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IMPRESSIONS FROM ISRAELI BLOGS

Unlike many blogs that I see spread across the Internet, I am not linked to a whole bunch of other sites. Only four. I link to Eric Zorn’s blog because he’s a columnist that I read regularly in the Chicago Tribune and I like to keep track of what else he’s writing. Besides, he links to me.

Other than that, as is obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I currently link to three Israeli sites. Two are ordinary Israelis. The third is a multi linked site on which one can find a large variety of subject matter and opinion daily.

The reason that I link to these sites is because I have a strong interest in Israel and like to keep tabs on what people are thinking over there.. My oldest grandchild was born there and thus has dual citizenship. My older daughter met her husband in Israel. He is an American, but both were spending time on a Kibbutz.

And I am Jewish and want to see this Jewish state thrive and live in peace with her neighbors..

All of which is a preamble to expressing a feeling of sadness at some of the things I read when I click on these Israeli links. I find the personal comments interesting, but when it comes to the big issues facing the country, issues of life and death, the comments and observations all seem to be hard line. There is understandable anger over such things as suicide murders and condemnations from foreign governments. There is understandable frustration. There is understandable impatience.

But there is little if any expression of ideas or discussion of what can be done to solve the problems that Israel faces. Perhaps there are Israeli blogs where that kind of commentary and analysis and proposals can be found - and when I find them, I may put some of them here as links. But I don’t find those kinds of posts on the Israeli blogs that are currently listed on this page.

On these blogs, I find such things as the age old argument about whether or not Israel is "occupying" the west bank and Gaza.

The same kind of ancient arguments of course emanate from the Palestinian side, but in both cases, my reaction and response is - are you nuts? Neither side can win such arguments because neither side will ever admit that it is wrong and the other side right.

So what on earth is the purpose of repeating, year after year, the same arguments that lead absolutely nowhere? The Arabs living on the west bank and Gaza are never going to agree that the Israeli presence is anything other than an "occupation." Why waste time and effort trying to prove otherwise? To whom? It’s an exercise in futility.

Surely the rhetorical effort should be to propose, to listen to proposals, to respond to proposals and not to keep re-stating the same arguments .

Yes, "Imshin" (Not a Fish) has every right to express her anger at what is going on in the Hague, just as the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz have the right to express their differing views on which side has the most compelling arguments about the controversial fence or wall.

I have made angry and frustrated comments on this blog about the idiocy of some of the Palestinian leaders and terrorist organizations. And those comments should be made. But expressions of anger and frustration and defiance alone will lead only to a continuation of the vicious cycle that has been ongoing for the life of the Jewish state.

Neither side can be defeated, and those that believe that the ultimate solution can only come from an understanding and admission on the part of the Palestinians that they have been defeated, are living in a fantasy world.

I don’t have any great words of wisdom to insert here. I’m just sounding off, expressing my frustration at the elusiveness of any solution. Today is my 75th birthday, and hope is fading of being around when a peaceful end to the conflict finally is reached.

But I’ll keep looking for hopeful signs, including what I find in Israeli blogs. And I’m going to start looking for Palestinian and other blogs that present reasonable thought and arguments. If I find any, even though this isn’t a "link type" blog, I may add a few more links.

Meanwhile, happy birthday to me and shalom.

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/27/2004 11:44:00 AM

 
VIEWS ON THE NEWS OF THE DAY

Just about every time a Molly Ivins op-ed piece appears in newspapers across the country, you can be sure that there’ll be letters from some conservatives asking why such "drivel" is being published.

Once in a while, papers print such letters, but lucky for us, they also keep printing Molly Ivins.

The lady’s a national treasure. Without being mean - though the aforementioned complaining conservatives consider her very appearance in their newspaper an act of meanness - she provides little informational gems that you just don’t see anywhere else.

Today, she lets us in on a gem among gems. In President Bush’s economic report to Congress, he proposed re-classifying fast food chains from the service sector to "manufacturing!!!"

It’s a scam, but politically, it’s a brilliant idea - if they can sneak it through. The administration can point to all of the new jobs being created in "manufacturing" at such factories as MacDonald’s Burger Builders Inc., and Kentucky Crafts.

Where were the headlines about that story in the (according to the Rush-Man), liberal press?
_______________________________

Alan Greenspan is a wizened old man who lives in a world of numbers totally disconnected from the world of humans and animal critters.

In his world, everything can be worked out, or predicted or explained by the manipulation of some of those numbers.

His latest such effort, suggesting that social security be reduced for future retirees as a way to help control the deficit caused by you know what and you know who, should be a signal that it’s time to send the old man back to his number world and cancel the passport that allows him to keep coming back to Congress to read his pronouncements and predictions set in fourteen point type. (Have you ever noticed how few lines there are on each page that he reads from when reporting to congressional committees)?

The irony is that just before he came up with this particular gem (not to be confused with an Ivins type of Gem), Mr. Bush announced that he was going to re-appoint him to run his numerological world when his current four year term expires in June.

So it’s bad news, (silly pronouncements), and good news (Bush is stuck with him, right through the November elections).
______________________________

"The Passion" has opened around the country and will be opening in theaters around the world - probably including Israel, though there are those protesting that it should not be shown there.

It’s going to make a lot of money for Mel Gibson.

Though I haven’t seen the film and will not see the film, I will be commenting from time to time on other people’s comments and on Gibson himself.

Today, only two brief comments. When Gibson was asked by Diane Sawyer if he was anti-Semitic, his primary answer was that it was a sin - that it was against his religion. But wasn’t it a part of his Catholic religion for centuries? And where, in his religion, is anti-Semitism classified as a sin? It’s confusing. I’ve listened to and read a number of his statements on sensitive subjects and I have no clear idea what the man believes.

This morning, listening to the radio, I heard the film described by people - including the program host - as bringing the "reality" of the events described in the bible home to them.

I cannot tell you how dismayed I am that people are accepting a dramatization based on biblical writings and other works, as "reality."

That’s about as logical an interpretation as believing that any character one sees on the screen is that character.

I heard a lot of other things that disturbed and dismayed me too, but I’ll hold off. They’ll require a lot more space than I care to devote to the topic today.
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Whether or not religion should enter our public schools in any fashion is a hot button subject.

Over in England, where there is a state religion - Church of England - religion has always been taught or in one way or another observed, in the national school system. But now, the folks who put together the curricula for Britain’s schools are suggesting that non-religious beliefs, such as atheism and agnosticism, be taught as part of religious education.

They are suggesting it be taught to reflect the reality of belief in the country - that a great many people simply do not believe in God or religion and that their views should be "taken seriously."

I can’t imagine that such an idea could take hold here. At least not at the moment. With the current administration, and the Gibson film as a lead story on radio and television news and on the front pages of newspapers across the country, it’s going in the opposite direction.

But it’s refreshing to see common sense across the pond. They are our first cousins, so maybe we’ll think about following their example some time in the future.
________________________________

The race is wide open in Illinois to replace retiring first term Senator Peter Fitzgerald, and the primary season polls are discouraging to say the least. The leading Democrat is Blair Hull, a multi-millionaire political unknown who is spending millions of his own money and had been flooding the airways with television and radio ads. No one knows the first damned thing about him, but because he’s been able to buy name recognition, the polls say he’s the leading candidate.

The same thing seems to be happening on the Republican side, where the leader is someone who has been advertising for months.

I suppose the only potential bright spot in this otherwise sad story, is that several past candidates have tried to "buy" primary elections and have been rejected at the polling place.

Let’s hope the minority of eligible voters who vote in the primaries this March, will have actually taken the time to find out who the candidates are, and will make their decision based on a little more than name recognition.

In my February 10, 2004 post on this blog, I made mention of the Australian voting system which compels you to vote after you reach the age of 18 or you’ll be fined. I said then it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to enact that kind of legislation here - and now I’ll say it again. Do we really want to force people to vote under the threat of being fined, when their only criterion for supporting a candidate is their recognition of his or her name?

I think not. We’ve got enough troubles in our political system without forcing Boobus Americanus to join in.


posted by Jeff Smith at 2/26/2004 02:28:00 PM

 
LOST IN TRANSLATION

Gotta take a break from the real world for a day. I need to recover from an overdose of Gibson/Bush/Nader et al..

But I don’t want to leave my blog postless on a week day, so………

I’ve been hanging on to a piece of spam mail for a few weeks now. Normally, I’d just delete it, but it intrigued me because it seemed to be offering FREE cable, and that sounded like a pretty good offer. So I appeal to all linguists everywhere.

What the $#@*xx/"#% is this saying?????


