How bad is the snow in the northeast this year?

The New Neo Posted on by

Bad.

Particularly in Boston and environs. It’s not just the totals but the timing:

If you’re wondering what the big deal is about snow in Boston, this is it: 78.5 inches of snow has fallen in Beantown this winter, which is more than 50 inches beyond what they typically see by now. Even so, you may be skeptical of the superlative. They are used to snow, right?

The most peculiar thing about this season is that of those 78.5 inches, 65.6 of them have fallen in the 16 days since Jan. 27.

It’s difficult to convey the significance of how many records Boston has obliterated this season ”” 5-, 7-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 40-day snow records all within a couple of weeks, plus the snowiest February on record.

It’s not just Boston, of course. It looks like this pretty much everywhere:

snow

One of the unusual things about this season is that the snow isn’t melting, as it usually does with some days above 32 degrees in the sun. This year it’s way way too cold for much melt at all. That, along with the storms’ coming in rapid succession, has led to record snow cover.

On the other hand, at least we’re not getting ice. It’s way way too cold for that, too.

The people in charge of plowing the streets are ordinarily very good at their job, but I guess there’s a limit and we’ve come close to reaching it. The piles are too tall already, and trucks have had to siphon off the snow and take it somewhere else. But that’s just too big a task to do very effectively, although the number of what’s called “snow farms” has proliferated.

The reality is that for the past month or so a storm has come every few days. And tonight another blizzard is forecast. Everyone’s adjusting; we just believe we have shifted to someplace in Alaska and that’s where we all live now—although Alaska may have moved somewhere south of here (this article is a month old and therefore may be outdated, but this year Alaska seems to be relatively snowless).

I have a full length down coat that I’ve owned for about fifteen years, and some winters I don’t even wear it. But that sure isn’t true this winter; I’d had it on every day, sometimes plus my heavy fleece helmet/facemask.

And big boots, of course. The trouble with boots is that despite their lining and thickness my feet freeze anyway. I stay inside much more than usual, as does everyone.

But sometimes inside is pretty cold, too (the “inside” part starts at minute 1:03):

Moynihan and the black family

The New Neo Posted on by

Moynihan was right. It stands to reason that if you reward a behavior you tend to get more of it:

“The fundamental problem is that of family structure,” wrote Moynihan, who had a doctorate in sociology. “The evidence””not final but powerfully persuasive””is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.”

For his troubles, Moynihan was denounced as a victim-blaming racist bent on undermining the civil-rights movement. Even worse, writes Harvard’s Paul Peterson in the current issue of the journal Education Next, Moynihan’s “findings were totally ignored by those who designed public policies at the time.” The Great Society architects would go on to expand old programs or formulate new ones that exacerbated the problems Moynihan identified. Marriage was penalized and single parenting was subsidized. In effect, the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home””and paid them well.

“Economists and policy analysts of the day worried about the negative incentives that had been created,” writes Mr. Peterson. “Analysts estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000”””or an inflation-adjusted $88,000 today””“to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.”

The article by Peterson (or something much resembling it) also appeared in the NY Daily News. In it, Peterson wrote:

Growth in single parenthood has many causes including female entry into the labor force, changing social norms and male unemployment. But a close look at when the problem intensified ”” and when it attenuated ”” suggests that the main culprit may well be the government.

The steepest upward jump in single parenthood took place in the late 1960s and early 70s. And since the mid-1990s, the percentage of children living in single-parent families has stabilized ”” especially within the African-American community, where the percentage has in fact declined somewhat from its 1990 high.

Why? Prior to 1965, the welfare state for families with children was largely limited to a meager, restrictive program distributed by state and local governments.

That changed with the arrival of the Great Society…

Please read the whole thing.

Peterson thinks the problem can and should be corrected. He doesn’t think the Great Society needs dismantling; just redesigning. I suppose that’s most practical since entitlements are notoriously difficult to reverse once a population becomes accustomed to them, and anyone who wants to do differently is labeled a mean and racist old fill-in-the-expletive. I wonder whether even tweaking is possible at this point, for that same reason—as well as the fact that, although Peterson seems to assume liberals would like to make these programs more effective and less encouraging of dependent and family-destroying behavior, I’m not at all sure he’s right. The left has reasons to want to purposely encourage these things.

