Tom Ricks of the Washington Post is ticked that I said he is on “the left” (in my last item re Obama). He wrote me a note, here’s the exchange: TR: Describing Iraq as a Hobbesian state worse than a…
At last week’s conference on “Freud’s Jewish World” at the Center for Jewish History, two scholars talked about journalism. Freud lived an upper middle class life in Vienna, and until he fled Nazism as a dying man, he read the…
The Oregonian has crushed the S.F. Chronicle on the Bear Camp Road tragedy. I guess it’s their story; geography is huge. Check out the Oregonian’s aerial tour of the roads the Kims went up till their car foundered. And there’s…
When tragedy befell them on Bear Camp Road in southwest Oregon, the Kim family was driving an all-wheel drive Saab 9-2X . Saab’s website shows the sporting vehicle performing on a lot of mountain roads, at least one a little…
Jimmy Carter’s use of the word “apartheid” in the title of his new book has generated a lot of controversy—the Washington Post reporting that a Middle East scholar has angrily resigned his affiliation with the Carter Center over Carter’s book….
Many, many intellectuals are now being called on to perform a backflip on Iraq. Alas, few have attempted it, and few of those have pulled it off with any grace. I mean the mea culpa for supporting the Iraq war….
Last night at NYU, Tony Judt gave a speech about the changing role of intellectuals in democracies in which he brought up the Israel/Palestine question and observed that the American discourse is now opening up to criticisms of Israel. Eight…
A lot of people have had trouble posting comments. I apologize, we’re trying to work out the bugs. If you’re ticked about it, email me and I’ll get it on the blog. Here is something that Richard Silverstein, whose progressive…
You’re a smart Jew. You go to a prestige college and hang out with a bunch of cool gentile guys. One of them has a fancy sister. You marry her because you want to be in the cool gang. She…