A Mosque at Ground Zero? Bring It On!
Why build a mosque HERE? It's a crazy idea that just might work.
Score another round for the children of Allah. In New York last week, the Manhattan Community Board voted 29-1 (with 10 abstentions) in favor of a plan to build a 13-story Islamic center, complete with mosque, two blocks from Ground Zero.
The two Muslim organizations sponsoring the project have said they want to establish a world-class facility that promotes tolerance, interfaith cooperation and a moderate vision of Islam that combats the widespread notion that Muslims simply want to kill infidels and eradicate Western Civilization. (Well, those weren’t their exact words.)
The American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative bought an existing building on the site last year, and they plan to break ground for the new center later this year — assuming the project receives a final go-ahead from the city. (Some opponents of the project want to grant landmark status to the current building, which dates from before the Civil War.) A Friday prayer service has been held at the site since last September.
The proposed Cordoba House would include a performing arts space, a swimming pool, a culinary school, child care facilities and a built-in mosque. Its sponsors see the complex as the Muslim equivalent of New York’s famous 92nd Street Y, which hosts prominent speakers and welcomes visitors of all faiths. Of course, numerous other New Yorkers (not to mention Tea Party activists from around the country) see it as a willful desecration of hallowed ground — an insult to the memories of the nearly three thousand souls who perished in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is spearheading the drive to build Cordoba House, begs to differ.
“We have condemned the terror of 9/11,” he said. “We have worked to ensure that our mosques are not recruiting grounds for terrorists.” He added that the 9/11 attacks also killed members of his own congregation and community.
“We condemn terrorists,” the Imam reiterated. “We recognize it exists in our faith, but we are committed to eradicate it,” he said. “We want to rebuild this community. This is about moderate Muslims who intend to be and want to be part of the solution.”
I’m willing to take the Imam at his word if he’s willing to deliver. As long as the proposed Cordoba House emerges as a prominent bastion of tolerance and goodwill, its presence in Lower Manhattan should go a long way toward healing the wounds of 9/11 and establishing a much-needed public platform for Islamic moderates.
I can understand the outrage of those who wish the Muslims would just go away. But I’m more than willing to support an outspoken moderate movement in the Muslim community, and the Cordoba House seems like as good a place as any to start.
What kind of message will the new center send to the outside world (and especially the Islamic world)? I suspect it depends on who’s doing the interpreting. Reasonable Muslims would view it as a symbol of our cultural tolerance and our commitment to freedom of religion. Radical Muslims would probably see it as confirmation that a degenerate America has lost its will to fight. (There’s no impressing the radicals.)
At least the perception of American goodwill might prevent thousands of Muslim youths from sliding down the well-greased chute that leads to radicalism and terrorism. Let’s hope the Imam and his partners have the courage and character to build a monument to moderation. Let’s also hope the radicals (both Muslim and anti-Muslim) don’t screw it up.
Israel’s Bad Career Move
Israel’s national halo has been looking tarnished enough lately, but the ill-advised commando raid on those Gaza relief ships this past weekend finally flipped that golden headgear into the deep blue sea. Granted, the relief activists probably provoked the outburst of Israeli gunfire that killed at least ten of their comrades. A soldier — even an Israeli soldier — isn’t stoically obligated to tolerate violence aimed at his person.
But why were those Israeli commandos raiding a relief flotilla in the first place? Why couldn’t they have notified the ships in advance that they were climbing aboard to check for smuggled weapons (or whatever else they were looking for)? Why risk an international flareup with an illegal show of military force in international waters?
I’m afraid it boils down to Israel’s righteous brand of exceptionalism, a trait that has won it more enemies than friends over the years. (More about this national quirk below.) Israel insists on blockading that troublesome, radicalized Gaza Strip, and it won’t brook any violations of its policy — even if the wretched residents of Gaza literally starve as a result of that policy. Bad career move, Israel.
This is no way for a civilized and ostensibly humane nation to act — even a nation that has suffered more than its share of savage and senseless terrorist assaults, even if those assaults have been as unrelenting as they are savage and senseless. Israel holds the reins in its corner of the world. It should know better.
It’s no accident that Israel and the United States have been the coziest of allies, aside from the reputed influence of the American Jewish lobby. They’re kindred spirits among nations — a matching pair separated only by distance and dimensions (Israel happens to be the approximate size of New Jersey).
Both Israel and the U.S. won their nationhood with a potent combination of passionate idealism, a commitment to democracy and a gritty will to prevail. Both nations embrace middle-class virtues and enjoy the fruits of affluence. Both conduct their affairs with a righteous zeal that borders on arrogance. And, as a result, both have demonstrated a rare talent for irritating their friends while infuriating their enemies.
