From Republikarma to Barackarma

He plugs one leak, and a bigger one develops. The President might want to conjure up the spirit of Nixon and call the plumbers.

One can never truly say whether the tide has turned, and whether the various conservative tendencies that used to pop up to bite Republicans in the ass has abated somewhat, and now the Democrats’ almost genetic propensity for political self-destruction will now assert itself in its truest form. The President, who was such a beneficiary of the Republican refusal to play by their own rules and the economic mess that resulted, now has created himself a dual quagmire, almost completely of his own volition.

The first irony involves BP. No one can blame him directly for the disaster, and the culture of deregulation and corner-cutting that led to it is a particularly conservative invention; but, Republicans will not be blamed for it, because even when the disaster reached the proportions that it did because they did not see the need to perform any mea culpa for it [it helps immensely that they were the minority power]. Instead, the President looked both impotent and hypocritical, because he couldn’t stop the leak faster and he was loath to actually punish BP too publicly, oil companies—even foreign ones—being not only too big but too important to fail. This despite the fact that he was considered to be a true environmentalist president.

The second irony involves the Afghanistan war and the leaks surrounding both this and the previous Administration’s conduct thereof, which seems to be reminiscent of the incidents surrounding the Pentagon Papers’ revelations of a Democratic administration’s prosecution of a war they believed to be unwinnable. If this the moment where the President has truly assumed ownership of this war, it was certainly not in the way he intended: he will be saddled with the responsibility of things he had no control over at the time [Bush’s policies] because the current leaks indicate he has no control over events now, if he ever did. Attempts to blame the previous administration—which even Nixon realized wouldn’t work in 1971, which was why he tried to quash the Papers—will not only backfire; it would remind the public that there was another war that everyone was making a fuss about that seems to have been forgotten about will continue to be forgotten about, and Obama will find out just how recursive karma is.

In short, Obama has succeeded in taking what might have been once been considered two major conservative-created failures and making them his own. At this point, Republicans might actually best be advised to rest on their laurels to a point, because if they don’t and they continue their infighting, they might remind the electorate of why they became the minority party in the first place. Instead, if they sit back and let the Democrats continue to fail the way Rush hoped they would, they might reap the greatest benefit come November 2010, and maybe 2012.

There Will Be Peace--When:

I mostly—no, completely--disagree with Nick Kristof’s take on the Arab-Jew conflict. And I definitely disagree with his conclusions drawn in his column in today’s NY Times.

However, I found one paragraph particularly instructive, if counterintuitively so.

I reprinted the particular paragraph as it was, then replaced “Israel” with “Islam” and “Palestinian” with “Jew”.

When a salient paragraph can be written the second way, there MIGHT be peace in the Middle East.

Kristof:“The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel’s founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel’s historical claims come from Israeli archeologists. This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “

Me:“The most cogent critiques of Islam’s treatment of Jews invariably come from Islam’s own human rights organizations [sic!]. The most lucid unraveling of Islam’s founding mythology comes from Islam’s historians. The deepest critiques of Islam’s historical claims come from Islam’s archeologists. This more noble Islam, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “

Shul Cake

Shul cake, for those of you who haven’t had the experience of going to a Kiddush, is generally the cheapest sponge cake available next to the schnapps and herring. Sometimes one can sing “Happy Birthday” to the cake. Personally, I love Shul Cake. But not the kind I’m about to describe.

In this pages I’ve definitely been critical of all three of the “great” monotheisms. From the outset, I have not spared my own co-religionists, especially when it comes to “washing dirty laundry in public” when trying to give the impression that one’s laundry never gets dirty in the first place.

At the risk of employing another cliché, it seems certain groups of Rabbis want to eat their cake and have it too. [Talmudic of me; that actually is the way the statement is supposed to go]. Two incidents in the news this week underscore the salience of said cliché.

The first story has to do with the brouhaha surrounding the synagogue in Syracuse that had the “temerity”, as an Orthodox congregation, to appoint TWO women as president of the lay synagogue board. Not, mind you, Rabbis, or Rabbas, or any other perceived hidden equivalent: this was the lay board. It seems in response, the National Council of Young Israel has decided to expel the congregation, and in thesponse to THAT, there has been a vote of no confidence tabled by nearly 150 member congregations of the council.

Now, I’m not one to raise issues of Jewish law unless they seem to be absolutely clear, and this isn’t one of those cases. I personally believe there shouldn’t be a problem with this even from the perspective of Orthodox law, but I could be wrong. However, what the NCYI has done is to avoid the question and claim that the expulsion has to do with unpaid dues. This is one of those cases where, for whatever the reason, those in charge of the Council should be forced to stand up and state their position and not hide behind technicalities. If you believe this is wrong, you’ll endure the dissolution of your organization, like Rabbi Naftali Berlin did when the Russian authorities tried to take over the Volozhin Yeshiva; he closed it. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

More disturbing was the next story, that the Rabbinical Board of Queens—the “Va’ad”—allowed a member under a cloud of suspicion that he has “inappropriate contact” with students was allowed to resign—in October!!!—without any reference to said “cloud” hanging over him. A prominent religious psychologist accurately called out the Va’ad on this by claiming that they had “protect[ed] one of their own” by “g[iving] him a hekhser and ma[king] him kosher”. No further explanation is necessary. No one should give credence to any reason given for allowing this rabbi to stay on; if the board wants to avoid a defamation suit, it can pay him to do nothing, like the rubber room teachers.

My reasons for publiczing events like this and contributing to the pressure upon these bodies—aside from possible personal reasons, as I was victimized as a child by staff in two different right-wing Orthodox settings—is that Orthodoxy MUST be morally consistent, and they MUST learn to adjust to the fact that their behavior will be placed under a microscope, because their way of life announces automatically that its adherents are held to an ostensibly “higher” standard of conduct.

There would be nothing wrong if there would be an admission that some of our co-religionists stray from even basic human standards; it happens. But when disingeuousness is the order of the day, the very goal of the religious behaviors are not only short-circuited, they are re-presented as the height of hypocrisy. Adding fuel to the fire are then accusation emanating from clerical quarters that the bad press is simply the result of a hostile culture and media, almost as if these issues would go away of the media and culture would go away. Well, they’re not, and in this case, they may be part of the solution if they force certain powers that be to pay attention.

No cake for you.