History will record

I haven't ever seen them, but I understand that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee made some fairly scandalous tapes a few years back that were all the rage. I'm not claiming any moral high ground here, I just never had the opportunity or the inclination to risk a virus on my PC back then. Still, I know enough about them to know that it's not necessarily the clothes that make the man.

Decades earlier, Dick Nixon made his own revealing tapes, and they've turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving, not simply in revelation of Nixon himself, but often in the way they have disrobed the other participants on those tapes, the way that the tapes have stripped their characters bare, to reveal their moles and piercings and just how far to the right they swing; things that, quite frankly, we'd just rather have never seen the light of day.

A couple of days ago, Jeffrey Goldberg highlighted this vile exchange between Henry Kissinger and Tricky Dick that was just released by the Nixon Library in the latest dribbling of disgusting Nixon-tape-isms:

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy," Mr. Kissinger said. "And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

"I know," Nixon responded. "We can't blow up the world because of it."

Of course, as we all know by now, it's the liberals who are the real anti-Semites. Fortunately for us, and just to make that point (once again via Goldberg), Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League have chimed in to put this all in perspective:

ADL: KISSINGER REMARKS ON NIXON TAPES REVEAL "DISTURBING FLAWS,"
BUT DO NOT CHANGE HIS LEGACY

New York, NY, December 13, 2010 ... The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said a 1973 discussion between President Richard M. Nixon and his top foreign policy advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger, released as part of the Nixon Tapes, "shows a disturbing and even callous insensitivity" toward Soviet Jews, "but should not change history's verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy" of Kissinger.

Abe Foxman continues on: "Dr. Kissinger's contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel. The Nixon Tapes should not change history's verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy of Henry Kissinger."

I don't have much good to say about Henry Kissinger or his legacy - regarding Israel or for that matter the rest of the world - but that's not what I want to discuss here.

What I do want to comment on, ever so briefly, is Abe Foxman. Goldberg expresses his sadness in Foxman's reaction to Kissinger's vile comments, going on to state "He is a better man than his reaction suggests."

Well, if Jeffrey says so, but I'd have an easier time taking Goldberg at his word if he had said Foxman was a better man. Past tense. Because Foxman's words and behavior of late certainly do not convince me of the quality of his character.

I guess after expressing his views on the "Ground Zero Mosque," one could, to a certain degree, forgive Foxman on the grounds of post-9/11 misguided oversensitivity, or something. But excusing implicit acquiescence to a Soviet holocaust of Jews? You'd think that went just a bit too far. Apparently, you'd be wrong.

UPDATE: Well, that changes everything I said. Goldberg now reports that Marty Peretz ("Muslim life is cheap") is on the side of Foxman and Kissinger.

Space is the Place

The Geminid Meteor Shower peaks tonight.

Passing out the torches

Roger Cohen is right.

The view that American Jews supportive of Israel but critical of its policies are not “real Jews” is, however, widespread. Israel-right-or-wrong continues to be the core approach of major U.S. Jewish organizations, from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

To oppose the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank (“Zionists are not settlers”), or question growing anti-Arab bigotry as personified by Israel’s rightist foreign minister and illustrated by the “loyalty oath” debate, or ask whether the “de-legitimization” of Israel might not have something to do with its own actions is to incur these organizations’ steady ire.

Read the whole thing. It remains a disappointing truth, an unfortunate point that I have been making since I started this blog.

Party time at the government gate

I find it ironic that the same conservatives, such as Mike Huckabee and Jim DeMint and my own Congressman John Mica, who have been ranting about the federal government's fail on efficient airport security measures are arguing that we need to follow the "Israeli model" of airplane security, because the Israelis (really) are so advanced and experienced with security and anti-terrorist measures (I will leave it to Dana Milbank to address the economic reality of the U.S. adopting that model), and possibly have the world's most effective military, are at the same time the precise group of folks that tell us that the Israeli model of qualification to serve to protect and defend your country - by allowing gay men and women to serve openly and honestly - is flawed.

(Southwest Airlines has already adopted an Israeli model, that model being Sports Illustrated cover model Bar Rafaeli. It may be worth noting that Ms. Rafaeli would also be allowed - in fact obligated - to serve in the Israeli military, where she would have served with both straight and homosexual men and women. But this Israeli model chose not to serve. Instead, she took advantage of an exemption for married women, having married a family friend, then divorcing him shortly thereafter. Which - unlike my rabbi who chose to comment on his disappointment with that decision - isn't a judgment call by me at all. I simply note - and I agree, it is an awful and strained analogy - that, whether or not she had joined the IDF, Rafaeli still had and has the right to marry whomever she pleases, a right that gay American soldiers still won't have in most states even after Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed, a right that even as more and more states extend it, will not be recognized by the federal government. And just to be clear, DADT will be repealed in this lame-duck session, despite the current hyperventilating about whether Harry Reid is blowing the process. )

Collectivist secretive ideology

A business colleague asked me the other day why all of the Jews he knows are Democrats. He didn't mean anything malicious about it - he's truly curious about all aspects of Judaism, although his ideas about it are a bit confused. He has family in the "messianic Judaism" movement, which means not Jewish at all, but his exposure to real Jews is so limited (among other things, he lives in Idaho) that they provide his foundation for Jewish understanding.

