Not much news today

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes I wonder what makes me pick a topic to write about.

Some days there’s a story du jour that cries out for treatment, even if only to provide a forum for commenters to talk amongst themselves about it. Sometimes there’s something that strikes a deep and resonant chord within me and makes me especially interested, whether or not anyone else in the MSM or blogosphere is paying attention. Sometimes I’m looking for comic relief, distraction, inspiration, comfort, you name it.

And sometimes all the stories seem remarkably redundant or stupid or irrelevant. A Politico reporter disses Mitt Romney in an especially egregious way? Bain Capital blabbity blabbity blah from the NY Times and the Obama campaign? Various polls that purport to mean something in terms of what will happen in November? Bluster and speculation about the pending SCOTUS decision on HCR when in truth no one has a clue what SCOTUS will rule?

News is often that way, but some days are worse than others. It’s a little early to say that the silly season has begun. But maybe it’s all the silly season now. Of course, I don’t really yearn for a big story, because they so often tend to be about disasters and calamities. I’ll take boredom over that.

When I was writing this post, a little earworm started in my head. It went like his, “No news today, my love has gone away…” I couldn’t place the lyric, but when I Googled it I discovered that I had gotten it quite wrong. It’s actually a song by Herman’s Hermits from the 60s, and it goes like this:

It strikes me that they certainly wouldn’t be able to get away with lines like “the company was gay” these days.

And it also makes me wonder whether milk delivery has gone the way of the dodo. It had been such a ubiquitous part of my youth (yours, too, probably, if you’re anything like a contemporary of mine or older). We had a little wooden box outside the side door, where the milkman would come and deliver his goodies—including the glass bottles of milk that had cream on the top, and a perfectly-fitting lid with a little tab that you pulled to open it. Of course, I hated milk even back then, but I loved that milkbox and it was often my job to go out there and get that bottle and bring it on in.

But enough milk delivery reminiscence. Let’s have some more musical reminiscence. This one actually is about the news rather than milk delivery—sort of, kind of, although it’s really about love and its comings and goings. But aren’t they all?

Will Holder stay or leave?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Several years ago a great many people were predicting that Obama would ditch Holder because he was too much trouble to the administration. I opined that it would not happen. I was looking at the post again the other day because there’s been similar speculation about Holder and Obama in the light of the Fast and Furious debacle, and I think a good deal of what I said then is still quite relevant. So here’s a repeat.]

In this post’s comment thread there was a discussion of whether President Obama is making some room under that crowded bus for his Attorney General Eric Holder. Jennifer Rubin has written a piece speculating that this might indeed be the case, citing the fact that Rahm Emanuel has gone on record as distancing himself from the controversial decisions made by Holder in the KSM trial and the Christmas bomber interrogations.

In my post on the subject, I wrote “Holder is a proxy for Obama himself.” Commenter “RickZ” responded:

No offense, neo, but every presidential cabinet appointment is a proxy for the President himself, that’s the nature of the beast at these rarefied positions.

So I would like to clarify: by using the word “proxy” in Holder’s case, I meant something different than the usual Cabinet appointee, the usual presidential representative. I could be wrong about this, but my gut senses a close identification between Obama and Holder, an almost-Vulcan-mind-meld between them on the legal issues involved in fighting terrorism. This is not a compliment to either man; I think both are sadly misguided.

Holder serves a purpose for Obama. If there is an issue on which the President is somewhat loathe to express his opinion fully, perhaps because he knows it will be unpopular or controversial, I believe that Obama purposely uses Holder as cover, to draw the opposition’s criticism and deflect it from himself.

Perhaps the proper word for the relationship might be “surrogate” or “mouthpiece.” This is not to say that Holder does not have opinions of his own. I am not claiming he is a puppet. But his opinions are so closely in sync with Obama’s on these issues that for all intents and purposes they are one.

For this reason, I disagree strongly with those who think Holder is about to go. I suppose Obama might sacrifice him if it becomes necessary for strategic reasons (after all, he’s been known to do such a thing). If the decisions they both support because so unpopular Obama feels the need to disassociate himself from Holder and use him as scapegoat, it will happen. But this would only occur in the most extreme of situations, because Obama is so wedded to these views himself, and they are completely integral to his own attitude about the legal status and treatment of terrorists.

