im a self-hating conservative because
a) liberals are usually cooler and better looking (hello? hollywood? would you rather hang out with Sean Penn or Alan Keyes?)
b) one can forgive liberals a lot easier for playing with the truth because since they actually believe that morality is what they say it is, it ipso facto becomes more flexible, and more tolerable, to argue with them (if theyre not too attached to PC. But those arent liberals, theyre progressives.)
However: conservatives always think theyre right and G-d agrees with them. So, when they are right, they're merely tolerable, but when they're wrong, or they play with their principles and claim never to have changed them, theyre lying on two fronts. Thats when theyre downright embarrassing and I dont want to have anything to do with them.
Put another way, I have no contemporary "liberal" credentials, so I wouldnt claim to be one of them. However, though I (reluctantly) share certain conservative principles, I wouldnt wanna hang out with them.
Or, in psychiatric terms: A psychotic thinks 2 + 2 =5. A neurotic knows 2 + 2 =4; he just cant stand it. Im a neurotic conservative.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
My One Contention With Jacobson
First off, I didn't manage to paste the link to Howard Jacobson's piece yesterday. Here it is.
Next, I want to quote the one passage that probably highlights the moral "dilemma" an otherwise reasonable progressive like Jacobson has placed himself in, and a way out.
Jacobson:
I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably. But it is in the nature of modern war, where soldiers no longer toss grenades at one another from their trenches, that the innocent pay.
First: he has already presumed, likely because of the discrepancy in the number fatalities, that the Israel perpetrated a "massacre", even if indirectly, even if justified. That is the first presumption that has to be contended with. If any massacre has been committed, the responsibility belongs solely to the Hamas minions who cynically use civilians as shields and bombs. To his credit, he quotes salient vocies and evidence debunking that notion that responsibility is on Israel's hsoulders, but he betrays too much discomfort with the idea; he gives too much credence to the very people he's calling out. He's accepting that the Israelis may have evn been the least bit "indiscriminate", when he knows (and WRITES!!!) the opposite to be true. Its Hamas that is being deliberately, and discriminately, indiscriminate.
Second: "Slaughter presumes innocence." Again, the proximate cause of said slaughter is Hamas, for the reasons enumerated above. Though, one may claim that as the Hamas government was duly elected by the Gazan populace, their "innocence" is an open question, which is my position. But one need not even go that far to contend that if there is a "slaughter", or a "massacre", again, the blood of both the Palestinians and Israelis is on the hands of Hamas'--and their useful idiots.
So--if "'you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?' What were those approached expected to reply?"
This is my reply to these progressives:
YOU are as responsible as Hamas for the deaths of the "innocents" you proclaim to speak for.
YOUR bias and anti-semitism is tantamount to accessory to murder. Of Palestinians as well as Israelis. Especially since you KNOW (and, probably, secretly hope that) more PALESTINIANS will die.
YOU want and end to the "slaughter" in Gaza?
SHUT UP.
Now, to be sure, I would not place a progressive like Jacobson in this camp. (I would say that a "leading light" like Naomi Klein, with her recent call for a boycott of Israel that she proclaims outright should be carried out with the intent and effect analogous to the divestment from apartheid-era South Africa is perilously close to crossing this line into accessory, if she has not yet already. She becomes the most recent addition to a list of prominent progressives--particularly Jewish progressives--who should be labeled as such accessories. I will provide such a short (or maybe not so short) list in an upcoming post.)
However, Jacobson's progressive take on the conflict, even if misguided in part, is important to consider. Which is: that it is might be possible for someone who is for whatever reasons uncomfortable (even if unnecessarily so) with Israel's actions vis-a-vis their sworn enemies in Gaza and elsewhere to STILL make distinctions between criticism and bigotry.
They should be held to it.
Next, I want to quote the one passage that probably highlights the moral "dilemma" an otherwise reasonable progressive like Jacobson has placed himself in, and a way out.