[NOTE: The same trend has occurred in white families, by the way, although the percentage of single-mother households is nowhere near as high, in part because they started out at a lower level of single-mother families:

When the report was released, about 25% of black children and 5% of white children lived in a household headed by a single mother. During the next 20 years the black percentage would double and the racial gap would widen. Today more than 70% of all black births are to unmarried women, twice the white percentage.

Whites are hardly immune to these same political/economic/psychological forces.]

Won’t you be my valentine?

The New Neo Posted on by

It may not have escaped your notice that today is Valentine’s Day. So Happy Valentine’s Day!

But Valentine’s Day can be a problematic holiday. Hmmm, whatever to get? And do you feel guilty if you don’t? Anyone who wants to give me a present is especially challenged because that old standby chocolate won’t suffice, because it gives me migraines.

Yet another thing that gives me migraines—or at the very least, moments of irritation—are those continually-repeated ads designed to help desperate men figure out what to get the woman (or women, as the case may be) in their lives, particularly if said woman has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old. It’s usually one of two things: footed fleece pajamas like the ones small children wear, or an enormous teddy bear.* Either gift makes the young and nubile women in the ads giggle, clap their hands, and jump up and down with glee.

But what caused me to write this post was a Valentine’s Day ad I saw on TV the other day for Vermont Teddy Bears—actually, for a particular type of Vermont Teddy Bear:

greyBear

Why does this cute little guy carry a mask and handcuffs? Why, it’s the Christian Grey Bear, that’s why:

If you want to dominate Valentine’s Day, skip the roses and send the limited-edition Fifty Shades of Grey Bear. Inspired by the best-selling book, the adult gift is specially designed for fans obsessed with Grey, biting their lips with anticipation over the movie. He features smoldering gray eyes…

I haven’t read the book and don’t plan to, but this bear is the strangest amalgam of infantilization and “adult” toy I’ve even seen. And if you think it’s just a good-for-a-laugh throwaway novelty, let me add that its cost is $89.99 plus shipping.

At the bottom of the ad is this disclaimer:

SAFETY WARNING: Contains small parts. Not suitable for children.

Perhaps Vermont Teddy Bears has a sense of humor.

[* NOTE: I did not realize it until I went to the Vermont Teddy Bear website, but they also have a handy PJ and teddy bear combo, for those men who just can’t decide between the two. A double teddy, you might say.]

Why Jon Stewart was bad for liberals

The New Neo Posted on by

I was surprised to read that Jamelle Bouie of Slate will be happy to see Jon Stewart go. As he himself says, Bouie’s a “liberal, college-educated millennial–the almost prototypical viewer” for Stewart’s show, so why’s he so thrilled (his word, not mine) about Stewart’s departure?

According to Bouie, Stewart is too cynical and sneering, and that puts the kibosh on the idea of serious, informed, substantive conversations. I can see his point; I agree that over time Americans (particularly younger ones) have gotten way too knee-jerk cynical, and that put-downs have often become substitutes for argument. That said, I don’t think Stewart has all that much to do with it. In fact, he’s actually got a trifle more substance (and even-handedness, which I value) than some more “serious” pundits, and there are many many other political, societal, and cultural influences that skew younger people towards the ironic and cynical.

But it was this paragraph of Bouie’s that really leaped out at me:

Again, there are times when this basic perspective is vital, when we need someone to bathe our government in light and mockery and challenge the dishonesty, incompetence, and self-seriousness of our leaders and elites. But this approach, which worked wonders during the Bush administration, isn’t always the best one. For liberals in particular, the idea that government is only hypocrisy and dysfunction is self-defeating and nihilistic.

Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Cynicism and mockery are great—in fact, they’re needed—when we’re talking about Republican “leaders and elites” and in particular George W. Bush. When we’re talking the big-government agenda of liberals and the left, it could seriously damage the program to be cynical and mocking. Then it’s time to get all serious and respectful. The cynicism and sneering that Stewart engendered threatened to spill over into mockery of big government itself, and that’s a no-no.

