wooden floor, smiling, gearing up your courage, that summoned a spirit never to be recaptured. At least not for me,” he wrote. “Those years, 1963-1965, were filled with a cry of a movement at its purest moment. He headed south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and got arrested five times.

Hoffman lost the job with Westwood, got divorced, and moved to the Lower East Side, E. 11th Street and Avenue C, where he honed his communication skills and met his second wife, Anita. The next four years re full of the legendary stuff – leaflets, pranks, street theater (throwing money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the April 15, 1967 anti-war protest that drew 700,000 people to the United Nations, the effort to levitate the Pentagon off the ground a few months alter, the Yippie movement born on January 1, 1968, the convention riots and then the Chicago Conspiracy Trail in the fall of 1969. “Steal This Book” appeared in 1971, after rejection by some 30 publishers. America Hoffman, aka Alan, was born to Abbie and Anita in 1971. Hoffman later got a vasectomy, which he had filmed “as a political/cultural act.”

By then, the anti-war movement was disintegrating. Hoffman still faced numerous charges when the world turned upside-down: in August 1973 he was arrested for his role as the broker in the sale of three pounds of cocaine for $36,000. He told Whole Life, “I was lured into doing something that I wouldn’t normally have done by some people, some of whom were friends, and some of whom were police agents . . . . It was a low point in my life and I was susceptible to trying something.”

Knowing he was in deep trouble, Hoffman opted for life underground. The wrenching yet vital six-year period found him traveling, teaching, living in Central America, writing essays collected in “Square Dancing in the Ice Age,” meeting a new woman (“running mate” Johanna Lawrenson, with whom he now lives in Manhattan), and ultimately leading environmental protests in upstate New York as Barry Freed.

Hoffman resurfaced in 1980 to serve 10 months in prison and work release programs. The years had not dulled the Establishment’s fear of and fascination with him. “First I was treated like Son of Sam, total maximum security. Tied, chained to a bus with troopers front and back,” he recalled. “The worst place you want to be famous is prison.”

With that episode past, Hoffman has spent recent years intensely involved in Central American, South African and environmental issues. He has led groups to Nicaragua, and this fall hosted a short-lived radio program on WBAI, Radio Free USA, meant to do free speech rather than talk about it. After four live broadcasts the show as shut down for more fundraising efforts.

Just before Thanksgiving Hoffman was arrested along with 50 students for seizing a building at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to protest CIA recruiting. At trespassing trials this spring Hoffman will use Massachusett’s “necessity defense,” pleading not guilty on the basis that the action sought to stop larger crimes (CIA activities).

“You don’t invite the Mafia on campus,” Hoffman argued. “he called the proceedings “political trial as seminar,” compared to the “political trial as circus” in Chicago. Witnesses will describe the CIA’s past and current activities. A not-guilty verdict would, he argued, indicate CIA guilt.

Much of Hoffman’s energy these days goes toward assembling a staff and legal team and fundraising for the trial. He also wants to get a national student organization going. Plus, he’s working on his latest book, “Steal This Urine Test,” on how to oppose and beat that procedure.

Hoffman summed himself up as middle-aged, with plenty of vim and vigor left. He phrases it in earthier terms: “I’m still full of shit, I’m in love, I’m still ready to take a few more swings, so what the fuck. You have to look up and say, ‘I’ll take the good with the bad.’ So, if I didn’t’ have those experiences, life would be more shallow than it is to me. I wouldn’t have been real. I would have been a series of signing autographs.”

My Special Evening With Candida Royalle, Femme Deluxe

2005-12-10T18:54:00.000-05:00

When I heard that former porn actress and now producer/porntreprenuer Candida Royalle would speak last month at the New York City Junto, a libertarian group, I had a major 80s-90s flashback. Between 1987 and 1995, I was East Coast Bureau Chief for Video Store Magazine. Royalle's company, Femme Productions, was a loyal exhibitor at video trade shows, promoting its expanding line of "sensually explicit" woman-friendly erotica to the retail channel. Royalle started Femme in 1984, so it was still the hot new thing when I started attending conventions of the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) for Video Store. I still have a business card handed to me by Femme sales rep (and former actress) Veronica Hart. Our hands almost touched!

Dressed completely in black with striking blonde hair, Royalle arrived at a hotel meeting room that was packed with at least 75 people. As they say, sex sells, although on this night the sex (talk) was free. Her new book, "How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do: Sex Advice From a Woman Who Knows," was for sale.

"This is an unusual group for me to speak before," Royalle conceded, although the philosophical fit between erotica and libertarianism makes sense. Some of the discussion differed from what she usually hears, as when one woman mused, "What would Ayn Rand say about this?" Another audience member observed, "People hate capitalism for the same reason they hate sexuality -- consumer choice."

The book, she said, is "about women taking responsibility for their own needs and desires." The book encourages self-knowledge, acceptance and asking for what you need. Royalle wanted to address men's complaints that women don't ask for what they want when they get "tongue tied." So she created a book that's both fun and serious and walks through couples issues as if they were a movie production, with research, pre-production (music, accessories), and post-production during which couples talk about what went on.

"It's such a difficult thing for women to do, how to ask a man to do something a little different without making him feel inadequate," she explained.

Besides the book, Royalle discussed her career as a performer and producer. As an actress she made 28 movies in five years -- these days, actresses do that many films in a month. Raised a Catholic in New York, Royalle began to feel ambivalent and left the business. A stint in therapy led her to conclude that adults are always going to be curious about explicit images, but that "there was a lot of room for improvement."

By the mid-80s she had identified a market for erotica for women. She thought videos could succeed by showing female and couples sexuality in "a tender, sexy way." Despite a cool reception from adult distributors, Royalle made three simple, vignette-based films in the first year. To date she's made 16 films.

"I put emotional situation in these that are about real people with real lives. I show what people do together," said Royalle. Switching into show-don't-tell mode, she played a clip from the spoof movie "Stud Hunters." The scene showed a long kiss that Royalle loved viewing and editing.

"I got so farklempt from this kiss," she exclaimed, showing her deep New York roots by using a Yiddish word that means "choked up." Her producer thought the scene lasted too long, but women viewers relished it, so it stayed in.

The discussion took a surprising turn when an Iranian asserted that Saudi men are the most depraved in the world, arguing, "The more repressed the society, the more freakish the response. Saudis can see porn. The misogyny is spiraling out of control."

From there, audience members mused whether the 9-11 hijackers knew they were going to die. Here's the adult-entertainment angle on that: evidently some of them had contacted escort services before the fateful day, but refused to meet the price of the services. Would men about to die dicker over a few dollars more to an escort service?

Femme's catalog includes such films as Urban Heat, The Bridal Shower, Christine's Secret, and Three Daughters, which "a friend" of mine saw long ago and liked. My "friend" even has a signed glossy from star Siobhan Hunter, a precious keepsake from VSDA. What's not to like, with a plot summary like this:

THREE DAUGHTERS is a lovely coming of age story about the Claytons and their three beautiful daughters. While Heather experiences her first stirrings of passion and desire, blossoming before our eyes, her parents re-discover the passion between themselves as they watch their daughters grow up and leave home.

No kidding? Does that happen in real life? Could Heather's mom introduce me to some of her cool single friends?

Besides the films, Femme's catalog now includes ergonomically designed thingamajiggies that would be a dandy complement to copies of "How to Tell a Naked Man What To Do." mission2moscow is looking for an appropriate Hanukkah bush under which to leave such items. Calling Heather's mom, stat!

Drop Everything and Listen to This Song, Right Now

2005-12-09T06:54:00.000-05:00

The good and daring folks at WFDU in New Jersey played this here little song yesterday. I thought, "Hey, this song is about me!" My ears pricked right up. After the first chorus I wrote down the lyrics and immediately located the song and the artists online. Vince Gill's country supergroup the Notorious Cherry Bombs released the song on its self-titled album last year.

Without further ado or introduction, click on this link. Really, right now, don't wait a minute, to enjoy this classic country anthem, "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night . . . " and I'll let you figure out the rest.

"Where God Was Born:" Bruce Feiler Visits the Delivery Room

2005-12-09T06:39:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I heard Bruce Feiler speak at the Borders store in Stamford. He was promoting his new book "Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion." His other books on the Bible (a/k/a the Torah to we folks of the Hebraic persuasion) always catch my eye at bookstores; I've never read them but decided an author appearance would be a good way to start.

Rabbi Josh Hammerman of Stamford's Temple Beth El introduced Feiler, who visited Israel, Iraq, and Iran while researching "Where God Was Born."

Feiler spoke of the Bible as a book about God and humans struggling to develop a relationship, despite constant disappointment. The exile to Babylon (modern Iraq) was critical to Jewish thinking, he explained, because the exile showed that the relationship with God matters more than the land and state that disappeared after the exile.

Despite the common image of the Bible (and reggae singers), Jews did not just sit by the rivers of Babylon and weep and kvetch. Instead, they invented religion with written scriptures and synagogues as places to go to worship God. Just as critical to the development of the modern world, King Cyrus was the first ruler to build a nation of pluralism, of different faiths. For this he warrants 25 mentions in the Bible.

Building on this theme for the modern era, Feiler welcomed this example of mutual respect and tolerance, saying that the Bible cannot be left to exclusivist views.

During the question period, Feiler said, "The two questions I get asked the most are, 'Is the Bible true?' and 'is "The Da Vinci Code" true'?"

Another question dealt with the spread and threat of fundamentalism. Soothing the multicultural relativists in the audience, Feiler said every faith has its fundamentalists (like those crazy Baptists and Buddhists who blow up buses), but they're a minority. They do present a challenge for the people of faith occupying the middle ground, who need to take by God, religion and the Bible.

The good news Feiler didn't mention: the last I heard, groups like the Presbyterians, Unitarians, and Reform Jews are staking out moderate positions of faith. That leaves only one big monotheistic religion to need moderating influence, but the identity of that religion slipped his mind.

I'll read his books to see if he's got some more details on this oversight.

As I write this entry, I'm flipping through the Dec. 9 issue of The Jewish Week. It features a full-page ad from a group very much on the same wavelength as Feiler: Gesher. The ad, with the compelling headline "There are many ways to experience Judaism -- Gesher wants you to respect all of them," discusses Gesher's role in creating the new Israeli movie Ushpizin, about the ultra-Orthodox community. Gesher's website says:

Gesher is Israel’s oldest and largest educational organization dedicated to bridging the gap between different segments of the population in Israel. By promoting mutual understanding, respect, and tolerance among Israelis of all backgrounds, Gesher (Hebrew for bridge) helps Israelis develop a Jewish-Israeli identity that honors the plurality of expressions and strengthens Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

I like that message, and I've got Ushpizin on my list of movies to see. Now, if we can just get it shown in Baghdad and Tehran. That would mark real monotheistic cooperation. mission2moscow is confident that will happen when the Messiah comes and sets up His very own screening room, in Jerusalem.

Confessions of a Jerry Capeci Junkie

2005-12-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

The deal went down like this, as it does every Thursday morning.

Before leaving my apartment, I checked to make sure I had a quarter. I always do the deal with a quarter. Things go faster that way, you know?

I hit Hope Street and scurried south, toward the Springdale train station. I knew exactly where to go, and my supplier was waiting inside with a fresh batch of the best stuff. My hungry hands grabbed what I wanted. Looking around, I slid the quarter toward her on a glass counter. In return, she said the mysterious words she always says, in her mysterious Filipino accent, "Have a nice day."

The tension rose as I walked quickly to the Springdale station, as I had to wait to get on the train and be seated before I could finally get my fix. But my patience earned its reward, for a few minutes later my Thursday could properly begin.

Because for mission2moscow, Thursday is always JERRY CAPECI DAY in New York.

My quarter supported the only newspaper I actually buy daily, the New York Sun, started three years ago as an free-thinking alternative to the Times, Post, News, and Newsday. I can pass the other dailies, but I am hooked on the Sun and would pay twice the price for it.

A huge attraction for me: The Thursday "Gang Land" column by veteran crime reporter Capeci, ex-Daily News. The column is compulsively readable, as Capeci expertly navigates the labyrinth of mobsters, cops, prosecutors, defense lawyers and the supporting cast, at times, of their families. Everybody talks to Capeci, even if "no comment" is the main official comment. Members of the mob-defense bar, however, usually chime in with some pithy thoughts on the outrages being perpetrated on their honorable clients. Lawyers like Bruce Cutler and Gerald Shargel appear in Gang Land as often as the Rockettes dance at Radio City.

I decided to write about Capeci after reading his Dec. 1 column, "20 Years Later, a Mob Hit Reverberates." I count it among his best, combining the instincts of a wired-in reporter with the long view of a historian. The column dealt with the Dec. 16, 1985 execution of Mafia boss Paul Castellano and aide Thomas Billotti.

Capeci wrote, "Twenty years ago this month, four men in tall, Russian-style fur hats pulled weapons from under their coats on a busy Midtown street at the height of the Christmas shopping season and gunned down America's most powerful gangster."