Holder is also no ordinary Cabinet appointee for Obama. They have known each other since 2004, the year Obama first achieved a national profile. The two met at “a dinner party hosted by former White House aide Anne Walker Marchange, niece of Clinton friend Vernon Jordan.” Very soon after declaring himself a candidate in early 2007, Obama requested that Holder be part of his campaign, and “Holder served as a legal adviser and strategist and led Obama’s vice presidential search committee.”

Holder is a trusted adviser and member of Obama’s inner circle. It probably doesn’t hurt, either, that Holder is a graduate of Columbia and a former basketball player, much like Obama. But it’s their common attitude towards law that creates the strongest bond between the men. As Holder says, “We are on the same page.”

And I don’t think Obama is eager to turn that page.

Ugly dresses

The New Neo Posted on by

I just discovered this website, where I plan to spend a bit of time now and then whenever I’m in desperate need of some frivolous R&R.

I tend to suspect some of these fashions are not for real. But here’s just one of the ugly dresses you can find there (although perhaps “ugly” isn’t quite the correct word—“bizarre” might be better):

To pull off something like that, it helps to have attitude. And she’s got it.

But I’m rather fond of these bridal shoes, as a sort of post-modern ironic commentary on something-or-other:

The “Jewish vote” over the last century

The New Neo Posted on by

While doing research for my recent post on Jews and Obama, I came across a site showing trends in Jewish voting in presidential elections from 1916 till now (I assume it’s based mostly on exit polling, although that’s not clearly stated).

The trends are easier to see if you look at this chart from the site:

So at the beginning of the century the Jewish vote was relatively evenly split between the two parties, at least as compared to today. The Roosevelt years saw the consolidation of the Jewish vote firmly and overwhelmingly in the camp of the Democratic Party. But it hasn’t always stayed there. The presidents who made the strongest inroads have been Eisenhower and Reagan, and Nixon in his second term but not his first, with a blip for Bush senior in his first term but not his second run.

I haven’t found any data to explain these things, although I bet someone has done a study somewhere. I’m not sure about the earlier part of the century, but the Eisenhower phenomenon could be accounted for by his WWII war hero status. For Nixon’s second term, his opponent McGovern was an especially weak one and Nixon’s victory a bona fide landslide, so Jews were probably part of that general trend. Jews liked Reagan to the tune of over 30% (in 1980, almost 40%), a level that approached their Republican support back in the early part of the century. That carried over to a certain extent when Bush I first ran for president, but by the time he ran again their allegiance was very firmly in Democrat Clinton’s camp.

Since then, there’s been almost no change in their very high level of support for the Democratic candidates. Jews voted 78% for Obama in 2008, which has been typical of their vote for Democratic candidates in recent years. The question is: will they be disaffected enough in 2012 to go for Romney in Reaganesque numbers? That would only require their reaching levels between 30 and 40 percent, because the last time the Jewish vote for a Republican presidential candidate was above 40% was back in 1920.

Andrew McCarthy: “They really don’t want you to see what is in those documents.”

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew McCarthy is often my go-to guy on legal issues. He’s very sharp on the law and terrorism, which is what you might expect from the lawyer who prosecuted the perpetrators of the first WTC bombing back in the 90s.

McCarthy writes of the latest developments in Fast and Furious:

The issue in F&F is not the withholding of DOJ documents. The issue is the reckless provision of an arsenal fit for an army to violent cartels, quite predictably resulting in the murders of possibly hundreds of people including at least one United States law enforcement officer…

If this were a Republican administration, the press would long ago have made the Department’s obstruction of Congress a five-alarm scandal…But while Holder has been in the eye of what little storm there was, it has always been the case that F&F is Obama’s scandal. Holder has never done anything other than implement Obama’s policies and manage relations with Congress as Obama wished them to be conducted…The last thing Obama wanted to do, with the November election looming, was resort to the Nixon strategy…And, again, if the Obama administration’s story was true, they would want to release the documents that support it.

They really don’t want you to see what is in those documents.

McCarthy’s argument makes plenty of sense, and if I had to bet I’d say he’s correct.

However, I also think that Obama has a history of arrogance and secrecy. Yes, there may be a bunch of smoking guns he’s covering up, but I think it’s also a personality trait of his to say “it’s none of your business” when asked to divulge information (that’s the “secrecy” part). And he thinks he can get away with it, since he’s done it before many times (that’s the “arrogance” part). What’s more, he may be trying to see how far he can push his power in general, and executive privilege is an important tool in that endeavor.

Flying the friendly skies

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve watched the TLC show “On the Fly” once or twice (only while double-tasking, so please don’t mock me too much). According to TLC, it “gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the modern air travel experience, sharing the large-scale operations and personal customer stories at Southwest Airlines.”