[NOTE: Every now and then—not often, but sometimes—the right was even able to make use of Stewart’s clips because he was occasionally an equal-opportunity mocker. I used video from his show on occasion myself.}

The history of Obama’s historical ignorance

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting piece in Commentary by Seth Mandel on Obama’s ignorance of history. It’s part of the old “knave/fool” dilemma that’s been discussed so much already on this blog. Although the article emphasizes the “fool” aspect in regard to historical knowledge, it does not ignore the “knave” part either, when Mandel writes: “We talk a lot about the defects of the president’s ideology, but not about his ignorance. The two are related…”

Obama’s historical ignorance is so widespread as to be, in Mandel’s word, “comprehensive.” Some specific areas Mandel lists are Putin’s resume, the basis for Israel’s claim to its territory, and the Crusades.

Obama’s historical ignorance was one of the first things I noticed about him. I wrote a post about it back in May of 2008, before he was elected. It’s interesting and revealing to me to look back now, with so much more information about Obama, and read what I wrote at the time:

I have long lamented the decline of the teaching of history and of critical thinking. One can be a highly intelligent intellectual today and know almost nothing about either.

This is where it’s led us. A Democratic nominee this ignorant, and a populace who can’t tell the difference.

Obama is the least qualified serious contender for the Presidency from either party that I can recall in my lifetime.

The word “this” links back to a piece at Hot Air discussing the fact that Obama had said that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us in the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.” Note the subject matter of the error here: denial that Iran is a serious threat, a denial that has been consistent to this day.

I now believe that the “knave” factor in Obama’s view of Iran was much greater than the “fool” factor, and that he denies Iran’s leaders’ intentions and character not necessarily through ignorance but because he has made up his mind to favor Iran. This preference for Iran—you might even call it a “pro-Iran” stance—has become more and more apparent lately to more and more people; there’s been a flurry of recent articles on the subject. But it is not a recent development, not at all; it simply has become more obvious to more people.

What Obama actually said back then was that Iran was less of a threat than the USSR had been because Iran is tiny compared to the Soviet Union, a statement so odd that I wrote another piece on the subject. I began this way:

I used to think it might be a good thing for Obama to continue to make egregious errors. It would allow people to see his feet of clay and to understand the dangers of his naive and uninformed views.

But, as he’s made goof after goof and none of his myriad supporters””including his enablers in the MSM””seem to notice or care, it’s become more frightening. Now I’m hoping he smartens up, but fast””especially if he wins the election.

The post was entitled, “Obama’s ignorance: this is getting scary,” and it was written on May 20, 2008, quite early in the game. I’m not pointing out any of these old quotes of mine to say how perceptive and far-seeing I was, because I don’t think what I noticed was difficult to see. Actually I think it was (or should have been) easy to see, and I made it clear in that piece that I had hoped and expected that a large number of voters would notice and that it would matter.

I was wrong about that part. As the British poet Philip Larkin wrote after WWI, “never such innocence again.” We’ve all learned quite a bit from Obama’s presidency, and much of it hasn’t even been about Obama.

To get back to Mandel’s article—it seems to me that his emphasis is incorrect. Yes, Obama is historically ignorant (or at least seems to be; one never knows whether it’s a pose and he really knows the truth but is just misrepresenting it to the public in order to sway them to his preferred position). But if he is ignorant, the reason for it is not just that he was poorly educated in these subjects, although I believe that is true, and true of many educated people today. It’s not even a general lack of motivation on his part, as in laziness; Obama is quite motivated in some areas. I believe it isn’t even just his own arrogance about being the smartest person in the room, although that’s certainly how he feels. Nor is it the fact that he likes to choose advisors who are admiring yes-men and yes-women, quite a few of whom share a similar lack of historical curiosity.

I think the most important reason for his historical ignorance is that Obama has an agenda—or, as Mandel puts it “defects in ideology.” It is his ideology that drives this, combined with the ignorance, arrogance, etc.. But the ideology comes first, because if you have a firm belief that you want to favor Iran, for example, and that belief has been held for a long, long time, and most of your moves as president have been predicated on that belief (and you also happen to think you’re incredibly brilliant), what possible motivation would you have to seek out or listen to information that contradicts what you think you know?