Jacobson:
I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably. But it is in the nature of modern war, where soldiers no longer toss grenades at one another from their trenches, that the innocent pay.
First: he has already presumed, likely because of the discrepancy in the number fatalities, that the Israel perpetrated a "massacre", even if indirectly, even if justified. That is the first presumption that has to be contended with. If any massacre has been committed, the responsibility belongs solely to the Hamas minions who cynically use civilians as shields and bombs. To his credit, he quotes salient vocies and evidence debunking that notion that responsibility is on Israel's hsoulders, but he betrays too much discomfort with the idea; he gives too much credence to the very people he's calling out. He's accepting that the Israelis may have evn been the least bit "indiscriminate", when he knows (and WRITES!!!) the opposite to be true. Its Hamas that is being deliberately, and discriminately, indiscriminate.
Second: "Slaughter presumes innocence." Again, the proximate cause of said slaughter is Hamas, for the reasons enumerated above. Though, one may claim that as the Hamas government was duly elected by the Gazan populace, their "innocence" is an open question, which is my position. But one need not even go that far to contend that if there is a "slaughter", or a "massacre", again, the blood of both the Palestinians and Israelis is on the hands of Hamas'--and their useful idiots.
So--if "'you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?' What were those approached expected to reply?"
This is my reply to these progressives:
YOU are as responsible as Hamas for the deaths of the "innocents" you proclaim to speak for.
YOUR bias and anti-semitism is tantamount to accessory to murder. Of Palestinians as well as Israelis. Especially since you KNOW (and, probably, secretly hope that) more PALESTINIANS will die.
YOU want and end to the "slaughter" in Gaza?
SHUT UP.
Now, to be sure, I would not place a progressive like Jacobson in this camp. (I would say that a "leading light" like Naomi Klein, with her recent call for a boycott of Israel that she proclaims outright should be carried out with the intent and effect analogous to the divestment from apartheid-era South Africa is perilously close to crossing this line into accessory, if she has not yet already. She becomes the most recent addition to a list of prominent progressives--particularly Jewish progressives--who should be labeled as such accessories. I will provide such a short (or maybe not so short) list in an upcoming post.)
However, Jacobson's progressive take on the conflict, even if misguided in part, is important to consider. Which is: that it is might be possible for someone who is for whatever reasons uncomfortable (even if unnecessarily so) with Israel's actions vis-a-vis their sworn enemies in Gaza and elsewhere to STILL make distinctions between criticism and bigotry.
They should be held to it.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Nadia Suleiman, Big Love, and Other Family Models
With all the attention given to the FDLS/Yearning For Zion scandal, the success of HBO’s Big Love, the Octuplet births, and the attendant brouhahas surrounding Prop 8 and gay marriage in particular, a new family model has quietly made its way into the pantheon of “alternatives” to the “nuclear” family.
Now, single motherhood is obviously not a new phenomenon. Forget the Murphy Brown-“cultural elite” battles of a few elections past; one need not even look at statistics of inner-city out-of-wedlock births, but notions pervasive in those (and now, other) neighborhoods that there’s nothing irresponsible about having children before one is prepared to, whether an impoverished inner-city teenager who says “Marriage is for white people”, or a Nadia Suleiman OCD archetype who is psychopathologically driven to procreate and will stop at nothing to do it.
Thankfully, there seems to be little praise from the medical/scientific community for the fertility doctors who apparently took advantage of Suleiman’s mania. More tellingly, she seems not to have gotten too many public mazeltovs from the pro-life community. Since the rabid contracontraceptionists (yes, I made that up) are so well attuned to the PR game, they must realize that Suleiman is manna from heaven to the prochoicers: she allows all pro-lifers to be tarred with the brush of her own compulsions.
(Maybe when Gov. Sarah Palin choked on her answers about contraception in her interviews with Katie Couric, Suleiman was just the kind of archetype she had in mind. And yes, I, so enamored with Palin before I saw those interviews, am turning on her with a vengeance. I blew a ton of credibility on assuming she was actually intellectually salient, when she really was a female Quayle. But I digress, as usual.)
