I’ve generally avoided writing about sports on this blog unless there I thought there was a useful political metaphor; in my approximately 16 months at this, I’ve probably written about five or six pieces that feature sports prominently. The temptation would be even greater than doing pieces that are blatantly pro-Jewish or pro-Israel, owing not only to the fact that in my more obviously Judeocentric pieces I’ve usually been quoting someone else directly [who would say what I wanted to better than I could] but also because I know how out-of-hand my lifelong obsession with the New York Jets [which would explain a lot] can get. I didn’t want to end up writing only about the Jews and the Jets.
This season, it turns out there may be even stronger parallels between the two. [Now, just in case any of you want to get REALLY self-righteous about this, no, there’s no comparison. Just call it a VERY loose illustration. And if you’re really offended, don’t read any further. Or read my Morally Offended and get a clue.]
Anyway…anyone familiar with Jewish and Jetish history will recognize the common thread of suffering that runs between the two, sometimes involving a certain degree of self-infliction. However, can anyone deny an element of Divine intervention after Sunday’s game in Indianapolis? [Here’s my foray into self-righteousness: I don’t believe in “football gods”. G-d can do this all by Himself.]
In either case, some [football] issues need to be addressed:
The only person who was cheated out of anything here was Peyton Manning. The guy deserved a shot at a perfect season, particularly since, as was proven Sunday, the only reason the Colts were anywhere near that precipice was because of him. As I’ve written before The Convention: Regular Season Begins I have a bias against the Miami Dolphins and Don Shula bordering on xenophobia [owing to the Mud Bowl/’83 AFC Championship] which was one reason I rooted for the Pats in SB XLII [aside from my almost equal bias against the Giants, for winning SB XXI when 1986 should have been the Jets’ year.] But while watching the Colts self-destruct in a Jet-like manner, I had this epiphany about the Fish' perfect 1972 season: while they might not have beaten any playoff teams—and only one team with a record over .500 [the Giants, who finished 8-6 that year]—I suddenly remembered that, of Miami’s 17 wins in ’72, the quarterback of record in 11 of them was a 38-year-old backup, Earl Morrall. I suddenly had a grudgingly newfound [short-lived, to be sure] respect for the job Don Shula did that season.
Now, as far as others who think that this is an earth-shattering event:
Colts fans DO have reason to boo. And they’ll be REALLY mad if this turns out to actually cost them playoff momentum and/or the Super Bowl, like it may have in ’05. However, recent NFL history is inconclusive: just look at the ’04 Colts, who rested everyone in the last game at Denver and got blown out 33-14, and then came back against the same Broncos the next week in the wildcard game in Indy and won 49-24. [Jet fans like me were really angry: that game almost cost the Jets a playoff spot, though they may have deserved to lose it after going 5-6 following a 5-0 start.] There’s also the classic case of the ’96 Broncos who started resting vets in week 14 after clinching the top seed and lost their playoff opener to the expansion Jaguars. [Having learned his lesson, Mike Shanahan won the two Super Bowls after that.] As far as the ’07 Pats playing for perfection, we’ll never know because they lost the Super Bowl, but that had more to do with the nature of the Giants’ blitz than any veteran fatigue.
So, Peyton was cheated out of a piece of history. No one else deserves it. And, as Rex Ryan put it, “this football team beat 14 teams, so they earned the right to play it the way they wanted to”.
I also refer back to the ’04 Colts-Broncos finale because apparently fans of five other teams are up in arms that both the Colts and Bengals are laying down for the Jets. Grow up. If the Jets hadn’t found ridiculously creative ways to lose in SIX of their seven losses—[pick sixes and dropped field-goal snaps come to mind]—no one would be having this conversation. The breaks finally evened out.
This especially goes for Dolphins fans. Yeah, you guys swept the Jets this year. Remember all those seasons the Jets swept the Fish and still finished behind them in the standings? 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1993, 1999, 2000, 2001…and in four of those seasons, the Fish made the playoffs and the Jets didn’t. So go jump into Biscayne Bay, Fishfaces. Payback’s a bitch, especially when she’s a New Yorker.
In conclusion: forty years ago, the Jets were going up against a Colts team that was being touted as the best ever. The Jets had no chance. [And the Colts starter was their backup—Earl Morrall.]