I’ve written a great deal on this blog about how difficult it is to take in new information and change your mind. This is true even for people far less arrogant, far less invested, and far less ideologically driven than Obama. You have to be open to the fact that you were wrong, and curious about truth, in order to learn and change in that way. Obama is neither. His ideology is set in stone and would be resistant to new information even if it happens to come his way.

Illegals and amnesty: loopholes, schmoopholes

The New Neo Posted on by

If there anyone on earth who is surprised at this news?:

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.

The article contains quotes from various Democrats with the usual “no one will actually do this so there’s nothing to worry about” as well as the “oh, they could already do it anyway” routine. Yes, of course, people who’ve been here illegally for years with all that implies wouldn’t risk breaking the law! And certainly no one would ever offer them money to do this, either! Not to mention those who might actually think that their new status confers on them the bona fide right to vote.

Is this really an unintended “loophole” through which the purpose of the law can be evaded? No, no, a thousand times no. It is a feature rather than a bug as far as Obama and the Democrats are concerned. There was and will be no effort to make it difficult for illegals to vote, although this could have been easily done. The fact that the secretaries of state “don’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register” is no accident whatsoever; they have been purposely kept from having them by Democrats.

Not sure, though, whether the following are unintentional loopholes or not. But I doubt they are anything that Obama is upset about. They are things that would probably have been ironed out if these laws had been passed by Congress, but of course that was never going to happen, and so Obama took up his pen and phone and didn’t bother with all those pesky details (or was actually pleased with those details):

…[There is] a perverse incentive created by Obamacare that would make newly legalized workers more attractive to some businesses than American workers and complications with the tax code.

The newly legalized workers can apply for back refunds from the IRS even for years when they didn’t file their taxes, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Koskinen [of the IRS] said the White House never spoke with him about potential consequences before Mr. Obama announced his policy changes. The secretaries of state who testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday said they too never heard from Mr. Obama ahead of time.

The MSM (and his party, of course) lets Obama get away with this sort of thing, so it reinforces the behavior because there have been no serious consequences.

The last paragraph of the article is of some interest, too:

Only four states require proof of citizenship before someone registers to vote, Mr. Kobach said. And even in those states, the federal government offers voter registration cards that don’t require proof of citizenship, giving determined illegal immigrants a way to circumvent checks.

Wonderful.

The comments section of the article features a lot of angry conservatives demanding that the newly-elected GOP DO SOMETHING!!! My response is that, even if the Republicans were united on what to do (which they are not), their options without a 2/3 majority in the Senate to override a veto (or to convict if impeached) are limited, and involve government shutdowns or defunding Homeland Security or similar moves that remain highly unpopular with the American public although popular with conservatives. Obama was always highly confident that not only did the Republicans lack the will to stop him, but that even if they could muster the will the majority of the American people would back him in any sort of standoff.

You or I may think the GOP should do it anyway, but you can’t pretend it’s not a very real and very difficult dilemma for them, even for those who want to stop Obama’s amnesty.

[NOTE: One thing Republicans can do that’s not directly related but is somewhat related is to pass a strong border security bill. Of course, Obama would either veto it or make sure it’s not enforced. But they need to do it anyway.]

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There is a lot of other news today but I’ve run out of time to write about it right now, so here’s a roundup:

A ceasefire in Ukraine—for the moment (see also this).

Chris Cuomo shows his ignorance of a very basic premise of the Declaration of Independence. I would wager his point of view has become very, very common.

Rep. Brooks of Alabama suggests the GOP eliminate the filibuster on spending bills, just as the Democrats eliminated it for judicial nominations. There is no question in my mind that the Democrats would do it in a heartbeat—in fact, will do it next time they come to power and it gets in their way. Performed now, the action would get the GOP out of a current bind, allowing them “to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while simultaneously revoking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.” I predict they won’t do it, though.

They’re starting to be afraid of Tom Cotton

The New Neo Posted on by

Which means it’s time to up the attacks on him at the national level.

Here’s one way it will go: “Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree.”