Free CableTV!No more pay!
intendant grist separate turn poliomyelitis intrinsic contradictory backyard bookish stamen prof muon inelegant ali exemption frighten environ able petroleum sheehan cart delicious kilgore memorable effusion
uninominal windward latus guerdon intensive bypass fauna friend hummock avuncular arthritis danny corpora bator prolong cooky
eisenhower nicaragua bromine marble moon aug duty cometh slavonic psychopath circular decile fritillary confirmation crypt sidecar summarily walsh jiggle motorcycle
wily castle clamorous bowman erratic narbonne dynastic homework bootlegger snook tuesday bypath carolingian orient bellboy footpad anaheim abed catcall gunplay euler announce breach continent
nee trw boastful mettlesome checkerboard muon clergy conjecture blush psycho heuristic fleshy mckinley
summon beginning carpathia abram astrophysics terminate catskill druid edematous vacuolate telefunken congo sulk nomograph duplicate corroborate cub delphinium peaceful picnicked budge signpost extricate bundy chump alteration performance pedestrian burbank odessa processor calamitous malton nave behest andesine beauteous
whether inflict regret appendix digest cantaloupe ago successive raze whimsic extoller cambodia downing batten caracas clubhouse contralateral technology amalgamate fiendish petrol bullet angling catechism purport conference invective bicentennial diaper declarator bad convene crt friable gateway cornish
clamp billiken intervene glassware aps righteous boeotian chat converse prototype privy monoid horace neurosis
scholastic luxurious locknut stella astrophysical carlton buxton absorb cholera gigacycle idiotic blank wino margin madam dim aug stud composition atrium stupefy comparator chickadee fe camouflage sift ferromagnetic buttonweed arsenide bitch celerity
evelyn derrick biracial elegiac nitroglycerine befuddle pine chalkboard alliance oblivious badinage bedside backlash labrador
howell bifurcate picnicker r bulk davit champlain hypocrite bruegel primrose clarendon garland threefold embassy chlorinate cuisine dance cupidity hadley awash pastor levis caribou crazy whimsic platelet dirge lagos surreal cocoa donor offbeat mullah cady woodbury molybdenum onset
__________________________

And if this is some kind of incantation that turns you into a frog with multiple itchy warts, I'm sorry. I truly am.
posted by Jeff Smith at 2/25/2004 09:26:00 PM

 
VACILLATING ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE

When it comes to the question of "gay" marriage, I feel like one of those who make up the mystery numbers in political polls - the undecided.

In case you’re wondering if I’ve put quotes around the wrong word in that sentence, I haven’t. It’s just that I have a bit of a problem with the word "gay." When I was a young fellow - and that’s a long time ago, homosexuals were called homosexuals. They were also called a lot of other names, most of them derogatory, but "gay" wasn’t one of them.

I don’t know when homosexuals began calling themselves "gay," but I’ve never been totally comfortable with their co-opting of the word. It makes one hesitant to use it in its original sense for fear of being misunderstood.

I’m reasonably comfortable with the word "marriage" and my understanding of its meaning. In western societies - actually in most of the world’s societies - it means a legal joining between a man and a woman, forming a family unit. In many cases, it is also accompanied or confirmed by a religious or other form of ritual, but in our American society - and that’s what this particular commentary is about - it is always a legal arrangement. It requires the parties to obtain a marriage license from a legal authority. If the parties later wish to dissolve the marriage, it can only be done through the courts - a legal process.

An important aspect of marriage as it is understood in our society, is procreation. It doesn’t occur in all marriages of course and marriage isn’t necessary for procreation to take place, but traditional partners in marriage are appropriately suited to produce offspring in two ways.

One is that the children of a legal marriage are considered "legitimate" and have legal rights. The other is that the marriage partners are physically designed to procreate. One has a penis. The other a vagina.

Homosexual men and women are now suggesting that our understanding of marriage be extended to same sex partners. Penis and penis. Vagina and vagina.

The assertion is that people of the same sex who are devoted to each other spiritually, and to the extent that is possible - physically - should be afforded the same legal rights as people of the opposite sex who have made similar commitments. In other words, to "marry" each other.

Those advocating such a change in our understanding of marriage, say that it is discriminatory to forbid them to legalize their same sex unions and in support of their legal and moral arguments, they compare their inability to marry to other forms of past discrimination which have disappeared.

I’m not too comfortable with the comparisons they make or with the weight of the arguments. Past restrictions against blacks or inter-racial or inter-faith marriage, were illogical to begin with. Getting rid of them - to the extent that we have gotten rid of them - simply needed us to come to that realization.

I don’t think you can describe the accepted understanding of marriage as a union between a man and a woman as illogical. It has, over the years, become the basic unit of family. It is the means by which we establish our heritage, our blood lines, our stability.

I am willing to accept the fact that homosexuality is not a matter of choice. That people are born that way. That they can only find spiritual and sexual fulfillment with someone of the same sex. And that because of their sexual orientation, life presents them with certain disadvantages that are not faced by heterosexuals.

But I am not convinced that there is a compelling argument for turning one of the pillars of civilized society on its ear, just to remove one of those disadvantages and to place homosexual marriage on the same plane as heterosexual marriage. In my view, there is a societal danger in any attempt to define the abnormal as normal, and whether or not one accepts the idea that homosexuality is a matter of birth, not choice, it is still a sexual aberration - nature taking a wrong turn

On the other hand, I am convinced that it would be a bad idea to attempt to amend the constitution to define marriage as being permissible only between a man and a woman and I think the president’s call for just that is purely a political act, surrendering to his base - the evangelical religious right. You know - the folks waiting for the "rapture."

I don’t know what the response should be to homosexuals wishing to "marry," and that’s a bit unusual for this opinionated commentator. As I've indicated, my inclination is to say that it isn’t a good idea. Homosexuals may have been dealt a difficult hand to play, but that doesn’t mean that they have some sort of automatic right to get a new deal from a new deck just because others are holding better cards.

I haven’t thought this through enough to come down conclusively on one side of the argument or the other, and I’m sure the gay community isn’t waiting with bated breath to see what "what’s all this then" has to say on the subject. But it’s an interesting area of debate and I may come back to it on a slow news day….





posted by Jeff Smith at 2/24/2004 07:58:00 PM

 
THE NADER THAT WON’T GO AWAY

"Sixty Minutes" is a pre-taped program. Even the introductions and Andy Rooney’s commentary are all pre-taped. It’s not the place to look for breaking news.

But yesterday was one Sunday when I wish the program had been live, so crusty old curmudgeon Rooney could have added a third self righteous "nut case" to the two that were the subject of his commentary. Mel Gibson, of course, and Pat Robertson, who claims that God has given him an inside tip on next November’s election - Bush in a walk. Andy wondered if Pat would convert to atheism if Bush loses.

I’m not a great fan of Rooney’s, but I find that we often agree on certain issues, and we are in total agreement on the mental condition of Messrs. Robertson and Gibson.

Which is why I wish the program had been live, because Andy would surely have added the man who once again revealed himself as one of America’s premium nut cases during his appearance on Meet The Press earlier in the day.

I speak of course, of the man who has given new meaning to the word "arrogance," the newest "candidate" for the presidency, Ralph Nader.

Is there anything more dangerous than someone with a messianic vision who is blinded to everything but the certainty of his or her own rectitude, and can reach large numbers of the public with messages of that vision? If there is, I don’t ever want to have to face it.

Nader gave the last election to Bush. There’s no question about it. You can argue that it was the supreme court. You can blame the hanging chads and the people who punched in a vote for Pat Buchannan thinking they were voting for Gore.

But it was the hundreds of thousands of votes across the nation that went to Nader that tipped the scales for Bush. Without Nader, how many of the votes that he got do you think would have gone to Bush? Does zero sound about right to you?

Now the great savior of American democracy is at it again. He rails against those trying to persuade him not to run. He calls those who created a web site urging him not to run, the "liberal elite."

Well, I didn’t help to create that web site and I’m not a member of the "liberal elite," but if I could reach Nader, I too would try to persuade him not to run, but it would be a waste of time. Nader isn’t listening to anyone or anything but his inner voice.

The arrogance of the man is beyond belief. His reason for running is to "retire George Bush!!" That’s what he told Tim Russet. He is running to unseat George Bush!!

Nader makes some valid points about things that are wrong in Washington, though he goes overboard when he says that both parties are total captives of evil corporate interests.

But if he really has the fire in his belly to try to achieve change, why on earth doesn’t he put his effort into things that are possible - even if remotely so?

If he really believes that the two major parties are too corrupt to ever reform and that the only way to change things is to have a third party that can challenge the status quo, why doesn’t he work, year round, to build such a party? Why not work year round to elect local officials and representatives and senators from that third party? Work from the bottom, up. Then, perhaps, he could have legitimate reason to ask to be that third party’s nominee for the presidency.

Instead, he presents himself every four years - I sure hope it isn’t going to be every four years - and says, the country is rotten, but I know how to fix it and I can solve all our problems from the top down. Like a "trickle down" theory of governance. Haven’t we heard that idea somewhere before?

But all a Nader candidacy can do is cause harm. It will do as much good as the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to make a point - and changed nothing. It will do as much good as the madmen around the world who commit mass murder by suicide to make some kind of political or philosophical or religious point - and achieve nothing.

Am I being harsh in making such comparisons? I don’t think so. These are also people to whom appeals to reason would fall on deaf ears. They see only the righteousness of their cause. Nader is no different. If you watched his appearance on Meet The Press yesterday, you saw a man who has been consumed by his own ego and it has encased him in a shell of messianic righteousness that is impervious to appeals to reason or compromise..

Political pundits say that Nader will not have a big effect this time around - that Democrats are so angry at Bush and so determined to remove him from office, that few will waste their vote on Ralph the crusader.