Meanwhile, two recent articles have highlighted the new type of single motherhood: usually a somewhat accomplished woman experiencing, for whatever reason, relationship droughts (as opposed to, say, an oversexed teenager with no compunction to practice safe sex, let alone the ability to even conceptualize self-support) deciding not to wait for a relationship—marital or other—to precede childbearing.
One was Lori Gottlieb’s “The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough: Marry Him!” in the March 2008 Atlantic Monthly, which, though focused more on issues of unrealistic romantic expectations and how our protagonist realizes that she may have possibly jumped the gun by conceiving single and thereby further complicating her already limited romantic options, nevertheless kows that “it isn’t that I’m unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that’s what grown-ups do (I can and have—I had a baby on my own).”
The other was Emily Bazelon’s “2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family”, in the New York Times Magazine of Feb. 1, 2009. Simply put, she writes: “Many college educated mothers [are] setting up lives around other single mothers and all their children, with no role for men or romance.” Hardly the “Boston marriages” of the late 1800’s. One of her subjects’ take on marriage is that “it seems like adding on a big mess to something that comparatively stable.”
But more tellingly, in my Orthodox Jewish community, the one anathematic notion that a woman can actually conceive a child out of wedlock has been (however slowly and quietly) been turned on its head. I was recently as a Sabbath meal and I met a 39-year old lawyer (not unattractive by any account, but whom some men with issues might find “intimidating”) who had conceived twins via IV-fertilization, and the mood at the table was very supportive. There is (again slowly and quietly) a growing body of Jewish legal response treating the subject—in a surprisingly more flexible manner than one would expect. Even though the trend is ostensibly without precedent in those communities, the more conservative juristic element has had an equally hard time find salient textual support to prohibit the practice.
(Granted, at the Sabbath table I was at, none of the guests would have had the “chutzpah” to be antagonistic, as a heavy ostracistic (yes, I made that up too) response would probably be instantaneous. Still, I think the support was genuine. I certainly am supportive.)
As a tangential, but closing note, regarding Prop 8-like issues and “gay adoption”, one might consider a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy being instituted regarding such domestic partnerships’ adopting children, based on some of the models depicted above.
Yeah, I know; I’m denying that marriage is a “civil right”, and “don’t ask, don’t tell” obviously worked SOOO well in the military. I don’t expect doctrinaire progressives to call my proposal anything but bigoted. My challenge is more to those (just a little) farther to the right on the socio-political spectrum: is your opposition to such arrangements theologically/morally absolutist and therefore not grounded in logical social policy, or are you genuinely concerned with the welfare of children enough to consider alternative arrangements that might at least not lead one to directly condone relationships you find objectionable?
Think about it.
Now, single motherhood is obviously not a new phenomenon. Forget the Murphy Brown-“cultural elite” battles of a few elections past; one need not even look at statistics of inner-city out-of-wedlock births, but notions pervasive in those (and now, other) neighborhoods that there’s nothing irresponsible about having children before one is prepared to, whether an impoverished inner-city teenager who says “Marriage is for white people”, or a Nadia Suleiman OCD archetype who is psychopathologically driven to procreate and will stop at nothing to do it.
Thankfully, there seems to be little praise from the medical/scientific community for the fertility doctors who apparently took advantage of Suleiman’s mania. More tellingly, she seems not to have gotten too many public mazeltovs from the pro-life community. Since the rabid contracontraceptionists (yes, I made that up) are so well attuned to the PR game, they must realize that Suleiman is manna from heaven to the prochoicers: she allows all pro-lifers to be tarred with the brush of her own compulsions.
(Maybe when Gov. Sarah Palin choked on her answers about contraception in her interviews with Katie Couric, Suleiman was just the kind of archetype she had in mind. And yes, I, so enamored with Palin before I saw those interviews, am turning on her with a vengeance. I blew a ton of credibility on assuming she was actually intellectually salient, when she really was a female Quayle. But I digress, as usual.)