We know how that game turned out. And it was played in Miami.
See how this all works out?
Monday, December 28, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Almost All Apologies
It’s too easy to say that Jimmy Carter’s “apology” to the Jews is due to his not wanting to throw up any obstacles to his grandson Jason Carter’s budding political career. It is, however unquestionable that he is being disingenuous. All the evidence one needs to that effect is his rather tortuous explanation of the meaning behind the title of his tome Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid [“The former president said that he had attempted to conflate into a single title his belief that Palestine, not Israel, should control the West Bank, and that apartheid, not peace, would prevail were that not to happen. Apartheid was a predictor, he said, not a description; such an outlook was not inconsistent with Israeli leaders and pro-Israel groups.”] THAT should pretty much serve as an indicator of how gullible he considers Jews who are otherwise completely supportive of his political weltanschuung and how little he cares about those who don’t, Jewish or otherwise.
As far as I’m concerned, Carter is about as genuine about his regret as Henry Ford was about his in 1927, after he’d practically single-handedly made the Protocols of the Elders of Zion an international best-seller. One should also remember that long after said apology was issued—and the publication of The Dearborn Independent, the American version and forerunner to Der Sturmer, ceased publication under pressure—Ford was awarded accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle was In July 1938. Not for nothing did Adolf Hitler tell a reporter "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" two years before he became Chancellor. I would predict that similar public accolades for Carter from terrorists and their supporters will not cease because of this “apology”. Some of them actually read history too, before they revise and deny it.
In the meantime, as Rosner from the Jerusalem Post puts it: “1. Jewish organizations have to congratulate him and pretend to believe him. Jewish writers don't. 2. Jewish politicians and Israeli politicians have to act as if he means what he says. Jews with no political aspirations don't.” That—and the timing of the apology with the Jason Carter’s budding political career—should serve, for now at least, as a positive sign: that the idea that some “criticisms” of Israel are disingenuous and motivated by anti-semitism are still politically trenchant enough that they have to be reckoned with.
Which is why the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal as President Obama’s “Anti-Semitism Czar”—and her immediate jumping into the fray by publicly siding with the J Street version of Israel “support”—is, to be sure, at least mildly alarming, but certainly not surprising. As I’ve said before, Obama plan to govern from the center by dragging the center to the left and making that the new “center”, and this fits his plan perfectly. Like Carter, she has said some of the right things [see her Ha’aretz interview] but her belief [which is essentially the J Street outlook] that when sacrifices for “peace” have to be made, it’s the Jews that are going to have to be doing the sacrificing, because that is our destiny. This is why is this case Rosner is wrong when he writes that “Instead of being an asset to Obama, she's a burden”, because when he writes right before that “Rosenthal is now officially a member of the look-at-them-and-you'll-know-why-we-don't-trust-Obama team”—he’s absolutely correct. Rosenthal is the embodiment of the Obama House Jew. [He’s got lots of those.]
I don’t think Obama is an anti-Semite. While he may be a lot more sympathetic to Islam [and Islamists, and even terrorists] than is politically healthy to let on [for him], one could posit [albeit, in a somewhat strained manner] that: a] the Islam he grew up with in Indonesia is not necessarily the same as the Wahhabi/Taliban version and b] he’s as religious a Moslem as Reagan was a Chrisitian [e.g., openly supportive of their political agenda while not ever going to services himself]. However, even given that possible allowance—and like I said, it’s both generous and strained at the same time—Obama’s attempt to realign the US interest with international Islam and other elements of Edward Said-influenced political correctness and have that rebranded as centrism is certainly fraught with peril for all Americans [if not everyone else]. Rosenthal’s appointment fits into that program perfectly.
As far as I’m concerned, Carter is about as genuine about his regret as Henry Ford was about his in 1927, after he’d practically single-handedly made the Protocols of the Elders of Zion an international best-seller. One should also remember that long after said apology was issued—and the publication of The Dearborn Independent, the American version and forerunner to Der Sturmer, ceased publication under pressure—Ford was awarded accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle was In July 1938. Not for nothing did Adolf Hitler tell a reporter "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" two years before he became Chancellor. I would predict that similar public accolades for Carter from terrorists and their supporters will not cease because of this “apology”. Some of them actually read history too, before they revise and deny it.