I hope they’re right, but a word here to those who voted for him in 2000 and the inevitable few (I hope it’ll be few) who will vote for him this year.

You folks are just as responsible as he is for the administration that is in power and that you obviously abhor. You put Mr. Bush in the White House four years ago, and if enough of you want to try to make a "statement" this year, you could conceivably do it again.

So let me offer the same advice that I would I extend to your leader if he would only listen. He won’t, but maybe you will. If you want change, start building from the bottom up. Elect independent or third party congressmen and senators. It is impossible to achieve change from the top down. You will never be able to elect a president from outside of the two major parties without doing the hard work of providing a base on which he or she can run.

If you’ve read this blog before, you know that I’m not a great believer in religion . Nonetheless, there is a prayer that I suggest you learn and try to integrate its message into your lives. It will help keep you sane. It might even persuade you to use your precious vote to help elect someone who can actually make a difference in your life and the life of this country. That person is not Ralph Nader.

The prayer goes like this.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and grant me the wisdom to know the difference.

Amen.

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/23/2004 01:24:00 PM

 
FRIDAY POT POURRI

Eventually we’ll have a Democratic presidential candidate to oppose George Bush in November, and barring a draft Gore movement taking hold at the Democratic nominating convention, it looks like it will be a John - Kerry or Edwards.

I don’t know much about either of them, but it would seem that Kerry has more of an appropriate background to be the challenger.

A lot of people have been comparing Edwards to Clinton in terms of campaigning ability - but I think the comparison falls short. Clinton served as governor of Arkansas for twelve years. He graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in International Affairs and attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship before going on to Yale to get a law degree.

Edwards is a first term senator who made a fortune as a personal injury attorney. He likes to tell stories about how he came from humble beginnings and had to overcome adversity, and how big time corporate attorneys looked down on him when he walked into court to battle them on behalf of his clients. And he likes to say how he triumphed over those big time attorneys. But he neglects to say that the reason he triumphed is that he had clients who had lost limbs or who were paralyzed or needed life time care after some horrible accident or medical malpractice. That’s an area of law practice where one’s ability to generate the right kind of clients is probably more important than courtroom skills.

I haven’t heard much of his stump speeches, but I have heard the one phrase that disqualifies him in my mind as someone I would vote for in a primary. That’s the one where he says he can beat George Bush in the West and in the North and in the East…. And, talkin’ lak this (with an exaggerated southern accent) in the south.

Any candidate who thinks he deserves my vote because of his accent, had better look elsewhere for support.

I’m not that enamored with everything that Kerry’s been saying either and maybe I’ll address that at a later date.

But today is pot pourri day.
_______________________

I don’t know whether former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, is guilty of all or some or none of the charges leveled against him yesterday.

But I do know that it is ridiculous to treat a man who has been indicted but not found guilty of anything and who is surrendering to authorities in response to that indictment and in order to post bond, as someone who needs to be handcuffed before being escorted into a courtroom to enter his plea. No one had to arrest him. He appeared voluntarily. No one handcuffed him and led him into the congressional hearing where he testified about the same matters for which he has now been indicted.

What was the point of the handcuffs?

The same thing occurred with Michael Jackson. He arrived to answer charges filed against him in a private plane. He wasn’t going anywhere but to the courthouse, yet he was handcuffed before being placed in a police car that had been sent to pick him up at the airport.

What was the point of his handcuffs?

I can only speculate that both were attempts to humiliate and to make statements. We don’t care how well known or important or wealthy you are, we want the world to know that you are no better than anyone else we indict and arrest.

Oh really?

As I have written here before, I was once indicted by the Federal government on phony charges that were swiftly thrown out of court. Nonetheless, it required surrender to the authorities. I went to the appropriate office accompanied by an attorney. I signed a document and left. All in a matter of minutes. There were no cameras to film me in handcuffs. There were no handcuffs!!

I was a nobody. I think Jeff Skilling and Michael Jackson would have been grateful if they had indeed been treated like anyone else who gets indicted and arrested. Like nobodies.
_____________________

If Gary Barnett gets fired from the University of Colorado, I will shed no tears. His remarks at a press conference about a female athlete who claimed she had been raped by a CU football player, weren’t just inappropriate, they were off the inappropriateness scale!!

I’m not too surprised that some of his players and former players are coming forward to say nice things about him, but I’m a little surprised and disappointed that Northwestern University felt that it needed to step into the fray and say that Gary was a good boy when he coached in Evanston, Illinois.

He got the Wildcats to a bowl game as Big Ten champs and I guess Northwestern felt it owed him for that. But all the time he was here (I live a few minutes from the NW campus), there was speculation about him leaving for greener pastures. Will he leave or will he stay? The question came up year after year - and Gary would leave it hanging until what seemed like the last possible moment, and then make some noble sounding statement about fulfilling his obligations and loving his job and other assorted bits of rhetorical nonsense.

But when the right job came along, he left, and some people got the impression that that’s what he had planned to do for all the years he was at NU.

The other day, on a radio program in Chicago, they were talking about Gary and the host wondered out loud if he would hire Barnett if he was a college president. He couldn’t make up his mind, but a side kick on the program chimed in and said that she wouldn’t hire him. Why? Because he’d leave!!

____________________________

The visitor from Ickscobania could barely speak English but the radio and television had been on all day and he kept hearing "Maddux" and "eight million dollars a year."

Finally, he was able to make his questions understood. It took a lot of repetition and sign language and resorting to more than one English/Ickscobanian dictionary, but.the end result was something like this.

"This Maddux, he is a great scientist, yes?"

"No."

"He has invented something wonderful to benefit all mankind?"

"No."

"He is perhaps an American Solomon? The wisest man in America?"

"No."

"Please tell me what he does to be paid so handsomely - more than the Ickscobanian gross national product"?

"He throws a ball."

"What?"

"He throws a ball."

"You make fun of my English, yes?"

"No."

"But you say he throws a ball, no?"

"Yes."

"And for this he gets paid eight million dollars a year?"

"Yes."

It’s hard to describe the look on his face as he turned and ran as though being chased by demons, but it was something along the lines of - "Oh my God, I am in the land of madmen. I must return to Ickscobania before I am infected."

________________________

There’ll be more comments here about Mel Gibson and his "Passion" film. For one thing, I will be responding to some of the things that Michael Medved said in his Jerusalem Post article on the subject. Meanwhile, when is Gibson going to say publicly that his father’s anti-Semitic views are garbage?

The longer he avoids doing so, the less I’m inclined to believe that his motives for making this movie are as noble as he claims.

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/20/2004 02:46:00 PM

 
THOSE DARNED PURPLE PILL ADS

If I was an attorney (perish the thought), I would organize a handful of doctors to be plaintiffs in a class action law suit.

Who would they be suing? Every pharmaceutical company that advertises a product on television that can only be acquired through a doctor’s prescription - and urges the viewer to "ask your doctor."

The doctors’ suit would allege conspiracy to drive them nuts and suborning the fraudulent practice of medicine.

The first part of the complaint is obvious. The number of these commercials seem to be increasing exponentially and they’re pretty persuasive. Imagine the chaos if viewers began responding to them in the kind of numbers the pharmaceutical companies would like to see.

Doctors would be deluged with phone calls and visits from people who just want to ask questions about a drug they’ve learned about on television . Patients with actual medical problems would have to wait weeks for appointments, and most likely, a whole flock of them will expire before the besieged doctors can fit them in. Surgical procedures would be disrupted because surgeons would be paged every few minutes to answer phone calls from insistent patients. Psychiatrists would be overwhelmed by their MD and DO colleagues needing help to cope with the stress and strain of excessive patient questioning.

The medical profession would be in a state of chaos.

Eventually, most of these doctors would probably leave the practice of medicine and I wouldn’t blame them.

The second part of the complaint concerns what many of these drug promoting ads tell patients to do. They say, tell your doctor (after you’ve driven him crazy with your phone calls and questions), if you have this or that ailment, or this or that contraindication to taking a particular medicine. Isn’t that something your doctor should be telling you? If the doctor is your doctor, he or she should be telling you what your medical condition is, not the other way round.

What these ads are saying is that you should present your doctor with a diagnosis of the medical condition that might benefit from the drug being pitched and that you should inform him (or her), of problems that could arise if you take the drug. Because you have a liver problem. Or a kidney problem. Or you’re taking some other drug that your doctor doesn’t know about that would be dangerous to use in conjunction with the drug they want you to take.

That’s pretty close to suggesting that you practice medicine. In your doctor’s office yet.

It should be a federal offense, but I’d settle for squeezing a few billion out of the pharmaceutical giants in a class action law suit. The docs would get $19.95 each and six months supply of free samples. The lawyers, as usual, would get the rest.

I’m not sure why the pharmaceutical industry decided to concentrate on direct to the consumer advertising, but I have an idea that it has to do with what they can get away with on television that they can’t get away with elsewhere.

Years ago, all of the advertising for ethical drugs was in medical journals, and the claims that could be made for their efficacy and curative powers were restricted only by the advertising copywriter’s imagination. Then came a change in regulations. Ads for medical products had to include a "brief summary," which was not so brief, about all the bad things about the drug - the precautions and the contraindications, and how many people it killed..