Meanwhile, two recent articles have highlighted the new type of single motherhood: usually a somewhat accomplished woman experiencing, for whatever reason, relationship droughts (as opposed to, say, an oversexed teenager with no compunction to practice safe sex, let alone the ability to even conceptualize self-support) deciding not to wait for a relationship—marital or other—to precede childbearing.
One was Lori Gottlieb’s “The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough: Marry Him!” in the March 2008 Atlantic Monthly, which, though focused more on issues of unrealistic romantic expectations and how our protagonist realizes that she may have possibly jumped the gun by conceiving single and thereby further complicating her already limited romantic options, nevertheless kows that “it isn’t that I’m unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that’s what grown-ups do (I can and have—I had a baby on my own).”
The other was Emily Bazelon’s “2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family”, in the New York Times Magazine of Feb. 1, 2009. Simply put, she writes: “Many college educated mothers [are] setting up lives around other single mothers and all their children, with no role for men or romance.” Hardly the “Boston marriages” of the late 1800’s. One of her subjects’ take on marriage is that “it seems like adding on a big mess to something that comparatively stable.”
But more tellingly, in my Orthodox Jewish community, the one anathematic notion that a woman can actually conceive a child out of wedlock has been (however slowly and quietly) been turned on its head. I was recently as a Sabbath meal and I met a 39-year old lawyer (not unattractive by any account, but whom some men with issues might find “intimidating”) who had conceived twins via IV-fertilization, and the mood at the table was very supportive. There is (again slowly and quietly) a growing body of Jewish legal response treating the subject—in a surprisingly more flexible manner than one would expect. Even though the trend is ostensibly without precedent in those communities, the more conservative juristic element has had an equally hard time find salient textual support to prohibit the practice.
(Granted, at the Sabbath table I was at, none of the guests would have had the “chutzpah” to be antagonistic, as a heavy ostracistic (yes, I made that up too) response would probably be instantaneous. Still, I think the support was genuine. I certainly am supportive.)
As a tangential, but closing note, regarding Prop 8-like issues and “gay adoption”, one might consider a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy being instituted regarding such domestic partnerships’ adopting children, based on some of the models depicted above.
Yeah, I know; I’m denying that marriage is a “civil right”, and “don’t ask, don’t tell” obviously worked SOOO well in the military. I don’t expect doctrinaire progressives to call my proposal anything but bigoted. My challenge is more to those (just a little) farther to the right on the socio-political spectrum: is your opposition to such arrangements theologically/morally absolutist and therefore not grounded in logical social policy, or are you genuinely concerned with the welfare of children enough to consider alternative arrangements that might at least not lead one to directly condone relationships you find objectionable?
Think about it.
Friday, February 6, 2009
I Take It Back. Gaza Is Now Under UN Occupation. Someone Tell The UN
Objectivity is not that farfetched a notion after all.
This might be the most "evenhanded", or least anti-Israel, MSM article I've seen yet.
Kudos.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090206/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
UN halts aid to Gaza, cites Hamas disruption
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Josef Federman, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 6, 10:08 am ET
JERUSALEM – The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday it has halted all aid shipments into the Gaza Strip due to interference by the ruling Hamas militant group.
The U.N. Relief and Works agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel intercepted an aid shipment for the second time this week.
In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been delivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the agency would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running low.
"There is enough aid for days, not weeks," he said. Complicating the situation, he said the agency has not been able to import plastic bags used for food distribution, and that existing supplies will run out early next week.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called UNRWA's decision "unjustified."
He said Hamas supports UNRWA's work but believes the agency gives some of its aid to groups attached to Hamas' rivals.
He urged UNRWA "to put an end to using aid for political means, and to distribute it to all the needy equally."
Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the U.N. agency for food and other support, and U.N. officials say the need for aid has increased since Israel ended a military offensive in Gaza last month.
The offensive, meant to halt years of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, killed nearly 1,300 people and caused widespread destruction.