Interesting. Unquestionably, one of the approaches to Scott Walker (who also frightens the left) is and will remain the fact that he has no college degree. Cotton most definitely has one, and from an Ivy League school of sterling reputation at that (as did that stupidhead George W. Bush). But Cotton’s Harvard degree will be paired with comparisons to Sarah Palin, with the insinuation that you can’t put Ivy League lipstick on a pig.

[NOTE: I wrote about Cotton here.]

I’m having cell phone transition angst

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I got a new cell phone, something I’d been meaning to do for months.

My old one had essentially died. The battery was losing power at an alarming clip, but that wasn’t even the biggest problem. The thing that forced my hand was that recently the little thingee into which you plug the charger wasn’t working any more. This meant that, unless I spent a ton of money to fix my old phone (not worth it; probably almost as much as a new phone would cost), the charge that phone had right now would be its very last.

So yesterday was the big day. I went into the store thinking I’d go from my Samsung Galaxy S3 to an iPhone6, but in the end I walked out with the Galaxy S5, for a number of reasons that seemed very reasonable in the store and probably are, at least theoretically. In addition, I had the weak hope that the transition would be easier because a Galaxy is a Galaxy is a Galaxy.

Right? Well, it might be right. But that doesn’t make any sort of change in technology easy for a techno-naif like me.

As the young guy in the store who waited on me said, in an effort to be reassuring: Don’t feel bad; you’re by no means the worst I’ve ever seen.

Well, I know that; I know some 100-year-old ladies, too. But I can’t hold a candle to your average 12-year-old—or even 21-year-old or 30-year-old, whose hands seem made to hold and manipulate a phone at the speed of light.

For me, the transition process yields headaches, literal and metaphoric. Samsung might call both the S3 and the S5 “Galaxy,” and they have strong resemblances to each other, but the road to “new, improved!” involves some pretty hefty changes.

I am now engaged in the process of assimilating those changes. The time spent (and wasted in fruitless searching) is extraordinary. Going back to the cell phone store to ask that nice young man for help is good in theory but not in practice. For starters, it’s a long drive. More importantly, I don’t yet know what I don’t know, and I need to know the right questions to ask before I can get the answers. So I will be watching some of those hour-long tutorials on YouTube and hoping they do the trick. Unfortunately, they tend to be geared to those who are already pretty sophisticated at this sort of thing—in other words, your average young person.

Meanwhile, patience is the word of the day—a trait of mine that’s gotten weaker over time.

Jews and politics

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an old and un-PC saying coined by Jewish sociolographer and neocon Milton Himmelfarb:

Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.

Commenter “John Dough” may or may not be aware of Himmelfarb’s barb, but he has a related question when he observes:

I continue to be amazed at the American Jewish community continued support for the liberal position. This Islamic sympathizing president is doing his best to foment another holocaust. Quoting from “Back to the Future” ”¦”¦ “Hello, is anybody home”?

Himmelfarb was speaking more of personal economics vs political affiliation; J. Dough was referring to a more existential dilemma. But the basic question is the same: why are Jews liberals?

The question is so puzzling, and the answer so complex, that another neocon—Norman Podhoretz—wrote an entire book on the subject a few years ago. It’s on my list of “must-reads,” but I’m sorry to say I haven’t gotten around to it (the list is long). The Amazon blurb mentions that it was the question Podhoretz was asked most often in his long career, and I can well believe it.

I said I have not read the book, but I’m pretty sure it’s well worth reading (Podhoretz usually is). From the descriptions at Amazon, it seems he’s saying that Jews historically supported liberalism because it favored the end of persecution, and that originally Democrats were big supporters of Israel. That ended quite some time ago, as did the pro-Israel stance of the left—or, as, Ruth Wisse put it in her review of his book, “Part of the answer comes in [Podhoretz’s] survey of the historical connection between the Jews and liberalism, the rest in his up-to-date analysis of how liberalism became a proxy for Judaism.”

That last phrase (“liberalism became a proxy for Judaism”) is, in my opinion, the key. My answer to John Dough and anyone who would ask the question he asked is that most (not all) of the Jews who support the left politically are Jews in the ethnic and perhaps cultural but not the deeply religious sense (I’ve already discussed the phenomenon of “Jews who are not Jews” here).