Television advertising has no such requirement attached to it. Pharmaceutical companies can push the heck out of the value of their drugs and the only caveats that I assume they have to include, are the "ask your doctor" bit and the "tell your doctor if (fill in the blank)" bit. No brief summary required. And doctors are human. They see and hear the same ads. The names of the drugs get stuck in their mind. They respond to their patients. Specially insistent patients. Those drugs get prescribed more and more. And the pharmaceutical companies buy more television time.

The irony of all of this is that the companies by-passing the doctors and trying to persuade you to bug your doctor about a particular drug, are the same companies pouring as much money as they need to spend to prevent patients from buying those drugs somewhere where they don’t cost an arm and a leg - maybe just a thumb or a pinkie. Like in Canada.

That’s dangerous they say. The drugs could be bad. After all, we know that Canadians have been dying from bad drugs for years. We need to protect you from making bad decisions. We’re sure your doctors agree with us.

By the way, have you asked your doctor about the purple pill? Or maybe the new green one coming out next week? Go bug him. And don’t forget to give him your diagnosis of all your ailments.







posted by Jeff Smith at 2/19/2004 10:32:00 AM

 
WILL "THE PASSION" DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD?

I promise I won’t beat this subject to death, but at the moment, it’s difficult to avoid. I think it may soon take on proportions far beyond discussion of a motion picture.

I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised at how people can look at or hear the same thing and hear or see it so differently. I shouldn’t be that surprised, but I always am.

I had talk radio on in my car after I posted my comments on Gibson’s "The Passion" yesterday. Some of the people who called in didn’t see the same interview I saw. Some didn’t live through or study the same history that I’m familiar with. I’ll cite just two calls.

One caller jumped on Gibson’s "Schindler’s List" reference as an excellent illustration of why "The Passion" shouldn’t stir up feelings of anti-Semitism. The show host didn’t agree and tried to explain its irrelevance but didn’t do a very good job.

I saw"Schindler’s List." As far as I could tell, the movie didn’t depict Germans committing deicide two thousand years ago, leading to two thousand years of vilification and oppression of the German people. So seeing what the movie did depict, Germans vilifying and oppressing Jews, wasn’t likely to stir up old feelings of hatred that were never there in the first place. I mean, when was the last time you heard of Germans being subjected to a pogrom? Other than German Jews of course.

Another caller thought that Diane Sawyer was too hard on Gibson. There have been similar postings on the Internet. People thinking she was trying to trap him or attack him. I of course thought the opposite.

But apart from the arguments over whether or not the film is anti-Semitic or will stir up anti-Semitic feelings, I think it has the potential to do a lot more harm than good. As more and more people see it and as more and more people talk about it, I think the effect will be akin to picking away at a sore that has beleaguered mankind for centuries - the competing religions that separate us from each other and from those who don’t follow a religion or believe in a deity.

We are a world divided in many ways, and we are a nation that is painfully divided along political and economic lines. But the greatest division is that of religious belief.

In my reading of history, religion has been the cause of much more harm than good.

The good that religion does - the teaching of morality, the charitable work - all can be and is done without the benefit of religion.

The harm that springs from religious belief might still be inflicted upon a suffering humanity if there were no religions, but we’d have to go some to come up with equivalents for such noble pieces of history as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the clashes of Indian Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, the Irish "troubles," and the Holocaust.

I find it absolutely incredible that people can believe in something for which there is absolutely no proof and which can never be proved, and be so certain that what they believe is superior to what others may believe, that they are willing to kill those people - or, as we are now witnessing around the world, themselves to make a statement about their beliefs.

Our country has managed, painfully, to balance religious and secular life and belief, but the seeds of imbalance have always been there, lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be nurtured to full growth.

We have a lot of people, including some powerful people, who would like to make the United States a "Christian Country." There are those who want public schools to preach religious belief. There is an enormous reservoir of intolerance for minority religions, for agnostics and for atheists. It wasn’t that long ago when it was openly practiced in this country. But not in recent years. But I have no doubt that it is still there, simmering below the surface. "The Passion" may test how well we have it in check.

The interest in the film is growing in leaps and bounds. The ratings for the Gibson interview on Prime Time was one of the highest that program has ever had. Some people who have seen the film have said it was "life changing" and that number seems to be growing.

I think it’s possible that the cumulative result of very large numbers of people seeing "The Passion," and it being hailed as a seminal event in the history of the world, will be that different groups of people in this and other countries with significant Christian populations where it may be shown, will be moved further away from each other, and that some who see the film will have increased disdain for people who do not believe as they do.

I often kid my wife about wanting to wear a T-shirt, with the words "I thought I was wrong once" on the front and "But I was mistaken" on the back.

Boy, do I hope I’m wrong on this one and not mistaken about being wrong either!


posted by Jeff Smith at 2/18/2004 02:15:00 PM

 
IMPRESSIONS OF THE DIANE SAWYER MEL GIBSON INTERVIEW

Towards the end of the interview, Sawyer asked Gibson if he would be making more films like Lethal Weapon. He said he doubted it. He might not make any films at all. He might just disappear somewhere.

But all I could see and think of as he was giving his rambling answer, was Gibson in that Lethal Weapon movie acting like a madman. "You wanna see crazy? I’ll show you crazy."

From the beginning to the end of the interview, my impression of Gibson was a man teetering on the edge of some kind of madness.

Describing his past, he said that he had been an addict. That he could and did become addicted to anything. He didn’t say so, but it became clear that he is still an out of control addict, but now his addiction is religious fervor.

The man believes that every word in the Bible is literally true. He said so. With a straight face.

But he also said that "The Passion" represented his version of the gospels and those aspects that he wanted to present!! His truth, which to him is incontrovertible.

I watched the interview because I have been following all of the discussion that has been going on about the film and I wanted to get an idea of what Gibson believed and why he made the film. The question of why he made the film wasn’t really explored - at least not to my satisfaction - but Gibson’s beliefs I think were rather clearly revealed in his peculiar answers to some of Sawyer’s questions.

Of course, some of Sawyer’s questions were peculiar too.

She asked him if he was anti-Semitic, which is a little like asking a murder suspect if he committed the murder. "Oh sure Diane. I’m glad you asked. I was waiting for just this kind of opportunity to confess on national television."

No, he’s not anti-Semitic, he said. Anti-Semitism is a sin. It’s against his religion. Even though it was a part of his religion for two thousand years. You know. Those perfidious Jews.

He was asked if the Jews killed Jesus. He didn’t answer directly. He said; "Jesus was a child of Israel, among other children of Israel. There were Jews and Romans in Israel. There were no Norwegians there. The Jewish Sanhedrin, and those who all they held sway over — and the Romans — were the material agents of his demise."
.
In other words, yes, the Jews did it.

He was prompted about the Romans and Pontius Pilate who had ordered the execution of thousands of Jews by crucifixion. Yes, he acknowledged the cruelty of Pontius Pilate, who he described as "as much of a monster as anyone." Which I took to mean, as much of a monster as the Jews that the film portrays as crying out for Christ’s death. What else could Gibson have meant by making such a statement in the context of who killed Jesus?

He then said that "we were all" responsible for the death of Christ and that Christians were as responsible as anyone - even though Christianity had yet to be introduced as a religion.

She asked him if he thought the film would stir up anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews .He didn’t think so and as part of a rambling answer said that he had seen Schindler’s List, a film in which Germans did terrible things, but that he didn’t come away hating Germans.

He obviously thought that was some kind of appropriate analogy!!

I have no expertise in psychology or similar disciplines, but the impression that I got from that and other answers was that Gibson has black and white religious and political beliefs that, for whatever reason, he attempts to couch in shades of gray.

I’m not sure why he did the interview. It could be for publicity. He financed the film with his own money, but now it looks like it will make a handsome profit. The controversy hasn’t hurt. The more criticism and dismay that comes from Jewish voices, the more evangelical Christians and others who believe as Gibson does, will want to see the film. Maybe that was Gibson’s distribution plan from the beginning. I don’t know.

I think I do know why he gave Diane Sawyer an exclusive. He hasn’t opened screenings of the film to Jews other than a few who have been referred to as "tokens," and he hasn’t engaged in any debates over the intent and potential impact of "The Passion" with any Jewish scholars. But he’s willing to be interviewed by someone who isn’t known for asking the tough questions and not letting the interviewee avoid answering them. And Diane didn’t disappoint him or me.

It was close to the end of the interview when she brought up the name of Hutton Gibson, the notorious holocaust denier and all around nut. Gibson simply refused to talk about him. "They" were trying to put a wedge between him and his father and he wasn’t going to allow it. He was "tight" with his father and "he wasn’t going to go there," meaning no questions about the anti-Semitic dad. Sawyer let him get away with it.

Gibson claims that he is not anti-Semitic, and I have no reason not to believe him. There are people who can commit blatantly anti-Semitic acts or make blatantly anti-Semitic statements, and have no idea that they are doing so, and Gibson may be one of those people. If his film is indeed anti-Semitic in its portrayal of the Jews of the region and period, it is possible that Gibson doesn’t realize it.

But it doesn’t quite jibe with the way he defends his father and his beliefs, as he did in an interview with the Reader’s Digest and in other interviews.