"The spectacular December 16, 1985, slaying of Mafia boss Paul Castellano and one of his henchmen riveted the city for weeks. An entire generation of New Yorkers is unlikely to forget the grisly photographs of the slain mobster lying sprawled on a sidewalk, surrounded by police, in front of Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street. . . the fallout from that gangland-style slaying still reverberates through the city's courts."

I lived in Astoria, Queens, when John Gotti orchestrated the crime; years later my office at 757 Third Avenue was located just three blocks from the Sparks restaurant, outside of which the murders occurred. The Castellano hit is part of my New York experience.

Capeci masterfully traced the deadly ripples of the shooting, including the upcoming trial of the so-called "Mafia Cops," Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who allegedly executed one of the shooters, Edward Lino, in 1990. Capeci writes, meditating on the remorseless grinding of Mafia and American justice, "All told there were 10 men allegedly assembled along East 46th, between Second and Third avenues that December evening. All are dead or incarcerated--all, that is, except for capo Vincent Artuso, a designated shooter who never pegged any shots at Castellano, his assigned target."

The complete column, including photos not found in the Sun, can be found on Capeci's website, www.ganglandnews.com, which is highly informative if a little antique in its design and navigation.

Capeci is but one reason why I like the Sun. The news coverage, its arts pages, and its pull-no-punches editorials all appeal to me. I even read sports columnist Tim Marchman, which is saying a lot. Columnist Daniel Pipes provides essential thinking on the War on Terror.

Thursday also features a fitting bookend to Capeci. Way in the back, near the crossword puzzle, the Sun runs the Clinton- and elite-besotted ramblings of Tina Brown, ex-Vanity Fair, ex-New Yorker, ex-Talk, and now "Topic A with Tina Brown," on CNBC (my suggestion for Tina's next editorial venture is here). Brown never met a power player she didn't adore; I'm surprised she's not doing play-by-play on the Saddam Hussein trial, comparing Saddam's presence to the sexual heat her ovular antennae registered (and which she wrote about) whenever Bill Clinton entered a room.

But don't take my word for it; the Sun posts the entire text of her columns. Here's a bit from today's sob over the decline of broadcast evening news programs, "News Delivery Via the Electronic Petri Dish." Brown writes that "the anchors who command real loyalty and enthusiasm are no longer the stentorian network newsreaders but the excitable cable table pounders," as if Dan Rather & Co. had a constitutional lock on the public's attention.

Lunch with Jerry and Tina -- for a quarter, I get that every Thursday.

Winter Wonderland, and Preparations Thereof

2005-12-06T05:55:00.000-05:00

Winter came early with snow Sunday morning. That was the teaser for the bigger Nor'easter to start Monday evening. Since I'm working at home, I took the time to swing by the Greenwich library to stock up on provisions, since I may also be snowbound Tuesday. Thus, solitary entertainment:

"Dressed Up to Get Messed Up" by Roomful of Blues, with the delightful album art, below.

Now that's what I call album art.

"Santana" by Santana

"Abraxas" by Santana

"Caravansarai" by Santana

"Light of the Moon" by the Pierces (I've never heard of this female duo, but I sure liked the cover art)

"Live" by Delbert McClinton (can't wait to hear ol' Delbert sing "Lipstick Traces")

"Day Dreaming at Midnight" by the Sir Douglas Quintet (a buncha long-haired Austin hippie types who were popular in the 1960s. Can't wait to hear "She Would If She Could, She Can't So She Won't." Pure poetry)

"Tropical Brainstorm" by Kirsty MacColl (Latin influenced, my ex likes her so I'm sure I will, too)

"Fundamental" by Bonnie Raitt

"The Bonnie Raitt Collection"

"BBC Sessions' by the Searchers

In the DVD department I picked up:

"Bubba Ho-Tep," with the tagline "The King vs. the King of the Dead," set in a nursing home in Texas. Nothing I'd watch with Shmoikel

"Get Shorty," released in 1995 and I'm finally watching it, right on time with my delayed-gratification schedule.

So, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, I'm ready for anything. If only I had some brownie batter.

A Father's Obligations: Shmoikel and I Go Ape

2005-12-04T01:13:00.000-05:00

As a father, my portfolio of responsibilities includes giving my son Shmoikel a good cultural and moral grounding. Some highlights of my efforts:

-- Ending each night by saying the "Shema" prayer together, and starting each day by reciting "Modeh Ani"

-- Driving him around as a baby on Saturdays to the sounds of Irish and Gaelic music on WFUV

-- Explaining the difference between capitalism and communism

-- Teaching him that "bad pop music is bad pop music, whether it's in Spanish, Swedish, or Hebrew"

-- Together Watching "The Planet of the Apes" (POTA) movie series

We had great father-son bonding this weekend with POTA. Over the summer we watched the original POTA and greatly enjoyed it. It holds up incredibly well from the eerie beginning to the shattering climax. The cultural pay-off came quickly when Shmoikel saw the movie "Madagascar," which has a scene of a tiki version of the Statue of Liberty. One of the characters sees it and starts pounding a beach, shouting, "Darn you all to heck!" Shmoikel was the only kid in the theater who got the reference. I was so proud -- seriously.

We decided we had to see the entire POTA series. On Wednesday we found a boxed set at a library here in Gold Coast Connecticut. Friday night, fortified with popcorn, we settled in to watch the second installment, "Battle Beneath the Planet of the Apes." Alas, the tape wheel was stuck and wouldn't play. Darn that antique VCR format to heck!

Undaunted, we watched the third installment Friday and the final two as a rare double-feature on Saturday. While I had heard the series weakened as it went along, Shmoikel and I both found them mostly fascinating and deeply thought-provoking. The last episode faded in its first half into a mutant-zombie flick, but then the mental and moral issues kicked in.

As a series, POTA asks profound questions. It challenges viewers to consider what makes us human or inhuman, what are the implications of our treatment of other creatures (the fourth movie echoed immigration issues and what's gone wrong in Europe), the corruption of power, and the morality of killing to change history. The series can inspire good discussions between parent and child.

As is our wont, Shmoikel and I immediately went online to check fan clubs, official film sites, and anything else related to POTA. The first offshoot of going ape: we may see Charlton Heston's other two sci-fi classics, "The Omega Man" and "Soylent Green." Truth be told, I gave away the secret to the latter movie and we ran around my apartment chanting "Soylent green is peeeeeeople!" for a while.

I may hold off on The Omega Man because of its scorching scenes of interracial shtupping between Heston and tough-talking soul sister Rosalind Cash. Those scenes mightily impressed me when I saw the movie in 1971 at the Border Theater in Mission, Texas. (They'd seem tame today, but as with so much erotica, it's all in the context, baby.) Every movie has its time, and that time hasn't quite come yet for Shmoikel.

The next Heston movie weekend will consist of "El Cid," "Ben-Hur" and "The Ten Commandments."

Greatest Mis-Heard Song Lyrics Ever

2005-12-01T06:35:00.000-05:00

Every year or so, I'll hear a song on the radio that breaks through the aural sludge to capture my attention. That happened with "Closing Time" by Semisonic and even in Spanish, with "Soy Mujer" (I am a Woman) by La India (The Latina Kate Smith, given her belt-it-out style). I became entranced with a snippet of theme music from the Brazilian telenovela "Senhora do Destinho" (Woman of Destiny). Those melancholy five seconds of music haunted me for months until I finally heard them again on my Rhapsody online music channel and I identified the song as "Encontros e Despedidas" (Arrivals and Departures) by the incomparable Maria Rita.

Lately, I found myself tuned in to a group called the Killers because of radio play of their song "Somebody Told Me." The song has a dense, lyric-heavy sound; what caught my attention were the lyrics I heard, or, more important, thought I heard when the song played on WPLJ in New York.

I found one phrase particularly clever, something only somebody familiar with the New York medical scene would appreciate. I finally found the lyrics online and, to my shock, learned I had garbled the lyrics. I couldn't believe it because that part of the song sounds perfectly clear to me. Here's how the lyrics in question read:

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year

On its own, that's a daring image, right up there with "Dude Looks Like a Lady" by Arrowsmith and "Rebel Rebel" by David Bowie. But what I loved about what I thought I heard was this twist:

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
That I had in Bellevue

What makes the last line shriekingly funny is that Bellevue is a major hospital in New York, renowned for its mental-health services. Now, read the lyrics in that light. Pretty hilarious, right?

This marks one case where the mis-heard lyrics markedly improve the original lyrics. Here's to the Killers.

2005-11-29T21:15:00.000-05:00

College Editor

I'm playing around with Blogger technology to add photos to the site. I have no idea what I'm doing. This looked like a good one to start with. Yes, I used to have hair on top.

Sparkle Time: "Valley of the Dolls" Due on DVD!

2005-11-28T21:53:00.000-05:00

Ace Village Voice columnist Michael Musto has exciting news for culture vultures: the prayers of 50,000,000 Jacqueline Susann fans will be answered in 2006 when the greatest bad movie ever made, "Valley of the Dolls," debuts on DVD. Musto writes in his "La Dolce Musto" column that the DVD "is being sumptuously repackaged, and there will even be special featrues, like a documentary I've been interviewed for."

Since this summer I have become a dues-paying member of the cult of VOTD. I always had the vague impression that it was incredibly racy, and I always liked the poignant theme song as performed by Dionne Warwick (true story: I was once in the Toys R Us store in Westport CT and the public address system actually played this song; some eager-beaver marketer took the "dolls" reference too literally).

The weight of second-hand impressions finally pushed me to read the paperback. Its sweeping plot staggers from 1945 New York to swingin' Hollywood in the 1960s and back to New York. Susann's time as an actress gives the early sections about the Broadway scene a real sense of authenticity.

Still hungry to go deeper into VOTD, I found the movie through the NY Public Library. The movie brings the book to fetid life, with some of the most unintentionally hilarious dialogue and bizarre cinematography ever made. A carpet-chewing Patty Duke brings just the right tone to scrappy singer/star Neely O'Hara, while lovely and doomed Sharon Tate plays the lovely and doomed Jennifer North. Richard Dreyfuss makes a blink-and-he's-gone appearance, by the way. I would definitely see VOTD again, this time with a group of people so we can savor certain parts and let our jaws drop in unison.

The British website Dollsoup has a great discussion of the movie, with prime bits of dialogue, such as the famous Helen Lawson/Neely O'Hara battle):

Helen Lawson: They kicked you outa Hollywood, so ya come crawling back to Broadway. Well Brooahdway doesn't go for BOOOZE and dope.

As the mood strikes me, I'll provide more random wisdom from the book and the movie. In the meantime, as I trudge through the search for creative and romantic fulfillment, I'll tell myself, in the immortal pep-talk words spoken by Neely O'Hara to Neely O'Hara:

SPARKLE, MISSION2MOSCOW, SPARKLE!

12 Years Gone: The Return of Jody Watley

2005-11-27T21:31:00.000-05:00

In 1993, during marital crisis No. 177, I raced along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, feeling exceptionally down about the wreckage of my life. Then radio played a song with lyrics that captured a mood a despair and loss of love. It hit me very hard.

I did not hear the song again for 12 years, until three days after I posted an entry on my new fave radio station, the Mix 102.7 FM in New York. I wrote about that kind of dance music, and immediately the universe hurls the music back at me: same parkway, different station, same electrified response. Could this be a "compulsion of music," similar to my madcap experience discussed a week ago about "The Da Vinci Code"?

This time, however, I listened carefully and learned that the artist was Jody Watley. I searched online and found, indeed, she recorded the song in 1987 with the title, "Don't You Want Me." The lyrics that packed such a jolt are:

Are you looking for a new love?
Or does commitment seem to bring you down?

Twelve years later, the song sounded as powerful as ever. However, changing life circumstances altered my emotional response. It is no longer a lament for love slipping away, day by day. Rather, I view it as an aural artifact from a past time of life -- and as a checklist of enquiries that can be useful now that I've moved far beyond the wreckage of 1993.

A Compulsion of Words: Morrie Schwartz Edition, Rena Frank Chapter

2005-11-27T07:48:00.000-05:00

Last Tuesday "Nightline" on ABC finished concluded its 25-year run with Ted Koppel. The final episode looked back on the most popular episodes Nightlight ever ran, involving retired college professor Morrie Schwartz. He had inspired, through his public battle of Lou Gehrig's Disease, the book "Tuesdays with Morrie" by sportswriter Mitch Albom.

The book appeared in 1998; in typical fashion, my interest lagged the general public's by years. I found a copy at a summer library sale and grabbed it. I read it about six weeks before the Nightlight rebroadcast. This congruence of book and viewing, although not as striking as "The Da Vinci Code" episode discussed last week, is still eerie.

The book touched me on several levels. I had my own Morrie. For 13 years I volunteered with Dorot, a group that served the Jewish elderly in New York. My Morrie, if you will, was Rena Frank, a retired nurse who escaped Germany in 1938 for England, settling into New York in 1952. We spoke at least weekly on the phone. My visits to her apartment at 216 W. 102nd Street lasted all afternoon, fortified by cucumber sandwiches, tea, and cookies. I never left without a bulging envelope full of newspaper articles that she thought would interest me, along with copies of "Hadassah" magazine and the annual City of Berlin calendar.

