The other day, Elisabeth Bumiller, a fine reporter, used the n-word on the front page of the Times, writing of neoconservative influence on McCain. Yesterday I saw her on MSNBC, speaking about neoconservatism like it was a dirty word. And it is. Those are the folks who gave us the Iraq War. Begone.
The Times fails the political labelling test today. Its piece on Freedoms Watch says that all the big money has come from America's third richest man, the fiery Sheldon Adelson, but has only one line or so on Adelson's central interest, Israel. It comes deep in the story:
He also established a foundation last year to support Israel and Jewish causes and pledged $200 million to it.
This beggars Adelson's work. As Haaretz has reported, Adelson is a close friend of Netanyahu's, has given tons to Yad Vashem and birthright, has purchased an Israeli media outlet, and is trying to influence internal Israeli politics. He almost certainly is dead set against the peace process. Furthermore, as I and others have reported, Freedom's Watch has a neoconservative Jewish character. Its three principals are/were Jews and it was invented at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Imagine if the Times had covered the anti-abortion movement in this country, or the anti-gay-rights movement, and suppressed the religious component of those efforts? It would have done its readers a great disservice. But it never suppressed that element; and the Christian right justly became a villain in blue-state public life. The Times owes the same favor to the Jewish right, which has bedevilled our policy in the Middle East for eons.
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Good luck on making an honest woman out of the meretricious gray lady of 8th Avenue.
All you can do is keep outing the Slimes' whoring, in its lurid fleapit across the street from the bus station.
The left-right dichotomy is largely false, so I don't expect to see right wing Jews taken to task. Jews of all stripes are off limits in the national discussion. What's new?
The left is on board with the icky Evangelical cohort; there's a tradition–it is stumped by the right-wing Zionists. The secular religion doesn't know what to do with the latest morphing of cowboys and Indians.
"Jews of all stripes are off limits in the national discussion."
Which begs the question: Why?
Is the media afraid of the frowns of Jewish owners, or advertisers, or boycotts organized by the usual suspects?
The pressure from zionist groups that monitor the media, seems not to faze Harretz.
How come it seems to work on US and Canadian media?
I suspect that the U.S. censorship has something to do with the amount of money coming from the taxpayers, and a fear of what would happen if the loot dried up.
I'm not sure what affect Ha'aretz has. From my experience, leftists in Israel have no problem being both tormentor and comforter.
In Jerusalem, we visited Judah Magnes and his family, and there, at his house, we met George Antonious. Mr. Antonious asked me how I liked Palestine. I said, "I know what I'm about to say is rude, this being your country, but I've never been any place I disliked so much. Of course, it's the first place I've ever been where everybody hatred each other. "
He replied, " I don't know what you expected, but don't you realize that this isn't the land of philosophers? This is the land of prophets."
I was struck by the profundity of the remark. A philosopher is disposed to reason, to give-and-take, but a prophet thinks he has all the answers handed down to him by by Almighty. Considering the number of prophets of different religions all living in this tiny country, no wonder the harmony has been unattainable.
PP 226-227, Memoris Of Iphigene Ochs Sulsberger Of the New York TImes Family, as told to her grandaughter Susan W. Dryfoos, 1979.