You would think that it wouldn’t be a contradiction for him to profess love for his father and defend him as a caring parent, while condemning his evil beliefs. Or as a religious Christian might say, hate the sin, love the sinner.

Other people will come away with a different impression of the interview than mine.

There are already people on line saying that he did a good job of deflecting accusations of anti-Semitic intent and consequence. And of course there are people on line saying that it’s ridiculous to read anything anti-Semitic into the film’s portrayal or to believe that it will arouse anti-Semitic sentiments. Their views are as valid as mine.

Whether intended or accidental, anti-Semitism, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder, and most often seen differently through Jewish and non-Jewish eyes.

My final impression of the interview is that Gibson is a religious zealot who believes that he is being guided by a higher power, that his "truths" are the only truths, and that he has a mission to enlighten the rest of us with his version of those truths.

Taken to extremes, that could be someone screaming "God is Great" as he blows himself to bits in order to murder others that believe differently.

I guess we should all be grateful that Mel Gibson is an American and a Christian

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/17/2004 02:31:00 PM

 
BUSH RECORDS CONFUSING. SO IS THE INTERNET!!

The Bush Vietnam period military service flap doesn’t seem to want to go away, and now the White House is doing its best to complicate matters.

I served in the military more than the 30 years ago when Mr. Bush did his National Guard time - and it was in the British army, not the American.

But I’m wondering if the President doesn’t wish that he had served in a unit more like the one I served in.

I have my discharge papers. Most ex-servicemen and women would hang on to those.

But payroll records? Dental records???

I presume Mr. Bush was able to get his from the National Personnel Records Center, where they keep records for anyone who served in the military in the 20th century, but apparently their release has only served to confuse the issue further.

I had a different experience involving military records.

About ten years ago, I was inspired to look into the possibility that I may have had some benefits coming from the British army that I never applied for.

There were a couple of different kinds of benefits, and one, they said, I most certainly would have received before I was discharged. Well, said I, I don’t recall getting any such benefit, so let’s let the record speak for itself. The payroll record.

This exchange was through written correspondence, but I could almost hear the laughter that must have consumed whoever typed or dictated the response to that suggestion.

Payroll records? After all these years? You must be kidding. Payroll records are destroyed seven years after a person is discharged. Medical records too.

Just think, if the US services operated the same way, all we’d have to examine would be Dubya’s discharge papers, which I’m sure he has, and his word about when and where he served. And the controversy would eventually go away. As it needs to. It’s just not an issue
_____________________________________________

I said I was going to make some comments on the Internet and some of the things that I find there, so here goes.

I’ll start with Google.

I get a regular e-mail Newsletter called Site Pro News. It’s aimed at people doing business on the Internet, so I’m not sure exactly why I get it, but it’s occasionally interesting, so I let it keep coming.

Lately, the Newsletter has been expressing concern over changes that Google makes from time to time in its searching parameters. Apparently, the changes that it made in recent weeks has had an effect on where commercial companies show up when a search involving things or services that they sell is under way.

Companies that were showing up high on the list of search responses, were suddenly much lower or not showing up at all!!

Since I’m not selling anything with my two little web sites, this news didn’t bother me, but I decided nonetheless to see what Site Pro was talking about.

I went to Google . Actually, I was already in Google, since I use it as my home page - something I might re-consider since I also have the Google tool bar to knock out pop up ads, and having that and the full Google page, is really overkill.

Anyway, I typed in some things that I’ve written about and that I know produced a Google search result in the past.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

It’s as though I’ve moved off the face of the Internet. Even my whatsallthisthen URL almost couldn’t be found. Now my ego was feeling bruised, so I went to Dogpile and typed in a subject. It did show up on Yahoo and Alta Vista, so I felt a little better. But it’s still confusing.

For example, back in Google, I typed in "consumer stories."
From an alleged 4,100,000 results, my consumerstories.
blogspot site comes up number sixteen, and a virtual
duplicate of that site, home.comcast.net/~gazink, which is
my Comcast personal web page with pages that need to be accessed with links if you’re in my blogspot site, comes up as number twenty four. Out of four million!!!

Go figure.

Then there’s the Google page rank, the little row of green dots. Ten of them. How many light up when your site is on the screen, tells you how Google "ranks" the site. Presumably, the higher the ranking, the higher on a list of search results you’ll appear if someone is looking for something that shows up in your site.

Google considers this site a 4. Out of 10. Not bad I guess. I’m not promoting the site to anyone.

But just for the hell of it, I nosed around to see how other sites compare.

The rankings may make sense to Google, but none whatever to me.

For example, I like to run a quick check on the two English language Israeli papers on line. Haaretz, left leaning, and the Jerusalem Post, tilted in the other direction. Haaretz gets a big fat 7 ranking. The Jerusalem Post - 2!! Is Google making a political statement? Is one paper that much more important than the other? (I find them both first class newspapers).

Another search, for a particular name, turned up a page that said it was a place holder for the name. Nothing else. Google ranked that as a 2!! Same as the Jerusalem Post!!!

At the risk of repeating myself, go figure!!
_____________________________________

Sadly, while quickly checking the two aforementioned Israeli newspapers this morning, I came upon this horror story about what was published in a Scottish newspaper in November of last year. The headline of the Haaretz story reads Worse than anti-Semitism

I have to agree.

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/16/2004 01:18:00 PM

 
ARAFAT’S FUNNY MONEY AND OTHER ITEMS

I guess I’m not quite ready to take a break from current news events. Not when the sort of news that’s being reported out of France at the moment catches my eye.

Yesterday it was the ban on wearing religious clothing in French public schools.

Today, it’s the news that the office of the Paris prosecutor is investigating an alleged transfer of 11.4 million bucks from Switzerland into bank accounts controlled by Suha Arafat - Yasser’s wife!!

According to the reports, the money flowed between July, 2002 and September, 2003 - a fourteen month period. That’s better than eight hundred grand a month.

Yasser Arafat’s alleged personal wealth and the bank accounts that he allegedly maintains around the world have been talked about and written about for years. Go into any search engine and take a look and you’ll get stories and news reports by the hundreds.

The amount of his personal fortune has been estimated as being as high as three billion dollars, and we know he didn’t acquire it by starting up a software company or winning a lottery. Unless you can consider heading up the Palestinian Authority and controlling all of its finances, including money pouring in from donor nations - the United States among them - as "winning the lottery."

Suha Arafat, a Palestinian Christian who is young enough to be Yasser’s daughter, might be considered a lottery prize for the aging PLO founder, but apparently a costly one. News reports put her monthly Paris allowance at around $100,000.

My interest in this story - and the reason I am commenting on it today - stems not so much from its substance - it’s only one of many stories about Arafat’s corrupt financial dealings - but from what was in the news report that was printed in today’s Chicago Tribune.

Attributed to the Associated Press, the headline read : French probe Arafat wife’s bank accounts. So far, so good.

There followed an article of close to 500 words, of which more than 200 were devoted to quoting Suha Arafat attacking Ariel Sharon!!! In fact, the lead sentence of the report reads:

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s wife said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is behind the media reports of a French probe into alleged transfer of millions of dollars to her bank accounts, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The story is supposed to be about the French investigation over possible money laundering, but the AP report is replete with ridiculous accusations from this woman who, during an appearance in GAZA with Hillary Clinton in 1999, said: "Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children."

The AP story even brought in the ongoing investigation of a deal involving Sharon’s son Gilad, and the possibility that Sharon himself had done something illegal.

It makes me wonder what is going on here. What the hell has an internal Israeli investigation got to do with a French probe into possible money laundering by Arafat? What would be the purpose of the Associated Press reporting the story, virtually from the point of view of the person being investigated, who is known for making outrageous and obviously untrue accusations against Israelis?

I can imagine what Mrs Arafat’s purpose was in making her nutty statements. She was following the ancient admonition that a good offense is the best defense. And it seems to be working. Even Haaretz, in one of its editions, gave a passing reference to her "Sharon did it" defense. But in a short paragraph. Not as the underlying theme of the story.

I suppose in the cockeyed world of the Middle East, one can expect cockeyed reporting on almost any story.

But this one reads more like the attribution should be something like Al-Jazeera, not Associated Press.
____________________________________________

A couple more comments about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Mr. Sharon may not be guilty of anything illegal in connection with his son’s business dealings, but from where I sit, he’s guilty of bad judgment if he authorized the recent incursion into Gaza that resulted in 14 Palestinian deaths. Maybe there aren’t pictures to demonstrate that the deaths are as dramatic and heart wrenching as a bus being blown up by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem , but the loss of life is just as horrifying.

I don’t understand it. Mr. Sharon says that the Gaza settlements will be withdrawn. He and other also use the fence around the Gaza strip as an argument in favor of the fence being built along and beyond the green line. Terrorist bombers don’t come from Gaza, he says. Because there’s a fence. It keeps them out. So why is the IDF going into Gaza and causing deaths that Sharon must know will result in another suicide bombing?
_________________________________________________

Finally, an Israeli soldier has been charge with manslaughter in the death of British "activist," 22 year old Tom Hurndall . Hurndall was shot in the head in the Gaza strip last April and died in London in January.