In the meantime, as Rosner from the Jerusalem Post puts it: “1. Jewish organizations have to congratulate him and pretend to believe him. Jewish writers don't. 2. Jewish politicians and Israeli politicians have to act as if he means what he says. Jews with no political aspirations don't.” That—and the timing of the apology with the Jason Carter’s budding political career—should serve, for now at least, as a positive sign: that the idea that some “criticisms” of Israel are disingenuous and motivated by anti-semitism are still politically trenchant enough that they have to be reckoned with.
Which is why the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal as President Obama’s “Anti-Semitism Czar”—and her immediate jumping into the fray by publicly siding with the J Street version of Israel “support”—is, to be sure, at least mildly alarming, but certainly not surprising. As I’ve said before, Obama plan to govern from the center by dragging the center to the left and making that the new “center”, and this fits his plan perfectly. Like Carter, she has said some of the right things [see her Ha’aretz interview] but her belief [which is essentially the J Street outlook] that when sacrifices for “peace” have to be made, it’s the Jews that are going to have to be doing the sacrificing, because that is our destiny. This is why is this case Rosner is wrong when he writes that “Instead of being an asset to Obama, she's a burden”, because when he writes right before that “Rosenthal is now officially a member of the look-at-them-and-you'll-know-why-we-don't-trust-Obama team”—he’s absolutely correct. Rosenthal is the embodiment of the Obama House Jew. [He’s got lots of those.]
I don’t think Obama is an anti-Semite. While he may be a lot more sympathetic to Islam [and Islamists, and even terrorists] than is politically healthy to let on [for him], one could posit [albeit, in a somewhat strained manner] that: a] the Islam he grew up with in Indonesia is not necessarily the same as the Wahhabi/Taliban version and b] he’s as religious a Moslem as Reagan was a Chrisitian [e.g., openly supportive of their political agenda while not ever going to services himself]. However, even given that possible allowance—and like I said, it’s both generous and strained at the same time—Obama’s attempt to realign the US interest with international Islam and other elements of Edward Said-influenced political correctness and have that rebranded as centrism is certainly fraught with peril for all Americans [if not everyone else]. Rosenthal’s appointment fits into that program perfectly.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
All Yours, Now
I have written ["W. Doesn’t Care. He Doesn’t Have To."] that Obama’s predecessor didn’t understand enough to care about his legacy. I was somewhat wrong, to a degree; a closer examination of a number of his policy moves after the 2006 midterms indicate that he came to a belated realization that history wasn’t on the RNC payroll. This administration seems to have learned from W.’s mistake and decided to starts chasing its historical legacy right at the outset; apparently the election wasn’t enough, or it’s undisputed historicity convinced anyone in the administration—especially the President—that his legacy was already assured enough that anything he did would be automatically as historic. This kind of self-delusion has finally come full circle, as his policy centerpieces all coalesced into a perfect storm.
It started with Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech and his insistence—in the face of a “constituency” that professes a strict, if disingenuous, pacifism—that there are such things as “good wars” and that someone has to decide when and where to fight them. Obvious to us, the sentiments expressed might have served to reverse the may have served as the final salvo in Obama’s battle with the further-out left wing of his party who were disgruntled by his stance on Afghanistan. In one fell swoop, he now attached his Administration to an unpopular war, almost in the way Vietnam’s crown of thorns passed to Nixon once he bombed Cambodia. So now he acknowledges owning the war.
Soon after, Obama was in Copenhagen in an attempt to give the US a leading role in regulating carbon footprints—this after the East Anglia emails began to reveal the “science” behind global warming to be a hoax on the level of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s no accident that Obama’s “science czar”, John Holdren, made his reputation as an evangelist for extreme measures in world population control, as a follower of now-discredited theories in line with Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb”. In truth, any conservative criticism of liberal politicization of science is, right now, disingenuous, as long as they continue to insist on science in the service of corporate ends [as in the think tanks promoting oil and coal as non-pollutants and smoking as non-addictive] or religious ones [as in any support for “intelligent design” theory in science curricula]. However, when the time arrives that the discrediting of so-called “science” of climate change becomes the consensus position in the scientific community, the liberal progressives will be saddled with this in perpetuity.