At any rate, I hesitated to answer, because it's much too complex to describe quickly and because I have no desire to get into a political debate.

I considered pointing him to the conservatives over at Commentary, whom a befuddled NoPo last year rounded up to take on the task of explaining to other Republican Jews why so many other Jews, from their perspective, muff their personal interest and go with the wrong team, as if Michael Medved's and Bill Kristol's explanations for liberal Judaism matter a whole lot. It's all, you see, based on their perception of what's good for Jews, as Jews. Liberalism, it so happens, is anti-values, anti-religion, anti-Israel, anti-Jew. The Commentary commentariat requires you, as a foundation for their arguments, to believe that anti-Semitism is a feature of the "Left;" that the President is a danger to Israel's existence; that real support for Israel is on the "Right;" that real "Jewish" values are consistent with conservative values.

For those commentators, it's never about what is right, what is honorable, what is just. Instead, the only question is, what is good for me. So Bill Kristol says: "One also wonders whether the Obama administration won’t present some 'teachable moments' to those Jews who are willing to learn about which political party, and which political persuasion, is friendlier to Jewish interests." Jeff Jacoby says "the loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty." Because, you know, if we don't look out for ourselves, who is gonna do it? Gotta look out for number one.

Medved, for his part, substitutes Kristolian selfishness for a view of liberal Jews simply as racists, concluding that Jewish liberalism is all about opposition to Christianity. And Medved minces no words in identifying anti-Christianity as the binding force in American Jewish life. A taste:

Anyone who doubts that rejection of Jesus has replaced acceptance of Torah (or commitment to Israel) as the eekur sach—the essential element—of American Jewish identity should pause to consider an uncomfortable question. What is the one political or religious position that makes a Jew utterly unwelcome in the organized community? We accept atheist Jews, Buddhist Jews, pro-Palestinian Jews, Communist Jews, homosexual Jews, and even sanction Hindu-Jewish meditation societies. “Jews for Jesus,” however, or “Messianic Jews” face resistance and exclusion everywhere. In Left-leaning congregations, many rabbis welcome stridently anti-Israel speakers and even Palestinian apologists for Islamo-Nazi terror. But if they invited a “Messianic Jewish” missionary, they’d face indignant denunciation from their boards and, very probably, condemnation by their national denominational leadership. It is far more acceptable in the Jewish community today to denounce Israel (or the United States), to deny the existence of God, or to deride the validity of Torah than it is to affirm Jesus as Lord and Savior.

No mistaking what Medved is thinking there.

Still, Medved gets one of the reasons partially right. There is a significant unifying force for Jews created by Christianity itself, and particularly, as Medved puts it, the "Christian right." But in focusing on Christianity as a unifying force for Jews, Medved gets cause and effect completely backwards, confuses the offense with the defense, and goes completely off the rails.

Medved thinks liberal Jews are simply rejecting all Christian views. It's a perspective only a "conservative" (as in, right wing) Jew could have, and lacks any fundamental understanding of true liberal American Jewry. The concern isn't about an objection to Christianity, or even vocal Christianity. "We" don't far President Obama's invocation of Christian values, for example. Rather, the perspective of liberal Jews is a recoiling from the demands of what Andrew Sullivan refers to as Christianism, and the subordination of Judaism to a view of Christianity held by a vocal segment of the conservative electorate, the second class status that Jews are given by the evangelical Christian movement that (particularly here in the South, but which has expanded its control country-wide) forms the intellectual (so to speak) foundation of the modern GOP, the understanding that Jews are a useful tool for Christianism, so long as the Right believes we are still fighting the same fight, their fight - against Muslims, or for Israel (but perhaps not the same Israel, or only the same Israel as the means to an end(time), but whatever).

I could go on, and perhaps will at some point, but the difference between Medved's view of the so-called liberal-Jewish / conservative-Christian divide is more reflected in this story than in anything Medved says, and shows why the so-called coalition of Jews and conservative Christian Republicanism is based on a dangerous illusion. The idea that the Republican speaker of a state legislative body should not be a Jew because GOP voters have worked for Christian values - "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it."

You can talk all day about whether you think one party or the other is more sympathetic to Jewish pet issues, or the issues you condescendingly believe Jews should be concerned about. It seems to me, however, that not being truly welcome would be as good a place as any to start exploring why we usually identify as Democrats.