Rena had an amazing sense of timing. In the 1980s my freelance lifestyle allowed me to travel a month at a time. I would return from places like London, Australia, and Moscow and 15 minutes later the phone would ring. "Oh, hello, Mission2Moscow, I vas just going to liff a message for you," Rena would say in her thick German accent. I imagined she had been calling to "liff a message" every 15 minutes for several hours, waiting for me to pick up.

Once, a year into our relationship, I staggered home from a holiday office party with a few too many screwdrivers sloshing in my low-alcohol-tolerance bloodstream. The phone rang. "Hellllo, Mission2Moscow," she chirped.

"Hi, Rena, I just walked in the door and I think I'm going to be siiiick . . . " I said, and, indeed, I was. We chuckled about that for years.

She died on January 18, 1994, exactly six months shy of the birth of my son. I am bitterly disappointed that Rena, of all people, did not live to see that happy occasion.

I could say a lot more, and I will, later. Everybody should have a Morrie, a Rena, in their lives. They prepare us -- prepare me -- to be a Morrie or Rena to a generation not yet born.

Dater's Choice: Pick Four out of Five

2005-11-25T17:06:00.001-05:00

An old software development maxim always charms me: “You can have it Fast, you can have it Good, or you can have it Cheap. Pick Two.” In short, you can’t have it all.

I've decided that a similar analysis applies in the Jewish dating world. The thought came to me after two lissome ladies in the Mid-Atlantic region replied to emails I sent them remarking on my height-challenged stature. One wrote back, "I hate to admit it but, although you sound quite interesting and I usually don't let height make a difference, I am afraid that 4" difference in our height (without shoes) was too much of a difference. I am sorry. I just grew too much!!!"

To which I replied, software development glowing red-hot in my synapses, "Good luck on the quest for the tall single straight Jewish male! At least I got four out of the five key attributes. Here's hoping you find five-out-of-five, or a four-out-of-five that works." I did not suggest she read this article, but perhaps she would benefit from it.

The process works the same in boy-girl matters as in project management. If you can't achieve the ideal, what attributes matter the most? Given the dimensions of . . .

Height
Marital Status
Sexual Orientation
Religion
Gender

. . . which one is least important? Time and again "height" has been an absolute deal-killer, except for a handful of women with truly progressive views on these matters. My attitude: If if doesn't bother me, why should it bother you? As my ever-so-practical mother used to say, "There's more to love." And. as I wrote to one woman, "Seen horizontally, I'm quite tall."

I'll even throw out the "gender" factor to focus on the first four. Which three out of four matter? How about a nice tall Episcopalian, or a tall married man -- a tall married man can be ever so charming and sophisticated, and you know he's going to ask for a divorce very soon, because he said so.

I have a vision of the future for some of these people. I see her at a bar mitzvah, five or 10 years from now, still searching. Her voice sounds alarmingly like that of comedienne Phyllis Diller. "That Mission2Moscow feller was interested in me, but he was only 5' 5!! No sirree bob, I like to wear heels and he was just too darned short," she cackles maniacally, unaware of time and tide's toll on her own appearance. "I've got my standards -- no compromising on men who aren't six feet tall!"

Then she grabs the bar mitzvah boy's tallest friend. "Come on, sonny, let's go do the hokey-pokey. Stand up straight!"

Suddenly, across the room, she spies the tall vision of her dreams and she glides over. After some talk, she realizes, finally, what attribute is worth a compromise.

Final thought: the two Mid-Atlantic women mentioned above are in their 40s and 50s and have never married. IMHO (blog talk, look it up), their odds of going five-for-five approach absolute zero. But if they hit for the dating cycle, I'll be the first to congratulate them.

42 Years Later: Another November 22

2005-11-22T22:44:00.000-05:00

The American media thrives on anniversaries, remembrance of the same things passing again and again.

And yet today, November 22, 2005, 42 years after November 22, 1963, barely anybody has a comment. A Google news search on "November 22, 1963" turns up only 31 hits, hardly any from major media outlets. The silence is odd, unsettling in its deviation from the ritualized mourning common in our society.

With all the recent misfortunes and blind alleys, Americans are too tired or distracted to memorialize the past. For once, we are leaving the dead to rest.

John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. I am now three years older than he was on that day.

Watch Out: It's a Republican (Laff) Riot

2005-11-20T09:26:00.000-05:00

In 1982 I attended an event that so traumatized me that I lost my appetite for political stand-up comedy for decades. I took a date to a radical comedy night at Stuyvesant High School in New York. After four or five wretched acts, along the lines, "Hey man, Reagan really sucks, man," we snuck out to comfort ourselves with ice cream and Tab.

Except for one or two nights of improv, I never again had any interest in comedy clubs. The pain of bad political comedy remained raw and unhealed. Then, perhaps soothed by the calm balm of John Roberts as the new Chief Justice, my interest in stand-up comedy perked up. I started to get in touch with my long-suppressed desire for political stand-up by checking out a Margaret Cho CD from the library. While I disagree with her politically, Cho was very amusing and sometimes moving. "Say," I thought, "This political stand-up isn't so bad. Could some of it, left or right, actually be funny? How long should I let one horrid experience keep me away from the potential enjoyment the comic experience?"

Encouraged by my "date" with Margaret Cho, I bravely decided to "come out of the comic closet." My venue of choice: Don't Tell Mama in New York with its "Republican Riot" line-up for Friday Nov. 18. Leaving my office high over swanky Park Avenue, I wandered to West 46th Street. I was shown to a small round table about five minutes before show time, joining about seven other patrons. Hmmm, I thought, New York connoisseurs of Republican humor must be otherwise occupied tonight.

I did see none other than Mr. Ivan Lenin, Russian-born creative soul and driving force behind the group Communists For Kerry (CFK). I'd met Ivan before when photographing CFK at the Aug. 29, 2004 anti-war rally in New York, and later at a CFK street theater event at Union Square before the November election. We chatted after the show, and I'm happy to do some log-rolling for my fellow blognik.

The evening began right on time when MC Julia Gorin, a prolific writer and comic who came to the US from the USSR, headed on stage. The lineup featured Greg Banks, gay GOP comic (on crutches, no less, counting twice on the diversity-o-meter); Jewish marine veteran Dave Rosner (who showed his flat, hairy stomach), Indian-Japanese voiceover master Daniel Nainan, and New York Post editorial writer Robert George, with Gorin hitting the stage between acts with HIGHLY un-PC material regarding certain participants in the War on Terror (hint: they aren't Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus).

The material and yuk level varied. One comic shouted to the crowd, "Do you want tax cuts?" and we shouted back, "Yeah!" That pretty much rocked the house. Hey, you had to be there.

Naiman tickled the audience with imitations of his Indian father and Japanese mother. I can see him becoming the straight male Indian-Japanese conservative equivalent of Margaret Cho, a high compliment indeed. Robert George, self-described black Catholic West Indian Republican, had a polished delivery and plainly knows how to work a room.

Gorin closed the night with her material, including scabrous comments on Oprah Magazine's interview with the would-be girlfriend of a suicide bomber. She drew on her background an an immigrant to critique the US Jewish community, saying something like, "A lot of American Jews were disappointed when they found out Russian Jews moved to the US and became Republicans. They said, 'If we had known you'd become conservatives, we would have left your ass in Russia!'"

Bottom line: Conservatives can be funny, although, as with anybody, they've got to be funny first and conservative second. Was I snorting and drooling with helpless mirth? Not really, but I stayed amused, most of the time. More important, Republic Riot renewed my faith in political stand-up comedy, whether it comes from the left, the center, the right, the far right, or East Texas. Today, I can dream of the day when Margaret Cho, Oprah Winfrey, and Julia Gorin share a stage and a hug, sisters in arms, declaring their allegiance to truth, justice, and the American way of political comedy.

And then they introduce Oprah Magazine's Man of the Year, Sen. Zell Miller.

Like I said, I'm dreaming.

The Compulsion of Words

2005-11-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

Twice in my life a compulsion gripped me to finish a book, to race ahead and be done with it for some reason I didn't understand.

This first happened when I read John Hersey's "Hiroshima," about the atomic bomb attack on Japan. I finished this book late on the night of Sept. 9, 2001.

The second happened today, when I slogged through the last 150 pages of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Ordinarily this type of book would take me two weeks to read; it had a level of mechanical mystery that moved the plot forward, but the writing and concept did not inspire me in the way of, say, "A Conspiracy of Paper" by David Liss. Yet I decided to shorten the reading cycle on an obligation-free Saturday and so I kept pushing forward.

I finished it around 6:15 pm, and a half-hour later I was signing in at the local Jewish Community Center for "Tapestry: A Community Celebration of Jewish Learning." I had no idea what classes I would take. Most were filled, so I selected two from those that remained open. The first was on Kabbalah. The second was on "The Jewish View of Human Sexuality," presented by the rabbi from the local Young Israel.

At the beginning of the session he announced, "I'm going to talk about something from the book 'The Da Vinci Code.'" This stunned me; I had finished the book barely an hour earlier. And I hardly expected an Orthodox rabbi to discuss a book on esoteric practices and the (fictional) hidden history of the Catholic Church.

The rabbi discussed Talmudic passages on sex, dealing with the big preconception (Jews don't have sex through a hole in a sheet), obligations, the commentaries against sex standing up (which reminded me of the joke that Southern Baptists don't have sex standing up because somebody might think they were dancing), and my favorite Talmudic story about the Garden of Eden (before Eve arrived on the scene, Adam had sex with all the animals, and found them lacking).

Near the end of the class the rabbi handed us copies of pages 308-309 and 445-446. I won't give the book away, but the passages indeed connected to the theme of the class. With the book so fresh in my mind, the lesson had a vivid immediacy. Read the book, and you'll never look at the Star of David the same way.

Still, I have to wonder at what strange cosmic force pushed me along on Saturday, page after page, until I finished. Some actions lie beyond rational thought.

The Republicans Attack! Weapon of Choice: Progressive Rock

2005-11-17T15:06:00.000-05:00

Going back to at least Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" theme two decades ago, the Republicans have shown a knack for communicating their message. In the past week, they've unleashed another attention-getting message. It caught my attention not just for what it says -- that Democrats saw Saddam Hussein as a threat -- but how it says it. Go here and click on the video link on the home page.

Listen to the soundtrack playing behind the Democratic talking heads. Rather than pull ominous classical music, the GOP marketing mavens selected the bewitching riff from "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" by Traffic, from 1971. What midnight planning session led to this stroke of genius, I know not, but the choice works incredibly well.

What's the message of the music? I doubt the GOP is taking a subliminal poke at the Democrats with the title of the song (which stops when Pres. Bush speaks at the end of the 3:45-long video). Perhaps it suggests that Republicans know all about great pop-culture references, with "Low Spark" a counter-intuitive choice from a group associated with "square" culture.

Most deliciously, maybe the music is deliberately ambiguous, not meant to chastise or wave flags, but to simply unfold and let the viewers locate their own emotional response.

A Modest Improvement for Sir Eric's Song, "Cocaine"

2005-11-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Over the summer, during a long drive to Washington, D.C., young Shmoikel and I checked out different radio stations. We finally settled on a classic rock station that wowwed me with a broader selection of songs than these tightly formatted stations usually play. Somewhere around the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore the station played Eric Clapton's version of "Cocaine," by J.J. Cale.

Something clicked in me. I realized that this song cried out for some slight editing. The song resonates, but even the classics benefit from occasional spiffing up -- in the same spirit that generations of grade schoolers have tinkered with the lyrics to the "Star Spangled Banner" (speaking of Fort McHenry . . . )

So here's what I did. As the song played on the radio, the revised -- and, I think, improved -- version of "Cocaine" burst full-fledged into my mind. I simply substituted the word "SpongeBob" whenever Sir Eric mentioned "cocaine." And you know what? The song rocked! Just read the new lyrics below. I'm sure you'll agree with me:

By j. j. cale (revised by Mission2Moscow)

If you wanna hang out you’ve got to take her out; SpongeBob.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; SpongeBob.
When your day is done and you wanna run; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; SpongeBob.
Don’t forget this fact, you can’t get it back; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

Now, honestly, isn't that better? Some of you may scoff, and say, "Come on, Mission2Moscow, that's a stupid idea. Eric Clapton was singing about drugs, not a beloved TV cartoon character." That's true, up to a point, but Sir Eric sang about cocaine only because SpongeBob hadn't been invented yet. I think it very likely that Sir Eric may want to re-record the song after he reads this post (if I can get it to him past his manager, lawyer, and security guards).

All I ask is that you give this new version a fair listening. Just get up off your tuchis, go to your CD collection and pull out a Clapton CD with this song. Put it on your CD player. Crank it up loud, now a little louder. And every time Sir Eric sings "cocaine," shout "SpongeBob." You might want to even have your kids in the room to join the fun, since they love SpongeBob, too. Yell loud enough, and your kids won't ask what "cocaine" is.

