Today’s Times
Jack Ross writes: Last night my friend Richard and I watched my DVD of Arguing The World, which I had not watched in almost two years. It has been on the basis of my knowledge of neoconservatism, which I was…
The New York Times management remains a sanctuary for neoconservatives. Why I don’t know. I’m looking into this in my way (weissphilip@yahoo.com). Some datapoints: 1, last February, the Times endorsed McCain and Clinton for the respective party nominations. 2, neocon…
In an interview with Politico’s Ben Smith, Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman criticized George Mitchell’s stance of “neutrality.” “The Swiss were neutral [in World War II],” he said. So: Foxman gets to lambaste all Hitler and Holocaust references he doesn’t…
My New York Review of Books arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and it has one piece on Gaza by Roger Cohen that’s very good but not great. I wrote about it a few days ago; it seems to me to…
Beautiful piece of reporting by James Besser for the NY Jewish Week on the growing schism between J Street Jews and the neocons in organizational life, now crystallized by the George Mitchell rumors. Two voices of the lobby: “Sen. Mitchell…
Having watched TV half the day, I can say with assurance that the symbolic meaning of Obama’s elevation is too large to be contained by any policy pronouncement or interpretation. Which is making me optimistic re Israel/Palestine. President Obama’s mere…
Steve Walt is a little bit optimistic about Obama’s foreign-policy prospects. Funny money quote: Above all, the biggest mistake Obama could make would be to follow too closely in his predecessor’s footsteps, or to pay too much attention to the…
Here Daniel Pipes senses his own growing irrelevance in the new emphasis (good spot, Pipes) on Obama’s Muslim heritage. Here Pipes digs in his heels as he’s banished: “Like many conservatives, I am dazed that an unknown person with a…