Also Friday, Israel deported 15 activists from an aid ship it intercepted en route from Lebanon to Gaza. The activists, all Lebanese and Syrian citizens, were deported overnight, the military said.
Three others — two Indians and a Briton — remained in police custody pending deportation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The ship had attempted to reach Gaza on Thursday in defiance of an Israeli blockade. Israel intercepted the vessel and towed it to Ashdod port, where it remained docked Friday. It was not immediately clear when the boat would be allowed to sail.
Israel and Lebanon are officially at war. Israel said it was concerned about the ship's cargo and called the boat a "provocation." Israel, which is enforcing a naval blockade aimed at Gaza's Hamas rulers, has allowed several similar aid ships into Gaza and has turned several more back, but had never before boarded or detained one.
While the boat remained docked, some 1,000 units of donated blood were quickly unloaded and sent into Gaza, military spokesman Peter Lerner said. The rest of the supplies on board were being examined and would also be sent to Gaza, he said.
Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Since then, it has allowed in little more than basic humanitarian supplies.
Despite Israeli concerns, no weapons were found on board. The organizers of the aid ship, Lebanese political and human rights activists, said the cargo comprised of medicine, food, toys and basic humanitarian supplies such as mattresses and blankets.
Israel unilaterally halted its devastating Gaza operation on Jan. 18, and Hamas followed with an announcement that it would hold its fire.
Sporadic fighting has persisted. On Friday, Gaza militants launched two more rockets into Israel, the military said. There were no injuries, but it illustrated the fragility of the Gaza cease-fire. Late Thursday Israeli forces on the Gaza-Israel border shot and killed a Palestinian who the military said approached the fence armed with a grenade.
Egypt's attempts to mediate a long-term cease-fire have not succeeded so far. Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza's blockaded border crossings as part of any agreement, but Israel says it will not turn the crossings over to Hamas control. It also wants international guarantees that weapons smuggling into Gaza will stop.
The attempts to negotiate a cease-fire are unfolding in the shadow of Israel's national election on Tuesday, as Israel's leaders compete over who can take the toughest stand against Hamas.
New polls Friday showed the likely winner would be hard-line Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the current government ended the Gaza operation too early, without causing enough damage to the Islamic group.
(AP correspondent Karen Zolka contributed to this report.)
This might be the most "evenhanded", or least anti-Israel, MSM article I've seen yet.
Kudos.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090206/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
UN halts aid to Gaza, cites Hamas disruption
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Josef Federman, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 6, 10:08 am ET
JERUSALEM – The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday it has halted all aid shipments into the Gaza Strip due to interference by the ruling Hamas militant group.
The U.N. Relief and Works agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel intercepted an aid shipment for the second time this week.
In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been delivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the agency would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running low.
"There is enough aid for days, not weeks," he said. Complicating the situation, he said the agency has not been able to import plastic bags used for food distribution, and that existing supplies will run out early next week.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called UNRWA's decision "unjustified."
He said Hamas supports UNRWA's work but believes the agency gives some of its aid to groups attached to Hamas' rivals.
He urged UNRWA "to put an end to using aid for political means, and to distribute it to all the needy equally."
Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the U.N. agency for food and other support, and U.N. officials say the need for aid has increased since Israel ended a military offensive in Gaza last month.
The offensive, meant to halt years of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, killed nearly 1,300 people and caused widespread destruction.
Also Friday, Israel deported 15 activists from an aid ship it intercepted en route from Lebanon to Gaza. The activists, all Lebanese and Syrian citizens, were deported overnight, the military said.
Three others — two Indians and a Briton — remained in police custody pending deportation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The ship had attempted to reach Gaza on Thursday in defiance of an Israeli blockade. Israel intercepted the vessel and towed it to Ashdod port, where it remained docked Friday. It was not immediately clear when the boat would be allowed to sail.
Israel and Lebanon are officially at war. Israel said it was concerned about the ship's cargo and called the boat a "provocation." Israel, which is enforcing a naval blockade aimed at Gaza's Hamas rulers, has allowed several similar aid ships into Gaza and has turned several more back, but had never before boarded or detained one.