I'm not ashamed to say I did exactly this on I-95, singing lustily, and the toll collectors really got into the spirit of it, often breaking out in song with me as I handed my money to them. Not once did DEA agents stop me to ask why I was playing this particular song over and over.

Like I said, it rocks. Try it and then I dare you to tell me I'm wrong.

A Pleasure, and Not a Guilty One

2005-11-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

In July 1985 I met a woman named Loretta (real name, too) at a New York dance place called Visage, way out on West 56th Street. "I'm a reporter -- I write on computer stuff," I shouted into her ear over the thumping beat, and that caught her attention.

We kept talking. Before long she yelled, "I've taken the EST training and I'm also in therapy." Knowing my interest in Russia, she told me about the great possibilities of EST moving into the USSR.

I think about Loretta and our screwdrivers- and disco-driven night at Visage when I cruise Fairfield County in my fabulous 2004 Hyundai Elantra, radio tuned in to my new fave station, The New Mix 102.7 (technically WNEW, but nobody calls it that) in New York. The concept is simple: disco and dance classics, with long blocks of ad-free music. Over the past two months or so, I have found myself returning again and again to the station as a listening pleasure. To my surprise, I recognize only about half the music, compared to the 100% recognition rate on classic rock stations. "Coming up another big block of the Stones, Billy Joel, Elton John, Bruce, the Eagles, Madonna, Chicago, Cher" zzzzzzzzz. (I dazzle my son, Schmoikel, with my ability to name almost any song on a classic rock station within 5 seconds.)

The music on 102.7 is so compulsively fun, fresh and emotionally connected that I don't mind hearing stuff I know well. For the same reason, I never get tired of listening to the soundtrack to the movie "Carlito's Way," which sure beats listening to the soundtrack of "Schindler's List" (just some of the primo swag I got as a reporter in the home video industry).

Besides reminding me of Loretta, the music takes me back to parties, events, and those intimate moments in life where Barry White or Marvin Gaye were just what the love doctor ordered. Call me a hopeless romantic, but when I hear Tavares singing . . .

Now winter's gonna turn to spring
And you haven't accomplished a thing
So baby can't you make me just a little time
Cause you never know what's on my mind

It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, to fall in love
It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, let's fall in love

. . . then I feel a nerve in my brain getting strummed like a guitar string. And I like that feeling. Not to overanalyze dance music, but it connects both musically and lyrically to intense parts of my life.

Even the numbers 102.7 are magic. Mix is the latest incarnation for a station that's struggled to find a workable format for years. Classic rock, talk, one flop after another. After I moved to NYC in 1980, I quickly came to favor 102.7 in its identity as WNEW-FM, "The Place Where Rock Lives." With a great line-up of DJs like Richard Near and Pete Fornatele, it marked the last time I listened to a rock station with any sense of real identification. I even had an 'NEW gym bag and attended a listener event at the Bottom Line. Then tastes changed, ratings tanked, and the search for a winning format began. The DJs adapted, then scattered. I gave up on the station as my own interests moved toward jazz, blues and Latin genres.

But now, the format wheel has spun again and Mix 102.7 is a winner, at least for me. It goes beyond nostalgia to deliver a likable and vibrant sound and message. Maybe Loretta's listening to it right now and remembering that kooky reporter with the Russia fixation. And all I have to do is turn the beat on to remind myself that, really, it only takes a minute.

Here's hoping the special minute has arrived for my new 'NEW friends at 102.7, the sound of the past and the future.

They're All Democrats in France

2005-11-10T13:16:00.001-05:00

Question: How do you tell the difference between Democrats, Republicans and Southern Republicans?

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, an Islamic Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a Glock cal .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

Democrat’s Answer:

Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor! Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 9-1-1?
Why is this street so deserted?
Why isn’t he happy playing nighttime basketball?
We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day and make this happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.
This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for few days and try to come to a consensus.
Can I call Howard Dean or John Kerry and see what they think I should do?

Republican’s Answer:

BANG!

Southern Republican’s Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click…..(sounds of reloading).
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click
Daughter: “Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?”

John Fowles, Lord of Flip Value

2005-11-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

In addition to Tom Sawyer and biographies of Davy Crockett, my most memorable adolescent reading experience involved The French Lieutenant's Woman, written by John Fowles, who died on Monday. This is remarkable especially because I did not read the entire book until I was in my 40s.

I did, however, read a page or two while a teenager, around 1974. Somehow I got my hands on the paperback edition and, with a hormonal teenage male's unerring instinct for "the good parts," my eye fell on page 313. (that's the hardback I found at the Westport library, end of chapter 40; go ahead and pull the paperback off the shelf and see what I mean; I'll wait for you.)

"She reached then and took his recalcitrant right hand and led it under her robe to . . . " You get the point -- certainly, the male protagonist did.

As you are now experiencing, my heart raced, my puka-bead necklace quivered, my imagination soared, and what seemed like scaldingly erotic prose permanently burned itself into my id. At that moment, Fowles scored at the top of the "flip value" scale. For those unfamiliar with this essential male concept, "flip value" refers to the number of enjoyable parts of a book or publication. So, um, Sports Illustrated has high flip value when you flip through the magazine and finds lots of stories involving teams you want to read about. High flip value equals lots of good sections with fine, insightful writing, or something like that.

I never treated this as secret knowledge. At the town library I once nudged my friend D and said, "Hey, man, take a look at page 313." He did, exclaiming, "Why, Mission2Moscow!"

Fowles' passage lingered in my mind for decades. I finally decided to read the book (I never saw the movie, since Meryl Streep movies by definition have little "flip value"). Reading the scalding passages in context, their meaning changed radically. The 16-year old M2M totally misinterpreted the book and the action. Soon after hands go into robe, the chapter ends, "He was racked by an intolerable spasm. Twisting sideways he began to vomit into the pillow beside her shocked, flungback head." Ewwwwww. That's on page 315.

Still, my mind drifts back to the pure jolt of Fowles' language, the elegance of possibility, a glide rather than a slam into intimacy. For that I'll always be grateful. Skimming The French Lieutenant's Woman yet again, I don't see flip value, but only value.

Dept. of Most Unfortunate Timing

2005-11-07T14:20:00.000-05:00

Far be it from me to waste a few minutes of prime page-flipping time at the dentist's office. On Saturday before my semi-annual checkup I perused the November issue of Travel+Leisure. The cover article, titled, "Best of Paris," is in some places unintentionally amusing in light of the current youthful hijinks in France.

Writer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni starts with an overview of the political potential of prime minister Dominique de Villepin and interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, then writes, "They're just part of the general excitement and optimism of Paris these days." (Both men figure prominently in the excitement of Paris, although the optimism is suddenly subdued.)

Soon, Fraser-Cavassoni uncorks THE best line in the entire issue, "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Let me repeat, just to make sure you don't mis-read it: "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Elsewhere, the article discusses the Hôtel du Petit Moulin, with the wonderful note that the rooms are "a riot of color."

Oui, oui, les French know much these tempestuous days about "a riot of color." Or should be that "riots of color"?

As we used to say in Hidalgo County, oy gevalt.

The Secret Relationship of Jews and Cricket: Who Knew?

2005-11-07T10:58:00.000-05:00

Leave the comfortable yet self-tormented shores of American Ashkenazic Jewry and wonders emerge from the fog. Jewish film festivals are a great way to vicariously meet our landsmen of different habits and hues, and actions. See enough films and startling patterns take shape. I had that experience during the Jewish Film Festival of Lower Fairfield County, which finished last night. Out of the three films I saw, two of them involved the deep love of Jews for . . . cricket.

I delighted to see people playing cricket, a game far removed from the mainstream American, and American Jewish, experience. Well, not totally removed; in 2000 I played cricket for the one time in my life, when a team from the Stamford office of Mongoose & Co. (my affectionate pet name for the World's Greatest Consulting Firm, which employed me at the time) squared off against a team from a New Jersey office. Mostly I recall how hard it was to hit the ball, and the little sandwiches we ate on the sidelines.

So the Jews-and-cricket themes resonated with me. First I saw Wondrous Oblivion, set in London in the early 1960s. David Wiseman, 11, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a cricket fanatic but not a very good player, as the cruel boys of Slitherin House (oops, wrong movie, right characteristics) remind him. Hope emerges when a cricket-enabled Jamaican family moves in next door. What follows combines elements of "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

Last night's closing film, Turn Left at the End of the World, is an exceptionally good Israeli/French film from last year. It deals with Indian and Moroccan immigrants to Israel in 1968. Tensions abound, but the Indians find solace and a way of contributing to their new desert community through cricket. Compared to the green fields of Wondrous Oblivion, Turn Lefts puts cricket in a desert, complete with camels and highly untraditional audience behavior. In another contrast, Turn Left throbs with images of hot and naughty Sephardic girls. This Hebrew-language site has stills from the movie that give a slight sense of the visually delightful cast (and that applies to the guys in the film, too).

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cricket. Sorry, I got distracted there by Sephardic girls. Other bloggers have thought more deeply about the intense relationship of Jews and cricket, and you can read their informed thinking at Normblog and Adloyada. So the next time you see cricketeers in a park, splendid in white and eating cucumber sandwiches, just remember -- they may include members of the tribe, sticky wicket division.

Bring Me the Aroma of Carlos Santana

2005-11-05T06:53:00.000-05:00

Cosmopolitan magazine always amuses and informs me, far more than the lame pages of, say, GQ or Maxim. The October issue alerted me to the dangers of thongs and unhygienic bikini waxes (ouch!). The ads are great, too, for mysterious products I never need, in colors of subtleties I'll never grasp.

Without a doubt the most attention-grabbing ad in the October issue has the simple headling, "Introducing Carlos Santana(TM) fragrances for men and women." The tagline at the bottom purrs, "Arouse Your Senses." Red-themed native-looking artwork shows Santana with his ever-present hat against a background of densely drawn bongos, spirals, hands, eyes-in-hearts, and even a man looking like Carlos putting his hand on the head of a kneeling peon, an ambiguous scene suggesting either a blessing or a plea for oral sex.

Now, celebrity perfumes are common. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain have them. I can see the logical connection between fashionable, attractive women and fragrannces. But the connection is much more tenuous with men, as seen in the belly-flop of Donald Trump's fragrance.

Santana's stab at the smell test connects me to a lot of musical memories. Coming of age in the late 1960s in a heavily Hispanic part of the country, I liked his early music with its mix of Latin rhythms and Spanish lyrics and rock instrumentation. Abraxas from 1970 had very heavy (as we used to say then) liner notes. Early Santana had a sound that remains fresh 35 years later; the only other group I can say that about is ZZ Top. The music was so evocative of swirling colors, palm trees, the border experience, the possibilities of music beyond Anglo pop sounds.

I always wondered what Santana (the man, not the band) smelled like. After Woodstock, I figured he was sweaty. After he went off the spiritual deep end and called himself Devadip Carlos Santana, I figured he smelled like an Austin head shop full of black-light posters.

And now Santana is answering the question, at fine retail outlets everywhere. Or, cut out the middleman and buy directly from the Santana website. Santana is sending his message of peace and love to a suffering world with fragrances for both men and women. He must be doing something right in the technical sense, since perfume pros like the stuff.

Like a good marketer, Santana knows the difference between boys and girls. Not for him is a unisexual odor for everybody. Nope, sometimes he smells like a guy, and in those very special moments he wants to smell like a girl. So he made sure his products have just the right appeal for the moment. Note:

For men: "This smooth, woody musk fragrance was inspired by the music and passions of Carlos Santana. The aroma just after rainfall, in combination with the clean notes of Maja soap, is the essence of this timeless creation."

"Carlos Santana For Women blends exotic fruits with subtle florals and rounds out the scent with soft, sensuous musk to create a seductive, warm fragrance."

I have to wonder what smooth-talker got Santana to sign up for this misguided vanity project. (He may not even be that serious about it. The Santana Fragrances site is still under construction, a deadly marketing error.) He already sells hats, shirts, books, CDs, and other tchatchkas on his website, and his record sales over 40 years mean he's not hurting financially. The product just makes no sense; as a man I wouldn't wear the stuff, and if I gave the female fragrance to a Significant Other I'd probably get the bottle cracked over my head (note to self: need to write about the harrowing Mother's Day Tiffany's silver challah knife episode).

Sorry, Charlie: I'm not buying it, literally or figuratively. Now if there were a Santana home hair-weave kit . . .

Loathsome Marketing, First in a Series

2005-11-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

As a demographic unit, I'm a tasty morsel for financial marketers. Born in the center of the baby boom (1957), white collar, single, urban, nicely cash-flowed, investment oriented, and educated, I'm a "good catch," as somebody recently said in another context.

So the American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, had people like me in mind for its new advertising campaign now being flogged on TV and Metro-North trains. These ads tout Ameriprise's financial planning for a generation as "unique" as mine. You may have seen the ads with a VW hippie van morphing into something more modern. Train ads show 15 or so iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s carefully balanced between the social categories we referred to at Mission High School in Texas as the "dopers" and the "ropers."