Finally, there’s health care legislation. This is certainly going to be historic, but like what will eventually happen with climatology, it might be for the wrong reasons. Now, despite all available evidence, I am still not convinced that there are better alternatives to Keynesian economics and the existence of a welfare state, to a reasonable degree. Additionally, if no one in Congress has gotten around to reading any of the 2,000-plus pages of the bill, none of them can really comment with any accuracy about the bill, so I’ll take the high road and demur. However, despite the appearance of party unity on both sides of the divide—as evidenced by the strict party-line votes in the Senate at every stage—the infighting among Democrats surrounding the elements of the bill, including the reluctant dropping of the public option by Socialist Bernie Sanders, is probably more telling: that is, if the Republicans have become the party of “No”, the Democrats are living up to their reputation as the party of ”Anything”.
It might be that someone in the administration realized that, despite the failure of Great Society legislation and the fiasco of Vitenam [from either political vantage point], the legacy of LBJ and his administration was assured forever with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act [which also, to be sure, split the Democratic party]. In their rush to secure the historical legacy that had almost been handed to them just by virtue of the election, they have invested way too much political capital insuring that this health care legislation will simply pass and be counted as an equivalent, maybe even for doing nothing and worse. Instead, its passage—as an exclusively Democratic bill—will secure the moment that the automatic legacy unraveled, and when [hopefully] the partisan criticisms leveled at the administration finally began to gain credibility.
It started with Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech and his insistence—in the face of a “constituency” that professes a strict, if disingenuous, pacifism—that there are such things as “good wars” and that someone has to decide when and where to fight them. Obvious to us, the sentiments expressed might have served to reverse the may have served as the final salvo in Obama’s battle with the further-out left wing of his party who were disgruntled by his stance on Afghanistan. In one fell swoop, he now attached his Administration to an unpopular war, almost in the way Vietnam’s crown of thorns passed to Nixon once he bombed Cambodia. So now he acknowledges owning the war.
Soon after, Obama was in Copenhagen in an attempt to give the US a leading role in regulating carbon footprints—this after the East Anglia emails began to reveal the “science” behind global warming to be a hoax on the level of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s no accident that Obama’s “science czar”, John Holdren, made his reputation as an evangelist for extreme measures in world population control, as a follower of now-discredited theories in line with Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb”. In truth, any conservative criticism of liberal politicization of science is, right now, disingenuous, as long as they continue to insist on science in the service of corporate ends [as in the think tanks promoting oil and coal as non-pollutants and smoking as non-addictive] or religious ones [as in any support for “intelligent design” theory in science curricula]. However, when the time arrives that the discrediting of so-called “science” of climate change becomes the consensus position in the scientific community, the liberal progressives will be saddled with this in perpetuity.
Finally, there’s health care legislation. This is certainly going to be historic, but like what will eventually happen with climatology, it might be for the wrong reasons. Now, despite all available evidence, I am still not convinced that there are better alternatives to Keynesian economics and the existence of a welfare state, to a reasonable degree. Additionally, if no one in Congress has gotten around to reading any of the 2,000-plus pages of the bill, none of them can really comment with any accuracy about the bill, so I’ll take the high road and demur. However, despite the appearance of party unity on both sides of the divide—as evidenced by the strict party-line votes in the Senate at every stage—the infighting among Democrats surrounding the elements of the bill, including the reluctant dropping of the public option by Socialist Bernie Sanders, is probably more telling: that is, if the Republicans have become the party of “No”, the Democrats are living up to their reputation as the party of ”Anything”.
It might be that someone in the administration realized that, despite the failure of Great Society legislation and the fiasco of Vitenam [from either political vantage point], the legacy of LBJ and his administration was assured forever with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act [which also, to be sure, split the Democratic party]. In their rush to secure the historical legacy that had almost been handed to them just by virtue of the election, they have invested way too much political capital insuring that this health care legislation will simply pass and be counted as an equivalent, maybe even for doing nothing and worse. Instead, its passage—as an exclusively Democratic bill—will secure the moment that the automatic legacy unraveled, and when [hopefully] the partisan criticisms leveled at the administration finally began to gain credibility.
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