While the boat remained docked, some 1,000 units of donated blood were quickly unloaded and sent into Gaza, military spokesman Peter Lerner said. The rest of the supplies on board were being examined and would also be sent to Gaza, he said.
Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Since then, it has allowed in little more than basic humanitarian supplies.
Despite Israeli concerns, no weapons were found on board. The organizers of the aid ship, Lebanese political and human rights activists, said the cargo comprised of medicine, food, toys and basic humanitarian supplies such as mattresses and blankets.
Israel unilaterally halted its devastating Gaza operation on Jan. 18, and Hamas followed with an announcement that it would hold its fire.
Sporadic fighting has persisted. On Friday, Gaza militants launched two more rockets into Israel, the military said. There were no injuries, but it illustrated the fragility of the Gaza cease-fire. Late Thursday Israeli forces on the Gaza-Israel border shot and killed a Palestinian who the military said approached the fence armed with a grenade.
Egypt's attempts to mediate a long-term cease-fire have not succeeded so far. Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza's blockaded border crossings as part of any agreement, but Israel says it will not turn the crossings over to Hamas control. It also wants international guarantees that weapons smuggling into Gaza will stop.
The attempts to negotiate a cease-fire are unfolding in the shadow of Israel's national election on Tuesday, as Israel's leaders compete over who can take the toughest stand against Hamas.
New polls Friday showed the likely winner would be hard-line Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the current government ended the Gaza operation too early, without causing enough damage to the Islamic group.
(AP correspondent Karen Zolka contributed to this report.)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Super Bowl: Another Entitlement?
There has been a theory that the NFL is the last bastion of American manhood, if not all elements of our culture that conservatives find favor with (well, most conservatives; who can forget George Will’s plaint that the game “combines the worst elements of American life: violence and committee meetings”) and progressives find objectionable (viz. “The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football”; “For Pride, Profit, and Patricarchy”; “Men Will Be Boys”).
From the vantage point of this particular self-hating conservative rabid football fan, last night’s Super Bowl contest (like last year’s, instantly (and justifiably) canonized as one of the top five contests in the game’s history) moves the NFL further towards progressive/liberal values than it already has gone, entrenched as it is in egalitarianism (parity) and socialism (the TV contracts even sharing among all 32 clubs).
Of the last ten Super Bowls, six have been decided by a touchdown or less, with the game winning score occurring in the final two minutes in five of those; two have been gameworthy until the middle of the fourth quarter (XL and XLI); and the other two (XXXV and XXXVII), though blowouts, showcased what might have been two of the best defenses in NFL history (the 2000 Ravens and 2002 Buccaneers).
Additionally, as the commercials have become more and more tailor-made for the broadcast, enough that they almost have become a broadcast in their own right, the expectations for the quality of the commercials almost exceed the expectations of the quality of the game.
It’s as if a good game AND good commercials have become another entitlement. (Well, maybe in our current economy America might have deserved it.)
Of the four major professional sports, football is the only whose championship is decided in one contest. This might be why people the miss strong element of drama that surrounds a Super Bowl: always a storyline that not only is a lead-in to the game, but also within the game itself, no matter how one-sided or sloppy the game might be, which almost always make the game memorable.
I have seen full telecasts of every Super Bowl, except for I and II, which don’t exist because NBC and CBS erased the tapes, and V, which also seems to have disappeared. The only Super Bowl that had all the drama sucked out of it before the first quarter ended was VIII, when the Dolphins scored touchdowns the first two times they had the ball on almost identical 10-play, 5-1/2 minute drives, sandwiched around a Vikings three-and-out. It might be the only Super Bowl where the highlight film is more exciting than the game.
So, if you ever think there was a Super Bowl not worth watching, you just haven’t studied your football.