So, you'll see peace symbols and Cub Scouts, long-haired hippie freaks and cheerleaders, groovy types and squares, images that make me want to tune in to VH1 more than they inspire me to ponder my financial needs.

For this baby-boomer, alas, Ameriprise is establishing a negative brand image. I cringe to see the calculated cultural shorthand that supposedly speaks to my generation, whatever that is. The opening music on the Ameriprise website, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by Crazy Elephant, only compounds the problem by showing a total lack of creativity. What could be easier than to dust off 60s music to support a marketing message for baby boomers? I don't learn anything about Ameriprise (not that I'm curious, anyway) but I got a heavy load of 60s shtick. I can only hope Crazy Elephant makes a fortune off the licensing fee -- sticking it to the Man, if you will.

If Ameriprise wanted to grab my attention, its marketing must take risks. Let's start with life insurance. I've got SBLI term insurance with my son as the beneficiary for the day when I'm gathered unto my fathers (later rather than sooner, but living in NYC you never know). So, in all honesty, life insurance is all about dying. With that cheerful thought in mind, I suggest Ameriprise frame its insurance pitch with the song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult. That would cut through the clutter and get directly to the point of insurance. I would be mightily impressed. Better yet, have the members of the Blue Oyster Cult talk about their insurance choices.

The same thinking goes for retirement investments. Don't show me gauzy images of silver-haired men and women out boating or dancing at their country club. Talk about survival in a world very unlike the world of our parents, a stable world where my mother worked for 21 straight years at exactly the same job as a secretary at the insurance agency of Conway, Dooley & Martin. What could be more appropriate for retirement planning than Gloria Gaynor belting, "I will survive!" in all her disco majesty? My tagline suggestion for Ameriprise: "You survived Nehru jackets, puka beads, Jimmy Carter, punk rock, and Enron. Now, get ready to survive . . . retirement." Now that's what I call marketing.

I doubt Ameriprise will move in this direction. Probably the baby-boomer narcissism pitch will fizzle out into something even more pedestrian. Then again, perhaps Ameriprise will get desperate and won't fear the reaper.

Full disclosure: By this point you're thinking, "OK, Mr. Mission2Moscow, you think you're so smart, what's your approach to financial planning?" Good question, quick answers: The two biggest influences on my actions have been:

1. Columnist Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal, who strongly supports the use of index funds, which I use for the bulk of my retirement savings

2. Financial expert Andrew Tobias always makes sense to me, with his ruthlessly practical advice. He is a big fan of SBLI.

Don't Mourn; Organize (My Thoughts)

2005-11-01T12:32:00.000-05:00

This blog has been sporadic for several months, a place to post links to articles in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and essays I was writing for Texas-based website "The Back Word." Over the summer the Back Word went down the drain, and I've spent several months mourning the loss of a forum for essays I loved writing.

Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.

How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade

I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.

I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:

* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing

* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)

*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze

The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.

Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).

Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.

Ranchito Morbido, Never to be on The Back Word

2005-08-26T13:49:00.000-04:00

All good things must end, but must it be before my essays get published? The Back Word, the Texas website that brought several essays to the public, is no longer publishing new material. That's a shame, because I had more topics I wanted to explore. The shutdown came just before the site was going to publish this essay, a "lighter" version of an essay that should appear a Jewish paper in October.

I'll miss the Back Word, the thrill of waking up on the first of the month to check for a new essay being posted, the chance to email the URL to friends. I had fun and I got my creative cogs kickstarted, so I'll buckle down and try to market these essays and others still a-borning to other outlets (perhaps some that will even pay me). And now, the grand finale:

Ranchito Morbido: My Little Place in Texas

I grew up in a rented house on a dusty alley in Mission, Texas, about three blocks from the Missouri-Pacific tracks that divided the town into Hispanic and Anglo sections. My mother rented the house, which didn’t even have its own mailbox, for 21 years and never had any interest in buying real estate. She preferred to invest in the stock market. I still have shares of General Motors, Sunoco and TXU (formerly Texas Utilities) that I inherited when she died in 1984.

Yet, her legacy includes a little bit of Texas land that proudly bears the Wallach name. I haven’t seen our portion of the state since 1989, but I think about it often. I can picture it in my mind’s eye, shaded by the oak and mesquite trees in Gonzales, the historic town on the rolling road from San Antonio to Houston. In the distant future that draws closer every day, I’d like to return to Gonzales and the only property I’ll ever call my own in Texas.

I’m referring to the Jewish cemetery on Water Street in Gonzales. The place always fascinated me, as the final resting ground for my mother, two grandparents, two great-grandparents, and one great-great-grandmother (Charlotte Bath, died 1912), along with aunts, uncles and cousins. I want to be buried there, too. In doing so, I’ll be part of a family presence in Gonzales that goes back at least to the 1890s. The last living Gonzales cousins headed to the bright lights of Lockhart in the 1970s, but the deceased liked Gonzales just fine, and there they remain.

My mother died in Tyler, where she lived with her older sister Charlotte during the last three years of her cancer-shortened life. Afterward, Aunt Charlotte arranged for the headstone in the Jewish cemetery. It was as simple as Mom’s life. It says, “Shirley Lissner Wallach, March 11, 1920 – January 12, 1984.” It lies a few feet from her parents, Jared and Eva Lissner.

I first saw Mom’s gravestone on July 3, 1989, when I visited the cemetery with my then-fiancé. I hadn’t visited the place since 1966, when Mom brought my younger brother and me there to see the gravestones of her parents, both of whom died in 1959. On that 1989 visit I had to chuckle at the thought that Mom finally had some land to call her own under the Texas sky. I was starting to build a family life in the Northeast, so I saw the Gonzales cemetery as part of my past, nothing more. My fiancé and I followed the ancient Jewish tradition and put a rock on Mom’s grave, then left into our radiant future together.

Fast-forward 12 years, and the radiant future was flickering out in divorce. Fortunately, my ex and I hadn’t bought a joint burial plot, so I had the freedom to get buried wherever it so pleased me. The Northeast never held much appeal in that regard for me, since the place has never felt like “home” in a gut-level sense.
I quickly decided to be buried in Gonzales. As a final resting place, it has a lot going for it: all those family connections so I will be among my own landsmen, as the word goes in Yiddish; a temperate climate so my gravestone will last for centuries without the wear and tear caused by snow and cold in the Northeast; an inland, semi-rural location unthreatened by excessive housing development, global flooding, or any other unpleasantness coming down the pike to endanger Yankee cemeteries. As the real estate agents love to chant, “Location, location, location.”

OK, sounds great, I’m sold on the place! Where do I sign up to buy what I call my ranchito morbido?

And that’s the funny part. My efforts to find out who controls the Gonzales cemetery and buy a plot there have been utterly inconclusive. In Gonzales, as in other Jewish communities, cemetery records fade away, synagogues close, the old folks die and the young ones leave and forget about cemeteries with headstones written in the Hebrew language few can read, let alone understand. Even when a paying customer comes along, it can be impossible to find somebody in charge of Jewish cemeteries, somebody to take the check and give title to a few cubic feet of prime memorial space.
God knows I made a determined effort to find an administrator. During the divorce, I called my cousin David “Buddy” Michelson in Lockhart, formerly of Gonzales, one of the last members of my mother’s Depression-era generation. We talked about the cemetery, but he did not know who ran it. A Texas Jewish Historical Society member provided leads to information, but not what I needed.

A few years passed and I tried again. I learned that Buddy had died in 2004. The Gonzales city government directed me to Buddy’s family and I soon had a long talk with his widow, Abbi. She reminisced about the time, shortly after their marriage, when Buddy showed her his parents’ graves in Gonzales. She said Buddy cared deeply about the cemetery, establishing a trust fund to ensure its perpetual care. Ironically, Buddy wanted to be buried in San Antonio, near the graves of Abbi’s parents.

My cousin Linda, Aunt Charlotte’s daughter, recently sent me photos of the place, showing Mom’s grave and the Texas Historical marker at the cemetery. She wrote, “The cemetery is well maintained and appears to have room for more graves.” Abbi is now checking around Gonzales to find definitive information about the cemetery’s management.

In the mean time, life goes on. The divorce that led to this sequence of discovery recedes into the past, while my new life unfolds day by day. My ex and I recently wrapped up post-divorce financial matters that give me the resources to become a homeowner if I so desire. Given the run-up in real estate prices, I may delay before I take the plunge again into homeownership. I imagine I’ll buy my little plot of earth in Texas, my ranchito morbido, before I get something fancier up here.

Rebel Soul: Notes From a Texan Abroad

2005-08-01T16:34:00.000-04:00

(originally published on The Back Word)

A picture taken when I met my father after eight years apart reeks with irony. He left Texas after my parents divorced, heading to Michigan and then New York City. He never returned until he paid us a weekend visit in the fall of 1970. My brother and I, aged 11 and 13, stand with him in a yard in Mission, Texas. Looking warily at the camera, standing far enough from my father to signal unease, I have my arms crossed over an orange University of Texas sweatshirt.

This is ironic because I learned, often and in rough terms, that my father hated Texas. Whether this dislike stemmed from the failed marriage, his dismay at Mission’s lack of urban sophistication, or most likely a combination of the two, he never missed a chance to knock the state. He was from St. Louis and suited to cities, my mother was from Del Rio and listened to the morning farm report on the radio. Beyond speaking English, they had nothing in common.

I saw my father a few more times, when my brother and I flew to New York to visit him and his wife. Despite escalating tension, I kept returning, lured by the bright lights and big city. He never accepted us for who we were, and instead tried to mold us into what he was and demanded we become. He started about 10 years too late, and squandered whatever goodwill we felt for him with constant attacks. The Texas we saw through our father’s eyes was a nasty place—conniving Southern Baptists intent on stealing our Jewish souls, crude mercantile behavior, no European-style culture, grubby people who couldn’t speak French. “That’s Texas thinking” was the second lowest insult possible, slightly higher than “you’re just like your mother.” He called us savages because we didn’t attend operas or symphonies! He warned, “Van, they’ll eat you alive at Princeton if you don’t know classical music.” (In fact, I discovered at Princeton that Monty Python mattered far more than Mozart.)

Texas became the symbol of the push-pull of my warring parents. The harder he tried to hammer me into being a prep-schooled, wine-sipping bon vivant in Brooks Brothers suits, the more passive-aggressively I attached to Texas. Other kids rebelled with long hair, drugs, and that damned hippie music, but I opted for a hard-edged appreciation of my Texas identity.

The mental process went like this: You don’t like Texas? That’s tough—check out my Sesquicentennial belt buckle, my beard, my taste for the twangiest mountain music and the border’s norteno sounds. To this day, a few months shy of my 48th birthday, I take intense pleasure when my father goes goggle-eyed at the Texas flag in my apartment and my faded Levi’s blue jeans. Confused youthful rebellion evolved and remained part of my adult identity. You don’t like the way I dress or act? I couldn’t say the following when I was 17, but I can easily say it at 47: That’s just too fucking bad.

Ultimately, I split the difference between Mom and Dad. In his own ham-handed way, my father profoundly influenced me. Those visits to New York opened me to post-high school options beyond my family’s traditional loyalty to the University of Texas. Like a character from a Larry McMurtry novel, I found a way out of the restless alienation I felt in small-town Texas. I did leave Texas for Princeton, moved to Brooklyn, got married, moved to Connecticut, got divorced, and never went back for more than a few days after 1977. At my 10th high school reunion, a friend reminded me, “Van, you said you were going to get the hell out of Texas.” And I did.

And I like aspects of the Northeast—the weather, New England, the career options, New York’s endless appeal to what I call my “action junkie” tendencies. But I’ve never viewed New York State or Connecticut as home. Buffalo? Syracuse? Waterbury? East Hartford? I have no childhood memories of the area, no rootedness beyond my young son and the walls of my apartment. That’s typical Wallach behavior. I’m just the latest in a paternal line of dream-chasing drifters; after all, my father, his father and I were born in three different countries, men blown like tumbleweeds across borders in pursuit of elusive fulfillment.

My late mother’s family, on the other hand, has modest dreams and happier lives. Her family has remained in Texas for seven generations, since my ancestors got the hell out of Germany in the 1860s. For proof, go to the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, on Water Street, where you’ll see gravestones of people born as far back as the 1840s. I’m related to almost all of them.

As I’ve gotten older, my Texas identification moved beyond rebellion to become an intense, if physically distant, sense of who I am. That sense always existed in me, and friends and relatives always tried to stoke the flame of affection. Bill Austin, the late owner of the Upper Valley Progress in Mission, where I had been a teenage reporter, regularly sent me packages of clips from the McAllen Monitor, usually detailing political corruption in the Valley and the many dangers of Mexico. My mother sent me charming gifts such as a heavy brass armadillo, a crocheted armadillo, and a t-shirt with armadillos saying, “Homesick for Texas, send chili soon!” (Come to think of it, my mother had an intense affection for all things armadillo). So in terms of remaining attached to my roots, I am very much my mother’s son, perhaps more than when she was alive.