Religious Jews have very different politics. In fact, they tend to be Republicans:

Politically, Orthodox Jews are far more conservative than other Jews. For example, 57% of Orthodox Jews describe themselves as Republicans or say they lean toward the Republican Party, while 36% are Democrats or lean Democratic. Among Jews as a whole, the balance tilts strongly in the other direction: 70% of Jews overall are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 22% are Republican or lean Republican.

Orthodox Jews, however, are in the minority among American Jews. Some statistics here:

[A 2003 Harris] survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those households who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types…

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that around 3.4 million American Jews call themselves religious out of a general Jewish population of about 5.4 million [some claim the Jewish population in the US is actually a million more than that, depending on how you define it]. The number of Jews who identify themselves as only culturally Jewish has risen from 20% in 1990 to 37% in 2008, according to the study.

If you add Reform Jews to non-religious Jews, you get over 54% (by my admittedly speedy calculations). That says a lot right there. Particularly for the non-religious Jews (37% of the total), and also for many Reform Jews (38% of the observant 46%, or 17%), identification with Israel is low. In fact, many Jews have absorbed the prevailing leftist idea that after the Six-Day War Israel made some sort of change that meant it was no longer on the side of good but had turned into something bad (we won’t get into the specifics here, but that was a turning point where the left began to see Israel as a colonizer and exploiter rather than a nice noble socialist nation).

You might wonder why these Jews don’t understand that in an atmosphere of growing anti-Semitism they, too, would be at risk. The capacity of the human being for denial is large, and secular Jews in particular have a tendency to think this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to them. They feel quite secure in their ability to demonize Israel because they do not identify strongly with it or its fate.* In the words of Mitchell Bard, “Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor.” Some of that fervor is the fervor that used to be given to religion itself.

[* NOTE: In another survey, even many so-called “religious” Jews are mostly secular:

…62% [of Jews surveyed] say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture…

More details here

”¢ 61 percent of American Jews agree that “there a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. Compare this to 50 percent of the American public.

Ӣ The biggest supporters of a two-state solution are secular Jews (72 percent), Conservative Jews (62 percent) and Reform Jews (58 percent).

”¢ The biggest skeptics are Orthodox Jews (30 percent) and white Evangelical Christian (42 percent)…

”¢ 60 percent of Jews say they approve of Obama’s policy toward Israel. This is highest among Jews over 65 (at 66 percent) and Reform Jews (65 percent). Conservative Jews are also supportive (60 percent), with secular Jews a touch less so (54 percent).

”¢ Support is lowest among Christian groups; 38 percent of American Christians support Obama’s Israel policy, including just 26 percent of white Evangelical Christians.

”¢ The most critical Jewish group is Orthodox Jews, 36 percent of whom approve of Obama’s approach to Israel…

”¢ Pew came up with nine different traits commonly associated with Jewish identity and asked Jewish respondents to answer whether each is “essential to being Jewish.” Among those nine traits, “caring about Israel” was the fifth most likely to be selected. 43 percent called this essential.

”¢ Traits more likely to be considered “essential to being Jewish” than caring about Israel, from most to least popular: Remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice/equality, being intellectually curious.

Ӣ Among religious Jews, 49 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It still ranks fifth for this group.

”¢ Among secular Jews, only 23 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It ranks sixth, behind “having a good sense of humor.”

It’s very telling, I think.

I would add that most American Jews live in the strongly liberal enclaves of New York City and Los Angleles. These cities are liberal in part because they have so many Jews, of course, but there are plenty of other US cities without such huge Jewish populations that are just as strongly liberal. It is highly possible that the Jews of NY and LA are so strongly liberal for many of the same reasons that the non-Jewish populations in large urban coastal centers are so strongly liberal.]

It’s what Obama didn’t say

The New Neo Posted on by

We’re very used to Obama denying that the Muslim religion has any connection with terrorism. But in the president’s interview with Matt Yglesias of Vox he also declined to state the obvious fact that in the Paris grocery attack the victims were selected because they were Jewish.

Obama’s verbal gymnastics around this were so awkward that they caused widespread comment as well as puzzlement and criticism. Here’s what he said:

It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.