I have sympathy for his family. I have sympathy for the Israeli soldier who shot him, apparently without sufficient cause, and he will likely be incarcerated for the act.

But this was and is a war situation and it is difficult to have sympathy for Hurndall and others who believe that they can help one of the most complicated situations the world has ever known by acting as a "buffer" between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.

I don’t want to see any of these pro-Palestinian sympathizers killed, but it’s surprising that more haven’t lost their lives when they place themselves in front of tanks and armored vehicles that are engaged in a military action.

Maybe I’d have more sympathy for these high minded young folk if some of them would ride buses regularly in Jerusalem and TelAviv and other Israeli cities, wearing T-shirts or jackets with markings that clearly identified them as peace activists trying to be a buffer between Israelis and Palestinians.

And I wonder how strong the call would be for someone to be put on trial for their deaths when one of those buses got blown to pieces by a madman.




posted by Jeff Smith at 2/13/2004 04:12:00 PM

 
THE FRENCH GET IT RIGHT - FOR A CHANGE

I have no great love for the French, even though I have a few French relatives, and I thoroughly enjoyed my one and only visit to France - a week-end in Paris many years ago.

There’s more than one reason for my current displeasure with the French, but the one that bothers me the most is the rampant anti-Semitism that exists there.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere. Somehow, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has given cover to the Jew haters of the world, who have never gone away. They’ve just been quiescent because it was politic to be so. But now, anti-Semitism has again become fashionable and the haters have crawled out from under their rocks. And nowhere in the western world is it worse than in France, where authorities deal with it with a wink and a nod.

I had to get that statement on the record before going on because I’m about to agree with and support a position that France has taken that many people think is blatantly discriminatory against some of its citizens.

I’m speaking of the decision to forbid the wearing of religious attire in French public schools. That covers Jewish yalmakes, Sikh turbans and Muslim head scarves. And Christians are banned from bringing large crosses to school. I guess little crosses worn around the neck are O.K.

The Muslim and Sikh communites are up in arms about this.

I’m not sure about French Jews. Considering the current atmosphere in France that I have described, I would think that Jewish kids would prefer not to wear something that would identify them as being Jewish. Not that their fellow students wouldn’t already know that they’re Jewish, but walking on the streets of French cities without wearing something that screams out to everyone they pass., "Hey, look at me, I’m a Jew," would probably lessen their chances of being insulted or assaulted by total strangers. The sort of thing that’s being reported as daily occurrences!!

The French say their motive is something akin to our policies of separation of church and state. They also say they don’t want segments of the French population isolating themselves from their fellow citizens. Their noble purpose is the full integration of all groups into French society.

I don’t much care what their motives are. I think they made a proper decision.

If there is one thing that has set people at each others throats throughout all of history, it is their competing religions. And today, surely nothing is worse than the world’s theocracies, where law is based upon beliefs that people held centuries ago, and where populations are taught and compelled to believe that theirs is the "true" religion and that those who don’t believe as they do are damned for all eternity.

We don’t even have to look to theocracies to find that kind of belief. Just the other day, I wrote about Evangelical Christians in the United States who have similar beliefs.

Religion sets people apart. In the democracies of the world, there’s not much that can be done about it other than to preach tolerance, but governments can take steps to keep conflicting religions from encroaching upon secular life.

The public schools are one place where they can accomplish that. To a great extent, we have been able to do it in this country, although there are always arguments about whether or not prayer should be allowed in public schools.

But here and in France and presumably in any democratic society where there is no "official" religion, there is nothing to stop the establishment of religious schools, where religious clothing can be worn and prayers can be recited. That’s where these things belong.

Even in democracies with an official religion, such as England (Church of England) and Israel (Orthodox Judaism), religious schools of just about any denomination can be established and kids can get their education there instead of in the public schools.

What the French government has proposed is a modified dress code, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It happens in schools and school districts all over the world. And unlike many of those dress codes which can be discriminatory, particularly to poor families that may have a hard time paying for the required items of clothing, the French dress code imposes no real hardship on anyone. They aren’t telling the kids what they must wear, just what they can’t wear.

French Muslims are crying discrimination, but there has been no suggestion of laws to ban the wearing of head scarves anywhere else. Just in the classroom. As far as I have been able to determine from reading reports of what the new law says, Muslim females who wish to do so, can still wear their scarves everywhere else, including the work place, even if that work place is a government office. And I would imagine the same applies to yalmakes and turbans.

Personally, I think governments make a big mistake when, in the name of tolerance, they allow adults to wear religious clothing where it obviously doesn’t belong.. Sikh policemen wearing turbans instead of helmets on the streets of London for example. I wrote about that bit of nonsense here last June 18.

Maybe compelling children to come to school without religious adornments won’t start them thinking about how ridiculous it is to believe that their fellow students are lesser beings because they believe differently and are going straight to hell when they die.(Jews don’t believe that, but you know which religious nuts do).

But maybe making them come to school that way will at least help them to see each other, just as fellow students and not as students with particular religious beliefs. Who knows, maybe it will even get them thinking that they might be more alike than what they’ve been taught outside of school - that they are separate and different, and not part of the same country or culture.

And that has to be a good thing.



posted by Jeff Smith at 2/12/2004 08:14:00 PM

 
ECLECTIC COMMENTS

I’m thinking of taking a break from commenting exclusively on current matters every week day, and delving into reviews of and reactions to some of the things I find on line, particularly blogs - of which there must be an infinite number. As I visit some blog sites and see long lists of links that require one to scroll and scroll and scroll to see them all, I have to wonder - how many people are clicking on links? Who has the time to visit blog after blog and actually read what is printed there?

My humble little blog, I believe, is one of the easier ones for visitors to read. I don’t ramble on and on. I don’t write about things that wouldn’t be of interest or wouldn’t make sense to someone who doesn’t know me personally. I try to keep my daily entries to under a thousand words. Well under when possible.

So I’ll be alternating between "op-ed" type of commentaries and poking around the Internet.

But today is eclectic commentary day.
______________________________________________

Yesterday, commenting on what surely will one day become known as "boobgate," I forgot to mention Terri Carlin, the banker from Tennessee who has filed a class action lawsuit against everyone in sight because we - she filed on behalf of all of us - "suffered outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury!!" From seeing Janet Jackson’s boob.

Don’t hold your breath for your twenty five cent share of the multi million dollar settlement. It ain’t gonna happen. But that doesn’t stop the likes of Ms Carlin and her lawyer from abusing our legal system.

_________________________________________________

The brouhaha over Mr. Bush’s Vietnam era military service is a storm in a teacup and isn’t worth our attention. He got out of serving in Vietnam. He did it one way. Bill Clinton did it another way. A lot of people did, including some of our great leaders in congress and in the cabinet. Did George Dubya go AWOL? Probably. If no one was keeping track - and it seems no one was - he could have given lip service to the service without the risk of being caught or the threat of punishment.

I was in the service. Every hour of my time had to be and was accounted for. I took an unauthorized week-end off once and served 168 hours of field punishment for my impudence.

Mr. Bush obviously served in a different kind of "service." It was 30 years ago and we should forget it. There’s enough in what he’s doing today to occupy our attention and to criticize.

__________________________________________________

Bill Janklow, the ex-congressman from South Dakota who was addicted to speeding and finished up killing a motorcyclist, has begun his 100 day jail sentence. He’ll also have to pay a total of $10,400 in fines, which includes $50 a day for his prison accommodations..

Some people think he got away with murder. I have no strong opinion on his sentence. He was a speeding idiot but he wasn’t drunk and for sure he didn’t mean to hit a motorcyclist.

But I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if the judge could have borrowed a piece of Finnish law. Item in today’s paper. "Millionaire’s life in fast lane costly."

In Finland, the amount of a speeding fine isn’t a set sum. It’s related to your income!! The young millionaire in question - just 27 years old - went "zooming" through a 25 mph zone and got a ticket for $216,900!!!

I just love it. It may be a little communistic - but then not all communist ideas were bad. I think this one could be applied across the board. Not just to speeding fines. To everything.The cost of everything to be determined by the wealth of the individual. I make fifty grand. I pay twenty for my car. You make fifty million. You pay a million five for the same car.

What’s that? You think that’s a crazy idea?

Hey, we’re looking for ways to stimulate the economy. This would surely do as much as the Bush tax cuts for those self same millionaires and multi-millionaires. .

_______________________________________________

It’s interesting that in all of the discussions about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and why we had to go to war, particularly when those discussions are by or involve President Bush or Dick Cheney, or Don Rumsfeld or Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, we don’t hear anything about the condition or the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein or Tariq Aziz or any of the other "most wanted" of the Iraqi bigwigs that we’ve captured, or what we’re doing with them or what we’re learning from them.

I checked around the Internet and found virtually nothing.

The Bush administration has been described as the most secretive in modern times. Is the lack of information about these captured Iraqis a reflection of that basic secrecy, or is it because there is nothing to be learned from any of these individuals that can support the Bush raison d’être for going to war?

Questions for the coming campaign no doubt..

__________________________________________________

The argument over teaching evolution in schools is heating up again. Alabama has just decided that it will no longer refer to "evolution" in that state’s science curriculum, but will call it "biological changes over time."