As the decades passed, I made peace with my father. We’ve lived within 50 miles of each other for almost 30 years. We talk and get together with my son so he can know his grandfather. I’m more outspoken when my father crosses me. We don’t talk about the past.

Being from Texas is a point of pride, an outsider’s badge in an area where practically nobody comes from the South. To identify myself as a Texan means to say, “I look at the world a little different from you. I’m not exactly like you, and I’m glad of that.” People take note of Texans while folks from, say, Ohio and Virginia are politely acknowledged, if that. Everybody’s got a Texas story, friends who moved there, a comment on the President, and saying I’m from Texas makes me the lightning rod for whatever opinions they care to spout.

Not that I’m a mindless booster or Texas-right-or-wrong type. After all, I live up here, not down there, and I’m not looking to relocate. The closest I ever came to that was when I tried to find a job in Austin in the late 1980s after I got married and my bride and I wanted to escape New York. I doubt I could ever emulate Larry McMurtry, who returned with riches and fame to open a bookstore in Archer City. Go back to Mission? No way, Jose!

Instead, I’ll build a virtual Texas through contacts with relatives and occasional visits. I’ll write essays like this that mine a deep vein of memory and conflicted emotion. I’ll cruise the websites of the McAllen Monitor, major papers, and the Texas Observer to keep up with the state’s kookiness. Of course, if I ever become McMurtry-like rich and famous, I might consider a Victorian mansion in Gonzales, the kind that looked so huge and splendid when I was a kid growing up in Texas.

Stepping Into Wonder: New Kid at Princeton

2005-05-28T21:49:00.000-04:00

An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Reunions Guide edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW), as part of Reunions Weekend. I wrote it as part of my 25th Reunion, which I enjoyed greatly. It does not appear online, hence I am including a longer version here. The PAW version is what I call the "broadcast" version, while here I include "cable" material that would never make it into the prim pages of PAW. The "nice" title is "Stepping Into Wonder," while the "naughty" title is "My Keyceptor is Trying to Seduce Me! And Other Tales of a Princeton Freshman." Enjoy.
------------

Stepping Into Wonder

On August 30, 1976, I flew from McAllen, Texas to Newark, N.J. to start my freshman year at Princeton. As soon as I stowed my bags and a creaky manual typewriter at the Nassau Inn, my experience began. Map in hand, I wandered the campus and found a lecture in progress. I wrote in my journal, “Finally, I discovered just what I had stumbled upon—a lecture by psychologist Carl Rogers, before a convention of Humanist Psychologists.”

That lecture, on my first day on campus, set the tone for what Princeton was, and continues to be. Coming from an isolated part of the country, where people like Carl Rogers were seen as subversive, I immediately confronted challenging people and ideas. I stepped onto campus and gained a sense of wonder at the sheer immediacy of what Princeton offered.

The experiences and impressions tumbled over one another. My journal from those days recorded the shocks of the new on social, political and sexual topics. Displays at Dillon Gym from the Association for Humanistic Psychology, for example, had “a variety of HP pamphlets and literature, each containing its own pitch toward the reader. Some had odd titles and psychic goals. The gay/lesbian arm of the meeting had a very large display of boards illustrating moderate and severe examples of anti-gay activities and also pro-gay displays.”

A few days later, I attended a “lecture-slide show by Timothy Leary on space colonization . . . I called home from Alexander Hall and told Mom of the day. I also mentioned the coed bathroom-showers here [I soon discovered this applied only to the convention]. I think it is a sane arrangement—we all have our minds potty trained.”

As a hormonally normal teenager freed from the social strictures of South Texas, I just knew Princeton would enfold me in a riotous social scene. Or so I hoped, anyway. One evening in those first weeks I met with my “keyceptor,” an upperclassman assigned to newbies to answer questions and smooth their entry into Princeton. Mine made a big impression on me, albeit not in the way Princeton hoped: “We sat in a living room and talked. She is a classics student, short, intense, buxom. ½-way through our discussion of classes I noticed she was acting rather seductive—she was lying down on the couch diddling a pen between her breasts, one of those BIC-types. I thought, ‘I guess I’m willing if she is,’ but nothing happened, that time, anyway.” We never saw each other again, but I still hear the click-click of that pen snapping through my brain synapses.

That raunchy perspective colored other aspects of my earliest Princeton days. Consider my attendance at a meeting of Undergraduates for a Stable America (USA) in Whig Hall. “We spent most of the meeting dreaming up new names for the group. Nobody likes USA. I said it first struck me as corny. I suggested the Adam Smith Society, A.S.S. I thought of a marvelous promo campaign to bolster a fun loving image: ‘Grab a piece of the A.S.S. . . .!’”

From USA my focus swung to the other end of the political spectrum. One day I was returning from a Psych lab with Jeff Sellers ‘80, “Walking back to the dorm we stopped to listen to a very intense fellow representing the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) at a table cluttered with propaganda on the walk east of East Pyne. He was probably in his early 30s, late 20s, conservatively dressed, short hair, glasses, real lefty. Finally broke away.”

“At dinner my roommates and I, stimulated by the SYL, discussed the physical traits of Communists lurking in Commons with us. Although no properly lurking males could be seen, we did see 2 girls with frizzy hair, somewhat East Europe dress. No self-respecting Red has straight hair.”

A few weeks later, I went with friends “to hear an Isaac Asimov lecture in McCosh 10. We arrived 30 minutes early but all the seats were taken except in the balcony. The lecture’s main thrust centered on the threat of overpopulation and the methods of curing it—persuading women to not have so many children.”

Ever eager to expand my cultural horizons, in late September I joined Film Society, and went to see Federico Fellini’s 1973 film Amarcord at midnight. “Jeff and I situated ourselves near the front-center. Comfortably, too much so, for after about an hour my resistance caved in under repeated assaults of sleep and I dozed a while. I saw the last 40 minutes of this Italian flick. Outside I felt so cold. It was 3 a.m., and Jeff and I walked mostly in silence to the dorm. He enjoyed the symbolism and photography and thought the subtitles detracted from his appreciation of the visual beauty. I chattered my teeth in a semblance of agreement.” The next weekend I switched gears and saw Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different.

The fall of 1976 marked the presidential campaign between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Always a political junkie, I joined the University Democrats on an Oct. 10 bus trip to attend Columbus Day political events in Newark. Along with USA and SYL, the University Democrats spoke to the utter political confusion (or, as I like to see it, my independence) that puzzles my friends to this day. I wrote, “I got my 1st close view of Newark, the epitome of urban Armageddon. For a funny reason I felt at ease there and sensed a town still living an ethnic dream of a long time past.”

“In due time a procession with the usual police and fire attachments and on-the-take politicos came waving past, and finally, yes, WALTER MONDALE, looking a bit heavier than I expected. Totally uninspiring. He jumped from his open-body old car and starting gladhanding the adoring masses. . . . We began trailing Mondale along the crowded street, although my Republican leanings kept me from taking a banner or yelling. Finally he got in the car. We followed him down to a speakers’ stand, and although we could not see him, we heard a very brief nonpolitical blurb on the great contributions of Italian Americans to American culture, from Christopher Columbus to Don Vito Corleone. Retracing our route back down the street we found the GOP VP nominee, Bob Dole. My group trailed him from the sidewalk while waving posters and yelling and acting like perfect representatives of the party’s symbol.”

One encounter stands out as truly mythical. During the summer of 1976, my budding interest in the USSR led me to read Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George F. Kennan ’25. Before Freshman Week, I noted a discussion at the Woodrow Wilson School on the theme of “Solzhenitsyn as a Historian of 1917,” as I remember. Having had my fill of humanistic psychology for a while, I wandered over. Among the attendees was an elderly man, who listened attentively and asked some questions. With a jolt I realized George Kennan himself attended the discussion. “So this is Princeton,” I thought to myself. “Wow!” (Kennan died this spring just weeks short of his 80th Princeton Reunion, at the age of 101.)

The other great memory of those early days involves my try-out for The Daily Princetonian. I thought about this story in 2003, when former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox died. As background, Maddox ran for President in 1976 representing the American Independent Party, a candidacy that generated something other than enthusiasm among Princetonians, as I was to discover in October . . .

As I recorded the event: “Candidacy period, Monday afternoon I was flailing away with my Econ story and Ben Engel ’77 asked me if I wanted to do a story. Sure—so I was introduced to Andy Steinberg ’80 and we began working on the now-infamous Lester-Maddox-at-Cottage flap. Monday morning pranksters distributed flyers at all dorm rooms proclaiming the appearance of the good governor at Cottage that night. The 3rd Worlders raised a ruckus and by 5 Andy and I were in WWS for a pre-march meeting with Kathy Kiely ’77 and somebody else. Then, off to a larger meeting in the TW Center. On the way over I interviewed Provost Snowden. So, as for the rest of the happenings, read the Tuesday Oct. 19 edition. I get a mention at the very end. Did not finish until almost midnight. I stayed at the office to finish reading the sheets to make sure that the info I contributed to the story was correct.”

That store plunged me into national politics, an amazing experience for a 19 year old. In a few months, I wrote my first lead article for the Prince, on a lecture by Simon Wiesenthal, renowned hunter of Nazis. As with the Kennan encounter, I felt I had entered a special place where amazing people and events were part of the landscape. I didn’t just learn history, I touched it, and saw and heard the history makers.

A Brazilian Vacation: My Astral Week

2005-05-23T15:06:00.000-04:00

Fresh on an English-language site in Sao Paulo, Brazil, all about my big Brazilian adventure. It talks about what I did there -- not quite everything, but close enough.

http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=797

My Favorite Oswald

2005-05-01T07:30:00.000-04:00

I read someplace that classical actors are judged according to how well they play Hamlet. After seeing Gary Oldman’s bravura turn in 1991’s JFK, I’ve decided that, modern actors must be judged by how well they play Lee Harvey Oswald.

Think about it: what other characters in recent American history, other than Richard Nixon and Anna Nicole Smith, have been more complex and confounding, bullying their way into our nightmares and turning history? With his bayou-coonass/Bronx accent and shifty-eyed demeanor, Oswald presents physical and psychological dimensions that would challenge the most accomplished actors.

I recently watched JFK for the first time since the movie’s release. I longed to see a lot more of Oldman’s Lee Harvey Oswald and a lot less of Kevin Costner’s New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in smoke-filled rooms. Director Oliver Stone teased the audience with fragmented McNuggets of Oswald, and left me panting for a big juicy steak of the Marine-Commie-defector.

So I started a trek to discover my favorite Oswald. Using Gerald Posner’s epochal investigation Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK as my trusty field guide to Dealey Plaza and beyond (and I’ve read the whole book, including the footnotes), I looked for movies and compared them to the historical record.

Surely, I thought, there must many films about Oswald, beyond the Kennedy biographies and factual records of the assassination. Oldman set a very high thespic bar, but I was determined to find challengers to the throne of Oswald actors.

To my amazement, almost nothing exists. Nada; zip; bupkis. While bookshelves groan and the Internet crackles with information about Oswald and the whole sordid mess, the creative film effort is pathetically small. Exhausting my web research skills, I found the Oswald shelf of your local video store would contain these films:

·JFK (1991), already mentioned. It covers the highlights of Oswald’s assassination-related life, some that really happened and others in dream-like uncertainty. Whatever one thinks about Stone’s politics, he created a hard-charging film brimming with colorful characters. Thrill at the opportunity to hear Oswald say, “I emphatically deny these charges,” “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir,” and of course “I’m just a patsy.” Plus, Stone made good use of cute-as-a-button Quitman native Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison. And in one easily missed line, Costner, I think, refers to McAllen as a center for gun-running. Ah-ha, I found a South Texas connection to the intrigue!

·Ruby (1992), starring Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby. Willie Garson plays a colorless throwaway role as Oswald. He doesn’t appear until an hour into this sluggish but sporadically entertaining piece of speculation, in which Oswald isn’t even the shooter. Watch for X-Filer and Princeton graduate David Duchovny in a minimal role as “Officer Tippit,” the Dallas cop killed by Oswald after the assassination. Aiello’s Ruby does get some amusing lines. In one scene, he is attacked by and then beats the tar out of the abusive husband of a stripper played by the delicious Sherilyn Fenn (post-Twin Peaks, pre-anorexia). Tough-guy Ruby bellows, “You make that the last time you take out your disappointments in life on Jack Ruby!”

· Two movies bear the proud title The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. The first appeared in 1964 (I’m sure glad it wasn’t 1962). Director Larry Buchanan explores whether Oswald was mentally ill. The film appears in video with another Buchanan take on Texas terrors, titled The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde. Specialty house Something Weird Video in Seattle markets this twin bill. The other "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" appeared on TV in 1977 and clocks in at an agonizing three hours and 12 minutes in length with John Pleshette as Oswald. This film is impossible to find.