Finances are tottery

I'm still puzzled about the logic of Obama's unilateral pay freeze on mostly relatively low income federal government employees, while at the same debating whether we can extend unemployment benefits and setting the stage for an extension of the Bush tax cuts (and a massive windfall) for the super-rich.

Look, I am all for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility. But where's the balance on all of this? If a pay freeze that impacts working-class Americans is necessary and wise, in the name of belt-tightening, where's the logic in giving a massive tax break to those who need it least? I mean, the non-electoral mumbo-jumbo logic. Really, if the pay-freeze makes sense, how

much sense does any extension of the Bush tax cuts make? Is any of this fiscally-responsible?

And how much sense does the pay freeze make with respect to economic growth? Let's put less money in the pockets of those most likely to spend it and then somehow expect retail spending to increase. It makes sense only if you believe that the economy is actually on the upswing, that the recession is far behind us, and that the only thing holding the economy back is the fiscal recklessness by the federal government. It makes sense if you think the U.S. has bad international credit and is in danger of turning into a Greek or Irish or Spanish economic collapse.

How much sense does it make when the economic rallying cry is "jobs, jobs jobs?" Where are those jobs going to come from when people have less money to spend?

(As an aside, I am also frustrated by the attempt to characterize the Administration's proposal as something that doesn't preserve tax cuts for all Americans. It does. Just because the wealthiest taxpayers would only be getting a break on the portion of their income up to $250,000 doesn't mean they are not getting a tax break. They are. The Republicans just filibustered a bill that gave a tax break to all Americans, in the hope that they can do better for the mega-rich, because if they can't give the rich more breaks - which will not be spent but rather banked for their kids, providing no economic stimulus whatsoever - then nobody should get anything.)

Hey boy you can't go where the others go

So many on the left are feigning their incredible disappointment with John McCain and his relentless fight against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell based on ever-changing, increasingly tenuous and hypocritical rationales. And they're right on one key point: it's vile, disgusting and tragic. He's decided that his legacy will be standing on the wrong side of history, standing on the wrong side of justice, standing for an institutionalized anachronism of simple-minded prejudice. He's too foolish (or too bitter) to be embarrassed, too foolish (or too bitter) to recognize that he will be written into history as a leading voice of a dying breed of bigots. And he's too foolish to realize that he will deserve every bit of derision that this particular display earns for him.

Unfortunately, however, I cannot say I am surprised. I cannot read what is in someone's hear, but it seems to me that this is the same John McCain that has always been there, front and center, if people would just pay attention. I wasn't shy about my view of John McCain during the year leading up to the presidential election. Notwithstanding the media branding of John McCain's maverickiness, propped by the insistence that his POW years made criticism of McCain beyond the pale, John McCain has rarely shown himself as a moderate, or honest, or a man of principle, except where it suits him. He's always been defined mostly by what is good for John McCain. In the past, what was good for John McCain appeared to be his media glorification - the moderate, the hero, the maverick, the darling. That maverick-ness came not from doing what was right, but doing what would garner McCain the most admiration, from the populace but mostly from the media. That was his path to the presidency, where he envisioned the source of his greatest worship. It wasn't about making right choices or personal conviction; it was all about what was good for the promotion of John McCain. And remember, as TNC points out, that this is the same man who opposed the MLK holiday. Now he's decided that what is good for John McCain is to be the face of the anti-Obama right, because he can no longer see beyond his anger. His quest for the Presidency finally dead, he no longer owes anything to the media, no longer is focused on the long game of setting himself up to be king. His goal now is to destroy the man who broke all his dreams, and he's pursuing that goal with all the vigor that he once pursued the Presidency.

Moreover - heaven forbid I should say this about a veteran and "hero" - he isn't particularly knowledgable about or shown true leadership regarding matters of the military. In his view, leadership means not bearing responsibility, not taking a stand to do what is right and to encourage others to do the same. He claims that leadership means listening to your subordinates, ignoring the fact that the military leadership has been listening. He then conflates listening (but only to those voices he wants to hear) with following, turning the chain of command on its head. He ducks behind bigotry, and claims that it's a principled stand.

What McCain calls "leadership" looks a lot like cowardice. It's plain, old-fashioned fear.

McCain pretends to back the troops, yet turns his back on so many of them. He claims that "wartime" - that endless state we find ourselves in because of George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain - is the wrong time to make a change. Apparently, however, it is the right time to focus not on "war," or on hunting down Osama bin Laden, but instead on spending valuable resources and energy hunting down and kicking out men and women dedicated to serving and defending their country simply on the basis of whom they love or desire, or forcing them to lie about the fundamental truth of who they are. For what values, what freedoms, does he think those soldiers are fighting?

Be disappointed, if you must. But I'm not sure you should be surprised.