From the vantage point of this particular self-hating conservative rabid football fan, last night’s Super Bowl contest (like last year’s, instantly (and justifiably) canonized as one of the top five contests in the game’s history) moves the NFL further towards progressive/liberal values than it already has gone, entrenched as it is in egalitarianism (parity) and socialism (the TV contracts even sharing among all 32 clubs).
Of the last ten Super Bowls, six have been decided by a touchdown or less, with the game winning score occurring in the final two minutes in five of those; two have been gameworthy until the middle of the fourth quarter (XL and XLI); and the other two (XXXV and XXXVII), though blowouts, showcased what might have been two of the best defenses in NFL history (the 2000 Ravens and 2002 Buccaneers).
Additionally, as the commercials have become more and more tailor-made for the broadcast, enough that they almost have become a broadcast in their own right, the expectations for the quality of the commercials almost exceed the expectations of the quality of the game.
It’s as if a good game AND good commercials have become another entitlement. (Well, maybe in our current economy America might have deserved it.)
Of the four major professional sports, football is the only whose championship is decided in one contest. This might be why people the miss strong element of drama that surrounds a Super Bowl: always a storyline that not only is a lead-in to the game, but also within the game itself, no matter how one-sided or sloppy the game might be, which almost always make the game memorable.
I have seen full telecasts of every Super Bowl, except for I and II, which don’t exist because NBC and CBS erased the tapes, and V, which also seems to have disappeared. The only Super Bowl that had all the drama sucked out of it before the first quarter ended was VIII, when the Dolphins scored touchdowns the first two times they had the ball on almost identical 10-play, 5-1/2 minute drives, sandwiched around a Vikings three-and-out. It might be the only Super Bowl where the highlight film is more exciting than the game.
So, if you ever think there was a Super Bowl not worth watching, you just haven’t studied your football.
Hello, everyone: Gaza is no longer occupied.
There are no Jews left living there.
Excuse me: one. Gilad Shalit. And they won’t let him leave.
Still, people seem to be hung up on Israel’s “demographic doom” because there are 1.4 million Arabs in Gaza just waiting to be included in the Israeli body politic long enough to vote the Jewish State out of existence.
And the MSM and the Left are still spouting it. (Not that they wouldn’t print anything that wasn’t true…)
I just hope the Israelis are smart enough not to.
The Palestinians now have one state. (No, not Jordan; that would make two.)
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: its time to introduce the severance of Gaza and the West Bank as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” that would make up a contiguous Palestinian "State" into the diplomatic vocabulary.
There is no specific "Palestinian people" in any ethnic, geographical, political, religious or historical context that commands the union of the two "occupied territories" as a matter of either international law, historical legacy, or even the principles of self-determination.
(At some point, we should also introduce the concept that the demand for a Jew-free Palestinian State willy-nilly makes an Arab Palestine a racist political entity. (Of course, racism no longer applies to Jews and Israelis. Just ask hard- and not-so-hard-Left Jews and Israelis. But no matter.))
Excuse me: one. Gilad Shalit. And they won’t let him leave.
Still, people seem to be hung up on Israel’s “demographic doom” because there are 1.4 million Arabs in Gaza just waiting to be included in the Israeli body politic long enough to vote the Jewish State out of existence.
And the MSM and the Left are still spouting it. (Not that they wouldn’t print anything that wasn’t true…)
I just hope the Israelis are smart enough not to.
The Palestinians now have one state. (No, not Jordan; that would make two.)
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: its time to introduce the severance of Gaza and the West Bank as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” that would make up a contiguous Palestinian "State" into the diplomatic vocabulary.
There is no specific "Palestinian people" in any ethnic, geographical, political, religious or historical context that commands the union of the two "occupied territories" as a matter of either international law, historical legacy, or even the principles of self-determination.
(At some point, we should also introduce the concept that the demand for a Jew-free Palestinian State willy-nilly makes an Arab Palestine a racist political entity. (Of course, racism no longer applies to Jews and Israelis. Just ask hard- and not-so-hard-Left Jews and Israelis. But no matter.))
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