· Love Field (1992) deserves mention not so much for its Oswald presence (just the standard TV scenes to move the plot along) but the way it uses the assassination as a mechanism to propel a Jackie-obsessed Dallas hairdresser played by Michelle Pfeiffer on her odyssey to Washington, D.C., for JFK’s funeral. On her trek she meets Dennis Haysbert (he played Senator and then President David Palmer on the first three seasons of "24") and they eventually engage in some amor prohibido. Nothing explicit gets shown, but Michelle does appear with a lovely post-coital glow on her face.

· The PBS program Frontline did an episode in 1993 called “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” While it’s a documentary, the teacher’s guide on the PBS website suggests that students watch the program and then stage their own trial of Oswald. The guide helpfully notes, “The teacher should allow some latitude in legal tactics. The purpose of this exercise is not to teach courtroom strategies. It is to explore the motivations and life of Lee Harvey Oswald.” The activity conjures up images of high school students hamming it up as Oswald, no doubt defended by Johnny Cochran-wannabees shouting, “If the Mannlicher-Carcano don’t fit, you must acquit!”

By default, Oldman wins the nod as my favorite Oswald, in the acting category. Oldman’s a great actor in a tough role. Challengers will be minimal until, oh, 2060, when some bright-eyed director, now in diapers, decides the 100th anniversary of the assassination will be a swell time to finally film an Oswald biopic.

Beyond the big and little screens, Oswald’s malign presence festers and sloshes. On the printed page and Internet, anything goes. Norman Mailer wrote the non-fiction "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," while Don DeLillo wrote the novel "Libra." Hard-boiled crime novelist James Ellroy’s "American Tabloid" explores the down and very dirty side of organized crime and the FBI and much more in the years leading up to November 22, 1963, conspiracies, Oswald and all.

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman added music to the mix with "Assassins." Oswald joins other killers and contenders, such as John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley, and Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, the Charles Manson acolyte who tried to kill President Ford, to do a little song and dance. (Interesting note: Squeaky Fromme is now rotting away in the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth; her projected release date is September 5, 2005. Take note, Secret Service!)

Staying on a musical note, Dallas musician Homer Henderson wrote one of the great transgressive songs of all time, “Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine,” with the lyrics,

I was born in Dallas in 1952,
Lee Harvey moved across the street on Bentley Avenue,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president---I don't think he did.

And Lee Harvey was a friend of mine,
He used to take me fishing all the time,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president but I don't think he did.

Wallow in Oswaldiana for any length of time, the ambiguities and slippery connections start to play games with your head. Shadows and coincidences merge into confounding patterns. For example, Willie Garson of Ruby also played Oswald in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Mad TV.” John Pleshette of 1977’s "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" also had roles in the 2004 version of "Helter Skelter" about Charles Manson) and the 1998 TV movie "The Day Lincoln was Shot." Coincidences, you say?

The strangest dot-connecting pulls together "JFK," "Love Field," and the terrorist-battling series "24" on Fox. Hang with me here: "JFK" cast Donald Sutherland in a pivotal role, as the government operative who steers Costner’s Jim Garrison toward the conspiracy. Then, Dennis Haysbert plays a lead role in Love Field. Finally, in "24," Haysbert plays President David Palmer, while Donald’s son Keifer Sutherland plays the anti-terrorism operative Jack Bauer, who works for Palmer. Well! What does all that mean?

And now, a confession: the annals of Oswaldian speculation include my own modest, yet dare I say imaginative, contribution. You’re reading it here first, folks, a world exclusive.

In 1994, America followed the sordid case of O.J. Simpson, from the murder of Nicole through the chase of the White Bronco to the arrest, the trial, the acquittal, and the relentless search over the last decade for the real killers. Throughout the case certain facts troubled me. Echoes of past horror bounced off the walls of the courthouse into my brain, where they forced my attention. Unable to resist the compelling force of these echoes, I followed a twisting path of research that left me breathless in its stunning revelations. In the end, I wrote what is truly “my favorite Oswald” article, which I titled, “OJ and Lee Harvey: Stunning Links Revealed!”

To my bitter disappointment and undying suspicion, not a single newspaper or magazine would publish the fruits of my long and lonely hours spent delving into the arcania of two ill-led lives. Fortunately, through the magic of the Internet, I can now share my findings. My shocking thesis: “O.J. Simpson is possessed by the demon spirit of Lee Harvey Oswald!”

My research, which has yet to be refuted, charts connections between Simpson and Oswald that simply cannot be coincidences. Really! While the research and documentation run for thousands of pages (kept is a secret location to protect them from my rivals and enemies), I can provide some key findings:

· Both Oswald and Simpson trained in the deadly arts. Oswald was a Marine with extensive rifle experience. Simpson learned to wield weapons acting in movies such as "Firepower" and "Killer Force."

· In his statement read during his mad dash, Simpson wrote, “First, everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder.” Following Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald also denied involvement. Quoting Dallas police captain Will Fritz, Gerald Posner wrote, “He denied it and said he hadn’t killed the President.” Thus, both Simpson and Oswald said they didn’t do it. Now, you tell me: how likely is that to happen in murder cases?

· Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository and fled, finally being captured in the Texas Theater. Simpson flew from L.A. International Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare Plaza Hotel. Oswald went from a storage center to an entertainment place. Simpson went from an airport—a storage center for airplanes—to a hotel—where entertaining movies are shown in rooms. Their movements show uncanny similarities.

I could continue, but these examples nail the case down pretty well, the real demonic conspiracy. Now if I could just get somebody to buy my screen play. . . Gary Oldman, baby, have I got a role for you!

Date Me, I'm From Texas

2005-03-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

Astute marketers know the value of a good name, one that captures an essence, provokes thought, and closes the sale. I grappled with the name issue when, post-divorce in 2003, I plunged into the chill waters of online dating. And what is online dating, other than the direct marketing of a single product (i.e., me, Me, ME)? To effectively brand myself, I needed cute pictures, a compelling profile, and a snappy screen name. With a unique selling proposition, I could tilt the odds in my favor in that split-second when a woman decides whether to respond to an email—or ignore me as one more short, bald, mid-40s guy.

Upon joining the now-defunct JCupid (catering to folks of the Hebraic persuasion), I tinkered with names like Van, VW, and even Tazio, the middle name I loathe. But nothing felt quite right, being either boring or bizarre. I got closer to the mark with Zev, a Hebrew name that sounds like Van and that I use at religious services. Zev worked well enough to remain the name on one profile, and it drew women who thought I was Israeli. Still, Zev lacked a certain Van-ness and emotional resonance.

So I doodled possibilities reflecting my upbringing amidst the balmy breezes and pastoral landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley, Mission, to be exact, Home of the Grapefruit and Tom Landry, first coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Some ideas:

• ValleyGuy: Too obscure, and the U.S. has lots of Valleys, including San Fernando, Red River, and Death.

• TexDude: Sounds lame, and I never think of myself as a “dude.”

• Missionary: This cleverly alludes to my hometown, but it could excessively appeal to Southern Baptists. Also, people might assume Missionary implies a limited erotic repertoire on my part. Come to think of it, that assumption might also get Baptists knocking on my digital door.

Then, clawing up from a reptilian pre-cognitive node in my brain, there emerged “TexasHoldEm.” The more I noodled, the better it sounded. Free associations clustered around it like lobbyists at the Texas Railroad Commission. It tells a short story in three syllables. Soon, TexasHoldEm became the screen name that I use on three sites.

You might ask, why make a big deal out of my Texas provenance? I left Texas for Princeton in 1976 and haven’t lived in the state since the summer of 1977. My returns for high school reunions and family visits are rare. I’ve lived in New York and Connecticut far longer than I lived in Texas. And yet, those early years forever are imprinted in me, through education, values, memories, even my way of talking (I joke that after a few Coronas I sound just like LBJ). I’ve made my peace with that influence—and I’ve discovered that Lone Star roots are a great marketing tactic, endlessly provocative at cocktail parties and singles sites. Reflecting those roots, I note in one profile, “I practice an archaic Southern chivalry; I hold open doors, stand up when a lady enters the room, write thank-you notes, and help you get your coat off (it's good practice.)”

My profiles carry a teasing line, “Now, who can guess the multiple meanings of my screen name?” That shameless come-on indeed attracts women to my fiesta of verbal playfulness. The name and line invite women to casually contact me without stooping to something as crass as, “U R so HOTTT!” A woman I’ll call YettaFromYonkers wrote the most memorable response. Her jaw-dropping first email, in its entirety, read, “Masturbation comes to mind, but far be it from this lady of Yonkers to admit to it . . .”

To which I quickly replied, “Very good! Obviously we think along the same lines. I was thinking about holding somebody else (TexasHoldEm, after all, not TexasHoldIt), but you've certainly got the right idea. Now, the other meanings: I really am from Texas originally, so it's got that connotation. TexasHoldEm is a form of poker, and card playing was very popular in my family when I was young—my mother enjoyed nothing better than playing poker late into the night with her aunts during family vacations to San Antonio.”

Photos on my profile gave visual clues to the meanings, some obvious, others indecipherable without explanation. One photo heavy with Texas atmosphere shows me at a Houston shooting range blasting away at targets with my brother’s Glock pistol. I tell women that I was “getting in touch with my inner NRA.” In another, I clutch two squirming Yorkshire Terrier puppies to my chest, with the caption, “Holding ‘Em.” In a picture from a high school reunion, I’m grinning impishly as I sit next to an adorable and hugely pregnant classmate from Mission; she points one hand at her stomach and another at me. Call that one a vision of chaste affection.

Just as I hope women respond to my pitch, I also notice women who use TX in their screen name. One woman with whom I’ve maintained steady contact, TexDG, says that the name generates curiosity from men. She wrote to me, “Guys from the east coast think Texas is ‘exotic.’” Many figure she supported Bush in the election; as she said, “They think the whole state voted for George—yes, a bunch a yahoos us'ns.”

“Did you get into any heated discussions? Could they get past their notions of Exotic Laurie to who you really are?” I asked.

“No heated discussions. I just don't go there. LOL-funny about that,” she wrote back. “A lot of the guys just want to know what color my undies are!”

Another woman, GoodListenerTX, commented, “I have received more emails with this name than either my first screen name of honestmom or afierytopaz. Most people couldn’t spell fiery let alone the meaning of topaz. (I know it is an obscure fact that topaz comes in other colors than blue.) I would have been a ruby but it would have been too cliché.”

These are women in Texas; plenty of men and women in the state throw TX onto their screen names. My all-time favorite is Texasbabydoll—aye caramba, who could resist that image? The contacts get even more interesting when folks (like me) fly the Texas identity like a battle flag when they live out of state. I particularly like the profile of YehuditTX, a woman I actually know apart from dating sites from our “liberal hawk” political interests. Her profile says, “I am a proud native Texan, currently a Manhattanite (lots more Jews here—including family—but the sunsets are smaller).” Then there’s my occasional correspondent TexanAtHeart, originally from Abilene and now living in the South.

You’ll notice a pattern here. TexDG, GoodListenerTX, and TexanAtHeart all responded to me, Women from the South and Latin America also have the fine grace to pen a polite reply. Some decline further contact, pointing to the distance between us, and I can understand their concerns. Others, however, have become dear and enduring friends. Whatever the future holds—as friends, lovers, or strangers whose yearnings touched for an instant—I can say to all of them zol zein mit mazel,Yiddish for “you should be with luck.”

Their behavior supports Wallach’s Global Theory of Online Dating: the probability of a reply to an initial email or instant-message invitation increases in direct proportion to the distance from Times Square. In sharp contrast to Texettes, women in New York City and even my home territory of Fairfield County, Connecticut almost never write back, even to tell me to go jump in a lake. Granted, they may be overwhelmed by male suitors, with me being just one more irritant living too far from Manhattan, but couldn’t a gal at least take 15 seconds to write a “thanks but no thanks” letter? Shoot me if you’d like, but don’t leave me to limp around neying piteously waiting for a response. A good Yiddish retort for this silent sisterhood might be, "May the only thing anyone ever writes you be a prescription."

The Texas and East Coast sides merge when I meet Texettes in New York. I can always sniff them out using “texdar,” my variation on the concept of “gaydar.” Like their counterparts back home, these urban cowgirls almost always reply to me and we sometimes meet. We’ve had great conversations about hometowns, educations, and bloodlines. One woman even had family members named Michelson, as I do, so we are probably related from way back in the 1860s, when the first Michelsons vamoosed out of Germany to settle in Marshall, Gonzales, and other places.

The Texas identity does carry risks. One on one, women are curious about the place and keep any prejudices in check, but in public somebody always feels compelled to spout off. I once attended a Friday night singles event where an Orthodox rabbi (!) said, “Oh, you’re the guy from that hick town!” Going to a Westport (Conn.) Singles Hiking event, I was trapped in a car with people who assured me that Republicans would never go on a hike because they hate the environment. Later, a man said, “You’re from Texas, so you must really hate Bush.”

I thought, What a pinche pendejo cabron, as we used to say in Hidalgo County. To this perfect specimen of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), I replied, “I like what President Bush says and does, and I definitely approve of the War on Terror.” That shut him up pronto.