The Chicago Tribune recently ran a major piece on our understanding of evolution, which naturally produced pro and con reactions from readers.

In checking on the Alabama decision, I was surprised to find that Illinois, the state that I live in, is one of five states that does not reference evolution in its school curricula. You can read about it here. It’s something that I plan to look into.

I thought I’d take a look at the current set of arguments against accepting evolution as a scientific fact, and I found a whole list here.

I’ve heard most of the arguments before, but number three on this list - there are nine in all, really made me do a double take. It reads: "Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world."

The people who say this are the same people who believe that they and the world they live in were "created" by a higher power - a God if you will - from nothing!!

There was nothing here until God created it. But if we call it evolution, it’s "an impossibility of science and the natural world."

Oops. More than a thousand words. Back tomorrow.




posted by Jeff Smith at 2/11/2004 02:35:00 PM

 
MISPLACED PROTESTS?

It seems like the Janet Jackson breast baring incident won’t go away. According to reports hundreds of thousands of complaints have poured into the FCC, and that agency and the television networks seem to be running scared. On last week’s E.R. program on NBC, the decision was made to delete a scene that showed an elderly woman’s breast or breasts. On a medical show yet. Dealing with the human body.

And now, ABC has said that the Academy Awards broadcast later this month, will be on tape delay. You’ve seen the non-gowns that the female stars don’t wear at these affairs. What is ABC afraid of?

I guess they’re afraid that an extra centimeter cut from one of those non-gowns, will spark another wave of protest from the American populace - a populace that never ceases to amaze me.

I know the Super Bowl was supposedly being watched by "families" and so parent might have been shocked that their young children were exposed to such filth.. but come on!!

For reasons that I find it difficult to understand, the Super Bowl telecast was beamed to 229 countries and territories, the huge majority of which do not play or understand American Football. Most of them play and watch soccer. That’s their national game and the world’s true international game.

But I mention this wide distribution of the Super Bowl broadcast only to express doubt that very many foreign sensibilities were disturbed by the momentary exposure of Ms Jackson’s breast - if you can call it that. I’m not sure how much actual breast was revealed when the cut away flap of material came off.

Much of the rest of the world is not shocked by partial nudity. But they would probably be a great deal more shocked than we appear to be over the context of the incident, the ridiculously insulting theme and lyrics of the performance by Jackson and Timberlake.

I can only speak of this second hand since I’ve never watched any of today’s music videos designed for young audiences, nor heard 99.9% of the "music" they contain, and I didn’t watch the Super Bowl or the half time shenanigans. But I am told, on very good authority, that what "the kids" caught a glimpse of on Super Bowl Sunday, was tame compared to what they’re exposed to on the TV channels they watch, the radio stations that they listen to and the CD’s and videos that they buy.

The KIDS I am reasonably sure, were not particularly bothered by this, but, if you can believe the reported figures, a few hundred thousand up-tight adults were.

It’s truly amazing how an incident like this can rally some people to action. We can sit and watch the goriest of television programs and the most suggestive and bad taste commercials and never blink an eyelid. I’m told there was a commercial during the Super Bowl that featured a farting horse. A horse emitting foul smelling farts. Where were the protests over that?

Where are the protests over some of the garbage known as "reality television?’ They’re likely not there because the people who are horrified at the momentary glimpse of a female nipple are probably the same people contributing to the Neilsen ratings for these "shows."

We have a horrendously high murder rate in this country, and a huge number committed with firearms. If a proportionate number of murders was being committed in a country like England for example, there would be a national uproar. A government could fall. But we’re relatively complacent about it. Not that anyone is for murder, but where’s the outrage? Where are the hundreds of thousands of people raising their voices and saying that this is a national disgrace and demanding that something be done about it?

I’ll tell you where they are. They’re busy telling themselves, each other, the FCC and their national representatives that the sky is about to fall because a couple of centimeters of bare flesh was exposed for a microsecond on television.

This November, we will be deciding on who will lead this nation for the next four years. Only a fraction of us will make that decision. That, my friends, is a national scandal. Hundreds of thousands of us should be protesting that we need to enact a law similar to that of the Australian voting system. When you reach the age of eighteen, you must vote or you’ll be fined.

On second thought, maybe that’s not such a good idea for the U.S. Do we really want people who are moved to launch protests over the momentary sight of part of the human anatomy to be compelled to vote for president, or for members of the House and Senate? Maybe they voted in the last election. Maybe for Bush!!.

An editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune takes a different view. It says that "There is a line in the public mind about how much sex, violence and profanity will be tolerated on the public airways. The public has delivered that message and now it’s up to broadcasters to exercise better judgment."

The Tribune didn’t emphasize the word "public." I did. I see nothing wrong with wanting to see less violence on the non cable airways. I don’t see anything that could be considered overt sex, but I agree that it belongs on cable channels, and profanity, though meaning different things to different people, is rarely heard anyway.

What bothers me is the thought that the people who took the trouble to make phone calls or send e-mail or in other ways complain to CBS and the FCC are representative of "the public."

It bothers me because I think the Tribune is right!!

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/10/2004 04:23:00 PM

 
THE RUSSET INTERVIEW. WAS THE REAL BUSH REVEALED?

I must admit I did not approach the Russet interview of the President with an open mind.

I can’t say that I’m among the millions of voters, mostly Democrats, who, it has been reported, have feelings of
hatred for Mr. Bush. But there is something about the man that strikes the wrong chord with me. Like a fork on a plate.

I began viewing by trying to keep track of the quick grins that replace the studied, serious expression. I gave up after the first twenty or thirty, at which time the interview had probably been running for two or three minutes.

My interest was in seeing if Tim could get anything new out of Mr. Bush about the Iraqi war decision.

For most of the interview, the President repeated the same justifications that he and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Powell and others have been offering at every opportunity. And of course, it’s the ever changing story. Now the reasons include the incredible threat to world peace that Iraq had "the ability to make weapons of mass destruction."

The issue of whether or not Mr. Bush had ever told the nation that Iraq presented an "imminent" threat to our nation came up, and while he insisted that "he didn’t want to get into a word contest," he nonetheless continued with the administration game of playing antics with semantics by reminding Mr. Russet that he had only called Iraq "a grave and gathering threat."

And of course there was the underlying raison d’être mantra of Saddam being an evil dictator who harmed his own people, gave money to the families of suicide bombers and so on. That alone was a reason to send our nation to war at a cost of hundred of American and allied lives and thousands of injuries.

I’m not sure what Mr. Bush hoped to accomplish. For his supporters, he was preaching to the choir. For those who had doubts, there was nothing persuasive. It was the same old same old.

Except for one thing.

Mr. Bush made clear how sees his role and that of the United States. It is to change the world. And that is why we invaded Iraq. I may not have the exact wording, but I’m pretty damned close. He said - "A free Iraq will change the world."


Coincidentally, Sunday’s "Sixty Minutes" presentation had a segment on evangelical Christians who believe that the world is in its final days and close to the "rapture," where all who believe in Jesus Christ and have accepted him as their savior, will suddenly disappear, leaving their clothes and non corporeal adornments behind. Those who do not disappear, because they haven’t accepted Jesus as their savior, will be left behind to face untold miseries.

That’s what they believe, and they say it with a straight face. Otherwise intelligent sounding humanoids looked into the "Sixty Minute" cameras and spoke of the "rapture" as a proven, iron clad certainty.

The program made note of the current political muscle of Evangelical Christianity, pointing out the allies they had in the Bush administration, including Tom DeLay in the House and John Ashcroft heading up Justice. And then they showed a clip of Mr. Bush during debates when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination. A question had been posed about who the candidates looked to as the philosopher that had most influenced their lives. Mr. Bush’s answer was Jesus Christ. When asked to elaborate, he simply said that he had accepted Jesus into his heart and it had changed his life. And he said it with an evangelical smile.

I think we have the answer behind the answer. The hawkish cabal that surrounds and influences the president on matters of war and peace may not be evangelists. A core group of them are Jewish for Pete’s sake - a fact that some journalist pundits never waste an opportunity to work into their columns about the war.

But Mr. Bush himself has an evangelical, maybe messianic view of the world. He see his role as doing God’s work. Good versus evil. Good versus axes of evil, although so far he’s only identified one axis.

As far as I know, all of our past presidents have professed some sort of religious belief. For sure, no one could be elected to the office today without professing belief in God, if not in a specific religion. No atheists allowed. Not even agnostics. And God help the candidate - no pun intended - who doesn’t end a major speech with "God bless America."

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God and have some sort of religious affiliation and a majority of us want our president to profess similar beliefs.

But this time around, we have a born-again in the White House, and the only people who should be happy with that are those sitting around waiting for the "rapture" to make them disappear and leave the world to the sinners, which would be anyone who doesn’t believe as they believe.

I don’t know if Mr. Bush would consider subjecting himself to another one on one television interview. I suppose it will depend on his approval ratings.

But the next time, if there is a next time, I’d like to see the questions concentrate on his core beliefs. Forget about Iraq. Forget about the economy. How does he see his mission as President of the United States? Does he believe that God put him on this earth to do "God’s work?"

Above all, is he waiting for the "rapture?"

