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October 31, 2004

Kerry's Stepson Agrees: The problem is the J-E-W-S

At some point American Jews are probably going to notice that, while there is a lot of overt anti-semitism in more insular parts of the Heartland, the political left is filled with the not-so-stealth British version of polite and sophisticated Jew-hating.

posted by Ace at 11:27 AM

Comments

Well, Heinz is a German name.

Posted by: Greg on October 31, 2004 11:42 AM

Thoughtful kid. Wonder where he gets it from?

Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on October 31, 2004 11:43 AM

Jooooooos! Jooooooos!

Guess I owe Cedarford an apology.

Posted by: zetetic on October 31, 2004 11:44 AM

As an orthodox jewish Bush supporter, I find the stepson's comments outrageous on many levels.
We all know that theresa funds left-wing and anti-Israeli organizations, but Senator John Heinz was a MENSCH. Not all German's are antisemites and the now deceased senator proves that. His pro-Israeli credentials and his friendship with the American Jewish community were indisputable.
However, what is not well remembered was that his tragic plane crash was into a Jewish nursery school that killed a few small children. Perhaps if chris had then been raised by a decent surviving parent and stepparent, anti-semitic, he would be sensitive to avoid such devisive, offensive statements .

Posted by: avi on October 31, 2004 11:54 AM

Avi, a minor correction. Senator Heinz' plane went down over a secular public elementary school--on Bowman Road in Lower Merion, PA--which has a sizeable Jewish student body.

Posted by: dulce on October 31, 2004 12:25 PM

What Heinz said was: One of the things I’ve noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state

Now, in the closing days of a tight race, that is a politically stupid comment to make which will be quickly disavowed by the Kerry handlers.

But it comes in a period of open discussion by Jewish pundits on where the Jewish vote and future campaign dollars will go, and those pundits think many Jews will vote based on which candidate is more aligned with what is good for Israel. They discuss how important the Jewish vote may be in certain swing states. So, yes, others are discussing what Heinz said unguardedly.

In Israel, two high-ranking Orthodox rabbis have instructed their followers in America to vote for Bush because "Bush loves Israel more than Kerry does". Others worry that liberal secular Jews in America show no sign of bolting the Democrats, despite Bush offering more to Israel, and worry because liberal Israelis are resentful of Bush favoring Sharon and the Likud - and not united in urging fellow liberal Jewish-Americans to vote Bush.

So the debate on who "is better for Israel" is a big part of the 2004 campaign, and both Parties have strategies to persuade Jewish-Americans to vote or not vote on that basis.

Whether there is truth in Heinz's observation that that elevates Israel to a sort of 51st state, the importance of the Israel Lobby - is a long-time controversy, even within the Jewish-American community. As this is freely discussed within the Jewish communities, outside the fact Heinz should have not mentioned it as a simple faux pas - do gentiles have a right in America to discuss a foreign nation and their American supporters impacting the American election without running into attempts to stifle them with reflexive charges of bigotry?

I think they do.

Posted by: Cedarford on October 31, 2004 01:04 PM

Hey, bloggers, wake up. There is a showing of Stolen honor going on right now. Newsmax/Dish has been showing the complete program since yesterday and is continuing to air it today and I haven't heard a word from one right wing blogger yet, wake up, alert people, come on.
http://www.newsmax.com
NewsMax, DISH Network Air ‘Stolen Honor’

NewsMax.com
Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004

NewsMax.com has broken the media’s censorship of the controversial documentary “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal” and has begun airing the film on national television.

Beginning Saturday morning, NewsMax began airing the documentary directed by award-winning journalist Carlton Sherwood on national networks and in local networks across the nation.

Sherwood’s account of John Kerry’s activities as a leader of the Vietnam anti-war movement has infuriated the Kerry campaign.

“Very simply, the press has accepted everything John Kerry has said for the past 33 years,” Sherwood said, explaing the media’s reluctance to air his film or offer the public a detailed account of its charges. "They have never challenged him. They never challenged him in ’71. They are afraid to do so now because they might discover that over three decades they were wrong about him and his war allegations."

"Stolen Honor" aired on PAX-TV twice Saturday. PAX-TV, one of the nation's largest TV networks, reaches approximately 90 million homes.

The documentary will air 10 times on PAX alone during this weekend, including showings on Sunday at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST/PST.

In addition to national networks like PAX, NewsMax will be airing ‘Stolen Honor’ this weekend on numerous local stations across the nation, including ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.

NewsMax.com decision to air the censored program was based on the film’s newsworthiness. After a flurry of controversy earlier this month, Sinclair Broadcasting aired only four minutes of the 43-minute documentary.

In a statement, NewsMax explained its action by noting that it was "critically important for the American people to hear the accounts of 17 American POWs and their claim that John Kerry and his anti-war activities betrayed them and the country."

Also, EchoStar Communications, which operates the DISH satellite network, announced that on Monday, Nov. 1, it will offer Carlton Sherwood’s documentary available on a pay-per-view basis.

DISH said "Stolen Honor" will be available to more than 10 million customers for $9.95 on channel 457 at 8 p.m. Eastern time and channel 455 at 8 p.m. Pacific time.

"We are pleased to provide our customers a variety of political films and documentaries so they can make informed choices," said Susan Arnold, vice president of programming at EchoStar's DISH Network.

Posted by: calex59 on October 31, 2004 02:35 PM

Oh, at $9.95 I'm *sure* Dish is pleased.

Posted by: Gerard Van der Leun on October 31, 2004 02:52 PM

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thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
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I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

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Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

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Batman fires The Batman
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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)