Well, yes. But do we really want that? Is it entertaining to watch the show’s compendium of raging and/or unruly and/or frustrated passengers and employees? Isn’t it quite enough to witness or be them in real life?

I was on a plane not long ago and saw an incident straight out of the show. After I’d taken my seat, I noticed a woman coming down the aisle and stopping in the row in front of me who greeted the people there a bit too loudly and enthusiastically, considering they were all strangers.

But I didn’t think much about it. Just considered her to be an unusually gregarious person—which shows that I have no future as an airline screener.

She sat down and continued to talk to the guy next to her, telling him she’s a “bad flyer” (whatever that means; nervous?). He calmly reassured her. In fact, he was one of those people with rare equanimity—soothing and patient, despite the fact that she’s the sort of seatmate most people dread.

I was just thinking what a nice guy he was, and wondering whether I’d hear her jabbering away the whole flight, when a large and friendly flight attendant with a big smile came down the aisle. He seemed pretty gregarious too; gave her a big “hello” and asked how she was doing.

Also what she’d been doing prior to getting on the plane. I immediately realized, having seen “On the Fly,” that the guy was evaluating her for sobriety. And that’s exactly how it went.

She volunteered that prior to getting to the airport she’d been with her boyfriend. Had she had anything to drink? Yes, maybe a little bit, just to relax her. How many? Oh, just one (slurring her words). Had she been eating too? Oh, yes, her boyfriend had made her dinner.

What kind? Spaghetti. What sort of sauce? Tomato, meatballs.

How many drinks? This time the answer was two. And on and on, till she was removed from the plane.

She only made a token protest; perhaps she knew she was pretty drunk. The guy was smooth as silk; when she asked him if he was really throwing her off the plane he said he hadn’t made his mind up yet, but he needed to talk to her in the front of the plane.

And so she got up, and of course she never returned. Since it was evening, I wonder whether the airline footed the bill for a room for her. But I do know that her seatmate got a nice reward—an extra seat to stretch out in for the long night flight.

Alice Walker: no Color Purple for Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

You’re probably familiar with Alice Walker’s Pulitizer prizewinning novel The Color Purple. It caused a sensation when it was published way back in 1982, with its story of a poor black woman who rises from a history of abuse and degradation to healing.

I attempted to read it then, and couldn’t get through it all. To me, it was a one-dimensional political polemic with almost nothing but an agenda, and a transparent and relentless one at that. Not the sort of book I fancy, whatever the point of view. This book’s agenda seemed to be “men are evil, women good” (or perhaps “black men are evil, black women good”), although I suppose since I only got about a third of the way through it I admit I might have missed something.

Now Ms. Walker has blocked the Israeli translation of her book into Hebrew. No great loss, I’d say, but certainly an interesting development in the life of any author. Try as I may, I can’t recall another example of an author essentially banning his/her own book from a country, but then again Israel is awfully special in that regard, no? (In fact, the publisher mentioned in the article says it has happened before to Israel). The effort also seems rather futile, since English, the book’s original language, is widely understood and spoken in Israel. But Walker, a Palestinian activist, has made her gesture—of course ignoring the intense irony of the Palestinians’ treatment of women. On the left, however, ironies tend to abound.

Walker was born in the South in 1944, and undoubtedly suffered all sorts of racial discrimination. Later she was very active in the civil rights movement (partly because of the influence of one of her professors, none other than Howard Zinn). But it’s the following fascinating vignette from her personal life that caught my eye relevant to the themes of men, women, mothers and daughters, racism, Jews, and Israel [emphasis mine]:

In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967 in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming “the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi”. They were harassed and threatened by whites, including the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter Rebecca in 1969. Walker described her in 2008 as “a living, breathing, mixed-race embodiment of the new America that they were trying to forge.” Walker and her husband divorced amicably in 1976.

Walker and her daughter became estranged. Rebecca felt herself to be more of “a political symbol… than a cherished daughter”. She published a memoir entitled Black White and Jewish, expressing the complexities of her parents’ relationship and her childhood. Rebecca recalls her teenage years when her mother would retreat to her far-off writing studio while “I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.” Since the birth of Rebecca’s son Tenzin, her mother has not spoken to her because she dared to “question her ideology.” Rebecca has learned that she was cut out of her mother’s will in favor of a distant cousin

Sometimes life doesn’t imitate art.