And if the answer’s even a qualified yes, make sure you vote this November and make sure you vote for whoever runs against Mr. Bush, even if the word Democrat sticks in your throat.

Better that than chance being recruited into whatever crusades he has in mind for a second term.




posted by Jeff Smith at 2/09/2004 01:59:00 PM

 
A MESSAGE TO THE PRESIDENT. ENOUGH ALREADY!!

I know that we are a fractured country, split pretty evenly in our political beliefs and preferences.

And I know that many of us allow knee jerk partisanship to infect and affect our thinking processes when it comes to matters political.

But there must come a time when we reject that infection and allow ourselves to see things as they really are and not as we are able to make them appear through our partisan lenses.

There came a time when the most stalwart supporters of President Nixon had to admit that he was part of the Watergate conspiracy and an architect of the cover up.

Many who thought that Bill Clinton was an American hero, had to admit that he was also a bald faced liar. What is, is. Even if our partisanship wants to argue about what is really is.

So what will it take for all of us, from the right, from the left, from the center and all other stops along the political spectrum, to throw up our arms and say - "enough already" to George W. Bush?

Day after day the evidence mounts that this man and his band of super hawks, took us to war because they had some convoluted vision of how they could re-arrange the middle east - and maybe the world.

All of the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction and the danger that Iraq posed to us and others was just that. Nonsense. Saddam Hussein was a danger to a great many Iraqis, that’s for sure. The mass graves. The documentation. The evidence is all there to prove that the man was a monster. But a danger to us?

Mr. Bush and others have tried desperately to connect Iraq to 9/11 and to world wide terrorism. And they’ve succeeded. Our invasion and the disruption of the Hussein regime has brought a wave of terrorism to Iraq, and to our service men and women. There were no suicide bombers exploding their madness in Iraq before we got there. Now we can say that Iraq is indeed a hotbed of terrorism.

How many people will it take to come forward and refute the Bush contention that it was intelligence reports, now proved to be wrong, that compelled us to go to war?

Greg Tielman, a retired State Department intelligence analyst appeared on a recent 60 minutes program and recounted how he watched and listened in disbelief to Colin Powell’s UN presentation, alleging things about Iraq’s weapons and its threat to the peace of the world that were not true and that Powell knew were not true. According to Tielman, the intelligence analysis did not conclude or advise that Iraq posed any threat to the United States. Certainly no intelligence information that would justify a military invasion.

And now George Tenet, in a defense of the intelligence that the CIA provided about Iraq, echoes Tielman’s statement that there was never a suggestion that Iraq posed any kind of imminent threat.

Yet Mr. Bush continues to insist, with his face contorted into one silly looking grin or another, that he "did the right thing." As though saying those words has meaning.

Parenthetically, I have to say that I hesitate any time my instinct is to make some reference to one of Mr. Bush’s many facial expressions. After all, he is the President of the United States, and the office calls for respect no matter who is in residence. But I also have to say that I have never before observed a president use the most inappropriate facial expressions at the most inappropriate times. Mr. Bush can be talking about life and death when he will suddenly break into a broad grin, as though he had said something funny or was talking about something funny. It may be a nervous affliction, akin to a tic perhaps, but it is still something that strikes a very wrong chord.

To return to the subject at hand, one of the arguments that Mr. Bush uses in support of his "did the right thing" assertion, is that he is charged with protecting this country and its peoples and that it’s his sworn duty to do whatever he thinks it’s necessary when he believes we are being threatened. And of course he throws in 9/11.

He apparently believes that however wrong the decision to attack Iraq might prove to be, he can defend it by waving the flag and citing his sworn duty as described above.

But he is obviously feeling the heat of mounting criticism, because he has now named seven members of an eventual nine member panel that will be investigating our intelligence services, chaired by Republican Laurence Silberman, a retired federal judge, and a Democrat, retired Senator Chuck Robb.

Opinions are split over the selections. Some think they are well equipped to do the job. Some think otherwise. And it’s not simply a split between Republicans and Democrats.

But there’s no split opinion on what the panel is being asked to do and by when. It’s being asked to investigate the Iraq affair and very likely our intelligence services in general. But the report isn’t due until well after the presidential election, and there’s no guarantee that the findings will be made public!!

Make of that what you will.

And this Sunday, he’s appearing on Meet The Press with Tim Russet. Tim is an aggressive questioner, but I wonder if he will cut through Mr. Bush’s standard "we believed the intelligence" and "I did the right thing" and the waving of the flag defense, and press him on the question of who planned the war strategy and when, and not let him answer every question with the ever changing versions of "why."

I guess you’re supposed to treat presidents with some degree of deference, but if the moment Mr. Bush mouths the inevitable "I did the right thing," in answer to a question, I would rise from my chair and let out a cheer if Tim would dare to say what millions of us are thinking.

"Come on Mr. President. Enough already!!"


posted by Jeff Smith at 2/07/2004 09:36:00 AM

 
THE JACKSON TIMBERLAKE STORM IN A TEACUP

Two days ago, I said that I would not be joining the nation’s news media and assorted pundits in commenting on the Super Bowl half time bared breast. Today, I can’t resist.

Yesterday, February 4, there were three op-ed pieces in the paper that I read daily - the Chicago Tribune. There were only three pieces, which is the usual number on this page, and the headlines of all three mentioned the breast incident.

To be fair, one used l'affaire Timberlake/Jackson as a bridge to another topic, but the other two were all about the incident.

And then this morning, on that same op-ed page, Newt Minow, the FCC Chairman of the sixties and author of the famous "vast wasteland" condemnation of the television fare of that era, suggested that the government was at least partially responsible for the bosomy exposure.

The reasoning? In the late 70’s, citing anti trust laws, the Justice Department went to court to overturn the National Association of Broadcasters "Code of Standards and Practices," which, among other things limited the number of commercials per hour. The government said this violated anti-trust laws and they won. The "Code of Standards and Practices" disappeared, and, says Minow, that’s why we saw what we saw (not me mind you) at the Super Bowl half time.

I’m really reeling from the logic of that one. And I always had a lot of respect for Newt Minow. There’s no more "Code of Standards and Practices" so anything goes? How about networks and individual stations exercising individual judgment? Do they really need a written code, spelling out exactly how they are supposed to conduct themselves in order to make common sense decisions?

Let’s look at who or what it was that created the current problem - if indeed it is a problem. The two performers involved in the incident are just that. Performers. They are visual stage performers, doing whatever it is that appeals to today’s children. And perhaps to a few adults who have never grown up.

I emphasize again that they are visual performers. They are not in any sense of the word, singers.

Think about it. Could you visualize yourself spending a casual evening at home listening to recordings of Janet Jackson or Justin Timberlake? If you can answer "yes" to that question, then you shouldn’t be reading this blog and I would strongly ad vise you to click out of here and go find a site more suited to your musical tastes and your mental age.

I have a pretty good collection of musical CD’s at home. I’ve seen very few of the performers on those CD’s in person. Some I have never seen at all. But they all have something in common which persuaded me to buy the CD’s in the first place.

They can all sing. There is no need for me to watch them wiggle or gyrate or grab their crotches or show décolletage in order for me to enjoy their performance. I can close my eyes and be richly entertained.

If CBS and all of the other organizations and people involved in hiring and approving the performers for the Super Bowl half time show have been functioning in this hemisphere - let’s say since January 1, 2004, they must have been aware of what to expect from them.

And I would think that would be something that would be recognizable to the children who buy their videos. Not their music CD’s. I don’t even know if these kinds of performers actually make music CD’s. What would there be to listen to? Take Janet Jackson’s brother for example. Michael is a super star, but could you imagine him earning a living just as a singer? Could you see him dressed in casual clothing, sitting on a stool in an intimate show room with just a microphone and a gentle spot light and captivating you with the sound of his voice? Without the spangles. Without the moon walk. Without the crotch grab. Of course not.

Those responsible for putting on the half time entertainment had the option of hiring whatever kind of talent they wanted to. They chose to hire Jackson and Timberlake and they got what they paid for. A visual performance to accompany and embellish the ridiculous lyrics they were screeching. The sort of thing that makes kids buy their videos. And I guess the general idea must have been to put on a show that would attract the video buying kids. It surely wasn’t aimed at adults.

Would a "Code of Standards" have prevented their hiring? One of it’s requirements was the "protection" of children. But would today’s broadcasting executives make a decision to ban the young folk’s heroes from their television screens? Maybe, if they wanted to find some other line of work.

Finally, a word about the "baring" itself. I’ve seen the moment on newscasts, with the offending boob covered of course. It seemed to last a split second. Unless people recorded the whole program and looked at the incident on a freeze frame, I doubt that anyone saw anything. Sure, you could see Timberlake reach over and pull off part of Janet’s costume., but the director cut to a wide shot almost immediately and there was nothing to see.

It was a gimmick, but no more offensive than the gyrations that these type of performers are known to include as part of their acts and the disgusting themes and words of the lyrics they spout.

I think it’s a storm in a teacup. Michael Powell of the FCC and Paul Tagliabue of the NFL have more important things to do than keep the issue alive and I think they ought to get on with them.

posted by Jeff Smith at 2/05/2004 03:07:00 PM