I am ready to talk when women ask about Texas. My whole brand positioning depends on delivering the goods about that unique upbringing. Without some colorful anecdotes and family stories, I’d get an “all hat, no cattle” reputation. Fortunately, I remember everything, as the readers of Back Word will discover. Some of my favorite informational crunchies:

• “My family has been in Texas for a long, long time. There are little kids down there that are seventh-generation Texans. My great-great-grandfather, Chayim Schwarz, was the first ordained rabbi in Texas. He moved to Hempstead in 1873, from Prussia. He’s the guy on the cover of the book Jewish Stars in Texas, which you can see at www.jewishstarsintexas.com.”

• “I graduated from the same high school that my mother did, exactly 40 years later. Talk about continuity.”

• “When I was a kid, the family story I heard was that relatives passed through San Antonio in the 1870s and they could still see blood on the walls of the Alamo. The spookiest Texas stories always involve the Alamo.”

• “Texas always breeds wacky politics. I had a high school typing teacher who argued that motorcycle-helmet laws were a form of communism. At my 10th reunion in 1986, a classmate was certain that the Sandinistas were going to march up from Nicaragua and invade Harlingen. The wife of another friend used to talk earnestly about the black helicopters.”

• “Growing up in Texas and then moving to the Northeast scrambled my politics. People down there think I’m a commie-hippie-pinko-treehugger. Folks in the Northeast think I’m a crypto-fascist Texas gun nut. The truth is actually in the middle. I’m a free thinker, and that drives people crazy.”

• “Heard of Kinky Friedman? Heck, I interviewed Ol’ Kinky once for a magazine article I wrote about the Lone Star Roadhouse in New York. We had a real nice visit, too.”

• “A college roommate thought my mother sounded exactly like Lady Bird Johnson.”

After two years, what does it all mean? I’m still unattached, and still flogging TexasHoldEm© brand boyfriend in the marketplace of romance. I now know that a thin and erasable line separates amor from amoral. I have gained some great friends, slurped enough Starbucks coffee on first dates to float the Battleship Texas at San Jacinto, collected passport stamps on jaunts to Canada and Brazil, endured a few sleepless nights staring at my bedroom ceiling, and was given a kabbalistic key chain from Israel, a gift wrapped in bittersweet memories (don’t ask why). I’ve learned the gut meaning of B.B. King’s song “There Must Be a Better World Somewhere” with the lyric, “Every woman's got a license to break my heart, every love affair is over before it gets a chance to start.” What would I do differently? Almost nothing.

However, like a good salesman, I do fine-tune my message based on market feedback and experience. Sometimes I’ll even micro-market to a target demographic of one. Musing on my “perfect first date,” I wrote in a profile, “If we're really clicking, then we can share glasses of Agavot, my favorite kosher tequila, and that can give the encounter a special glow and, well, momentum.” Tequila Agavot is, in fact, a product that mi amiga in Mexico, Ana Gilda, has developed. As her unofficial jefe de communicacions, I’ve helped Ana Gilda revise her marketing and media plans, and that includes talking up Agavot on websites . . .

The biggest refinement? I’m moving away from TexasHoldEm. Even the best marketing can benefit from a fresh approach, so I tested a new name on MSN chat. As with TexasHoldEm, it emerged full blown from my churning synapses: El Van Van. It intrigued chat buddies, so the name has potential as a conversation starter. I like El Van Van because it puts a bright spin on my prosaic first name. On a less obvious level, it reflects my evolving interests in languages and music. Now, who can decipher some of its other meanings?

My Life as a Reformed Gringo

2005-02-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

This kicked off my series of essays on The Back Word, a website of writing about Texas. The folk who ran it lost interest and took down all the pages. Fortunately, I have all the Word files, and this is the first of four published there:

For most parents, a child's exposure to a foreign language is mildly interesting. But for me, the news that my son Sam started studying Spanish this fall in the fifth grade stirs strong emotions. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the gringo minority in the town of Mission, in deep South Texas-- pop. 13,000, Spanish wasn't just a language. It marked the fault line that divided two cultures, Anglo and Hispanic.

Young gringos learned early that we could treat the Spanish language--and Hispanic culture--with indifference, if not outright hostility. When I was in the third grade, the teacher asked a new student, Frank, to read in the front of the class. A migrant or perhaps a new arrival from Mexico, Frank didn't speak English. He stood there utterly baffled, and began to cry. Almost 40 years later, I still remember Frank's humiliation as a perfect symbol of gringo arrogance.

Many gringo (that is, Anglo) adults along the border would shrug at the Franks of the world and declare, "Hey, this is the United States, suck it up and learn English." Compassion for or even curiosity about the majority of our neighbors ranked low among gringos' virtues. Instead, I grew up in an atmosphere of condescension toward Hispanics and Mexico. Those who thought otherwise seemed subversive in the suspicious culture of Texas at that time.

I thought and acted like a typical gringo. Although the Rio Grande Valley incubated Tex-Mex, one of the great styles of regional music, I plugged my ears to the sounds around me in favor of Grand Funk Railroad, Yes, and Deep Purple. Despite the permanent opportunity for immersion learning, I had no interest in Spanish, and neither did my late mother, a native Texan of German-Jewish stock who glowered when store clerks misread her dark looks and spoke to her in Spanish.

In high school, gringos joked that Spanish ALM (audio-lingual method) really stood for "Anglos Learning Mexican." Yearbook photos for Mission High School's Pan American Club showed a dwindling number of gringo members between 1972 and 1976. We derided nearby Pan American College as "Tamale Tech."

What did we think about Mexico itself, visible across the Rio Grande after a short drive down South Conway Avenue? The country was terra incognita, a mysterious and terrifying place that our parents warned us about (singer Kinky Friedman captured the paranoia in his song "Asshole from El Paso," with the lyric, "We keep our kids away from Mexico."). Drugs, violence, federales, poverty, disorder, people not like us dominated the skyline of our ignorance. We learned absolutely nothing about Mexico that didn't involve the Alamo and the Texas Revolution. Likewise, teachers spared our young minds any inkling of the bloody early history of the Valley, replete with land grabs and summary executions of Mexicans by the Texas Rangers. However, kids did enjoy piñatas at birthday parties.

Until I vacationed in Mexico City and Morelia in my mid-30s, I never ventured more than 200 yards into Mexico. As a senior in high school, an English teacher and his wife took a date and me across the river to Reynosa. As I wrote in my journal on May 16, 1976: "Hot, nervous, but different. We ate at Sam's and later had drinks (Coke for me thank you) in the Imperial and buzzed through several curio shops."

Did any aspect of Mexico capture gringos' interest and appreciation? Well, yes: the red-light districts. One conversation with two local luminaries on the attractions of Reynosa seemed so compelling that I recorded the sordid details in my journal soon after I graduated from high school. From June 19, 1976 (names and expletives deleted):

"How's Boystown these days?" Willie asked.

Waylon said the action was OK. Willie took something of a dim view of the area, but Waylon sounded quite enthusiastic.

"Wow! One of the places really has nice a atmosphere with columns, plants, chandeliers," he informed us.

"Sounds more like a bank," I said.

"Well, if you want a piece of ass you can get it cheaper (and cleaner) here, but I go for the atmosphere," Waylon said.

"Once," he added, "I found one who knew my older brother real well."

"When I first moved down here," Willie said, "I'd go down there and stay for hours just talking to the girls and looking at the places."

The topic of Nuevo Laredo whorehouses rose in the conversation.

"Well some guys tell me, 'Them Laredo whores is the best around,' " Willie joked in a mock thick Texas accent. "And I tell them, 'Well, hell, I'm going there this afternoon, so I'll be sure to check 'em out.' "

"You'd be surprised at what goes on in this town," Waylon told me. I can imagine.

And yet in an awkward, unconscious way I edged away from gringoisimo. Call it my mild form of teenage rebellion. Whatever her antipathy to Spanish, my mother's life philosophy--"Be friends with everybody"--fostered an accepting attitude. Fragments of the Hispanic world lodged in my memory, from a young age. I remember thumbing through comic-book novelas¸ or graphic soap operas, when my mother visited her hairdresser in South Mission, on the other side of the railroad tracks. I read Richard Vasquez's powerful novel Chicano when I was 13. Before long, I started listening to music groups that I still enjoy, such as Malo (led by Jorge Santana, Carlos's brother) and El Chicano, an L.A. band that performed dreamily romantic songs. To aggravate my younger brother after we started driving, I tuned the AM radio in our family's Chevy Impala to a Mexican music station, prompting a yelp of disdain whenever he turned on the car.

I must admit that for years I mooned over Hispanic girls, with names like Dalia, Delia, Hilda, Olalla, and Maria Luisa. Especially Luisa, with whom I shared a love of writing. With a beautiful choir-trained voice, straight black hair tumbling to her waist and a calm face that fit my image of an Aztec princess, Luisa won this gringo's heart during my senior year in high school. We even stole moments to hold hands in the guidance counselor's office. I asked her to the favorites dance, but her father did not want a gringo to take her. So I never did slow-dance to Chicago's "Color My World" with Luisa, my enchanting Aztec princess.

As an adult, I've tried to fill in the blank spaces of my knowledge, what I refused to learn or notice as a youth. I've studied Spanish enough that I can almost speak it as well as Ernest Borgnine's character in The Wild Bunch. Mi amiga querida buena (myvery dear friend) in Mexico, Ana Gilda, encourages me to chat with her online in Spanish, and I'm improving. I follow the ups and downs of Vicente Fox's administration and other Latin news, to the extent I can in U.S. newspapers. I became a big fan of telenovelas, with their easy-to-follow dialogue such as "Idiota!" and "Mi hermano es muerto! (my brother is dead)." I smiled while watching the movie Traffic when I realized characters spoke Spanish with Mexican accents, which I could distinguish from the Puerto Rican and Dominican accents I hear in New York.

I like the accordion-driven norteño music of groups like Los Tigres del Norte, which takes me straight back to Hidalgo County. (In an example of what goes around comes around, a Los Tigres song, "El Gringo y El Mexicano," refers to McAllen, Texas, the city next to Mission. I've teased Ana Gilda that I want to write a story about us called "El Gringo y La Mexicana").

Why does any of this matter? A middle-aged man reconsiders his roots and starts digging in the loam. He likes what he finds. Call it a story about one man's continuing engagement with a part of the world he once considered alien and irrelevant, even threatening. Now, I can appreciate another society and language that, by reason of where I lived, remains part of who I am.

News from Latin America no longer comes from the dark side of the moon (that is, beyond the south bank of the Rio Grande) but from distinct places that matter to me. In other words, I have enlarged my world. When I see Mexican and Central American men waiting on street corners in the Northeast looking for day work, they are no longer a faceless "them," but men with a language, a history, a place.

In these days, a big world view matters. America's efforts to remake the Middle East may suffer from the gringo attitude I know so well: "We know what's best for you, just watch and do things our way, and learn our language." Is that an effective way to treat a neighbor, or to reform a wounded country? Certainly I thought so at one time. Just ask my friend Velma, she knows.

Back at Mission High School, I once told her that the U.S. should just "take over" Mexico and that would fix the problems there in a jiffy. Rightly incensed, she recalled this exchange many years later. I forgot about it (a microcosm of U.S.-Latin relations?) and could only reply, "Oh, I said that?" Back then, ignorance supported blissful assurance. These days, I think differently. Velma and I even call each other primo and prima--cousins.

At the same time, I am who I am. Reformed, but not neutered. I emotionally connect with other gringos on the same wavelength. Robert Earl Keen's sweetly melancholy song "Gringo Honeymoon" speaks to me with its sense of wandering between two worlds; the stanzas include,

We took a rowboat 'cross the Rio Grande
Captain Pablo was our guide
For two dollars in a weathered hand
He rowed us to the other side.

We were standin' on a mountain top
Where the cactus flowers grow
I was wishin' that the world would stop
When you said we'd better go

ZZ Top's "Mescalero" album includes two wonderful songs primarily in Spanish, with what I now term an ASS sound: "Anglos Speaking Spanish." I know, because that's what I sound like (again, think of Ernest Borgnine).

To my delight, even my Borgninesque Spanish makes sense. Not long ago, while I waited at JFK airport to board a flight to El Salvador, I noticed a man who desperately needed to make a phone call. However, the security guards would not let him leave the area to find a pay phone. Speaking only Spanish, the man's anxiety became more obvious by the minute. As I watched, a famous Jewish teaching kicked in: "If I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?" Rabbi Hillel was right: I thought, the time to act is now. I told the guards the Salvadoreño could call on my cell phone. They looked surprised, but agreed to my idea.

"Excusame, señor," I said, catching his attention, "Usted necesita usar telephone? Llame en los Estados Unidos?" I held out my cell phone. He gratefully took it, and I showed him how to dial. He made the call, then returned the phone to me as the line crept ahead. No longer strangers, the man and I shared a moment.

I'll tell Sam this story. He will learn at a young age, as I did not, that language skills and an open attitude can make the world a friendlier place. Sam will be a reformed gringo from the beginning.