In the conflagration that has ensued, instead of merely saying “of course the president knows they were targeted because they were Jews,” spokespeople Josh Earnest and Jen Psaki first spent some agonizing minutes (there are videos) trying to claim the grocery shooting really was “random,” and then ultimately tweeting that of course the shooting was anti-Semitic and that the administration has always said that.

And they are correct that the State Department has been saying that for quite some time. But not Obama, curiously enough. In fact, the only time Obama referred to anti-Semitism as a motive in the attack (at least that I could locate, and I tried pretty hard) was in this short press release that was written rather than spoken, and sent to the UN on the occasion of a conference specifically on the topic of anti-Semitism. It mentions the attack as an example.

The word in the Yglesias interview that seems to have garnered all the fuss is “random,” and Earnest and Psaki spent a good deal of their efforts on explaining how the victims were randomly chosen among the customers in the grocery store (some have referred to it as a “deli,” as the president did, but I’m going with “grocery store” because that’s what it seems to have actually been). That seems an odd point—that they weren’t called out by name and assassinated—but even their randomness is in question.

Reports are that at least two of the victims were chosen by the terrorist Coulibaly from among the hostages because those two had performed particularly heroic actions:

Yohan Cohen, aged 22, and Yoav Hattab, aged 21, were hailed as heroes by their fellow hostages, as they were murdered by Coulibaly while seeking to overcome him and free the other hostages in the store. Coulibaly reportedly abandoned one of his weapons on a counter-top in the store as he entered, after it had jammed. After Coulibaly proceeded to threaten a customer with a small child at the beginning of the attack, Cohen, an employee, attempted to grab the abandoned weapon with the help of Hattab, and take down Coulibaly. When the malfunctioning gun jammed on Cohen at that moment, Coulibaly shot Cohen in the head, and then proceeded to shoot Hattab.

But I think it’s wrong to nitpick over the word “random”—although the attack, in a kosher grocery on Friday, right before the Sabbath when most observant Jews would be shopping in preparation for the holiday, and in which the killer specifically stated he targeted Jews, was clearly not random. What is more important is what Obama didn’t say. After all, how hard is it to use the words “kosher” or “Jewish” or “anti-Semitism”to describe the attack? These things are clear and obvious; you have to go out of your way to create weird constructions in order to not use the words.

So it wasn’t the word “random” that was such a problem, although it appeared to be at first glance. It was the absence of the word “Jew” or something of the sort. To illustrate my point, do a thought experiment: if Obama had said “randomly shoot a bunch of Jews in a deli in Paris,” would there have been a similar hue and cry? I doubt it, because we would have known just what he meant. It was the use of the word “random” combined with the absence of any words like kosher or Jewish, and the strange phrase “bunch of folks.” The sidestepping is extreme enough—and consistent enough (I have been unable to locate a single spoken statement in which he mentions Jews or Jewishness or anti-Semitism in connection with the attack)—as to seem an intentional avoidance on Obama’s part.

So–why can’t Obama say the obvious?

Here are the possibilities: (1) Obama doesn’t want to stir up any sympathy for Jews, either for geopolitical reasons involving his antipathy for Israel, or because he really is anti-Semitic (2) The more he identifies Jews as the intended victims, the more people will link the terrorists with religious motivations involving Islam, which he wants to discourage (3) He is so in the habit of using obfuscatory speech about religion for Islamic terrorists that phrases like “a bunch of folks,” and the leaving out of the word “kosher,” are nearly-reflexive and automatic edits of religious content (he lacks a similar reluctance when speaking of Christianity and the Crusades, of course).

At the time of the kosher supermarket killings, Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary:

Not mentioning anti-Semitism when Islamist killers specifically seek out Jews to slaughter ”” as if anyone could possibly believe a terrorist assault on a kosher market in Paris could be mere happenstance ”” is more than insensitive. It is a sign that this administration does not take the many attacks on French and European Jews seriously. It is also a message to the Muslim world that the United States does not take the issue of anti-Semitic violence seriously. To his credit, French President Francois Hollande did specifically condemn the attack as an act of anti-Semitism, a statement President Obama should have echoed.

Obama’s Yglesias interview signals that his attitude and message has not changed in the month since Tobin wrote those words. I submit that it is unlikely to change.