This righteous zeal — this knack for irritating and infuriating — springs from both nations’ accursed sense of exceptionalism. Simply stated, exceptionalism means “The rules don’t apply to us because we’re different from (and better than) other nations.”
The U.S. sees itself as the last best hope of mankind, the fount of liberty and democracy, and the greatest nation in history (if you listen to Sean Hannity). Israel believes itself to be the divinely appointed heir to the historical Jewish homeland, a slim slice of stony turf on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The more Orthodox Israeli citizens believe that God literally chose the Jews over all other nations — their scriptures tell them so, after all. (Americans essentially believe the same thing about themselves, without scriptural support.) Nobody messes with the U.S., and nobody messes with Israel.
How do you reconcile the legitimate and hard-won concept of a Jewish homeland with the exclusionary practices of that homeland? How do you grant Palestinian Arabs a place in that homeland without diminishing the essential Jewish nature of Israel? No other nation on earth has confronted such deep and divisive dilemmas, because no other nation has been resurrected on its former site after an absence of 2000 years.
Both factions in this eternal blood feud need to get a grip on reality — fast. The Palestinians must recognize that Israel’s existence has been a fact of life for over sixty years now; there’s no going back. The Israelis aren’t going to strike their tent and move to Norway or Nebraska. They belong in the land of their ancestors after having searched desperately for safe havens throughout the last two millennia. At this point in their history, Jews have earned the right to feel secure in their own homeland.
Israel needs to recognize that the Palestinians aren’t going to disappear, either — and that they’re entitled to live and prosper in the land of their ancestors. The Jewish population of Israel might be better educated and more technologically advanced than the Arab population, but that’s no excuse for treating the Arabs like a lesser species.
Can these two ancient peoples just kiss and make up? Apparently not. The current Palestinian revolt began after Israel decided to grant autonomy to predominantly Arab parcels of Israeli territory. And now that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, Israel has to contend with a radical Islamist foe on land that it voluntarily ceded to the Palestinians.
If The New Moderate had to point a finger at the group that bears primary responsibility for the ongoing miseries in the Holy Land, we’d have to aim that finger at the Palestinians — and especially the crazed radical Islamists among them. But Israel shouldn’t be let off the hook, either — especially after the arrogant raid on ships carrying humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Losing Turkey as an ally is the least of Israel’s worries at this point; the feisty Jewish state has alienated the Obama administration and most of the Western world as well.
How will the latest crisis play out? How will the ongoing conflict between Jews and Palestinians resolve itself in the end? I’d like to conclude that only God knows, but I have my doubts.
Texas Textbooks and the Great American Culture War
American high school students don’t know much about history. In fact, most of them don’t really care whether Andrew Jackson was the seventh president or one of the Jackson Five. But the sweeping social studies textbook changes recently approved by the Texas State Board of Education have opened up a gusher of controversy that almost rivals the gulf oil spill.
Most of the noise is emanating from the progressive camp, outraged that half a century of assiduous leftward revisionism is being trashed — in Bush Country, of course. The headlines scream with alarm and revulsion: “Texas Textbook Massacre” seems to be especially popular (Huffington Post and elsewhere), while Newsweek.com proclaimed, “Texas Cooks the Textbooks.”
Rewriting history, or just correcting old mistakes?
I’m not alarmed or revulsed (if that’s not a word, it should be). As a relative oldster, I’ve lived through the entire half-century of left-wing dominance in social studies — the whole, sorry, misguided, overheated movement to pop the bubble of American ideals while taking every opportunity to debunk the virtues of whites, males, Christians, Europeans and any combination thereof.
Yes, the teaching of American history needed to be more “inclusive” and a little less jingoistic. (The only black person enshrined in our mid-century textbooks was George Washington Carver, and I can remember silently questioning why the Spanish American War was a good thing.) But the winds blew too hard from the left for too many years, and I say it’s about time they shifted.
Of course, we moderates don’t want those winds to blow too fiercely in the other direction, either. We have to be vigilant. America has long been vulnerable to sweeping cultural shifts — veering from extreme puritanism to extreme permissiveness, from white chauvinism to white self-flagellation, with dizzying regularity. The ongoing culture war has only exaggerated our national tendency to embrace the extremes, the way global warming has boosted the ferocity of our hurricanes.
The left and right have been battling for supremacy ever since the McCarthy era, and the cultural momentum hasn’t always coincided with the political faction in power. The left actually made its greatest cultural inroads during the long Republican presidential hegemony from 1969 to 1993, from Nixon through Bush the Elder — broken only by Jimmy Carter’s brief exercise in futility.
Now, with a confirmed Democrat residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the right-wingers have staged their own uprising. But is the Texas textbook decision just another example of Tea Partiers gone wild? Let’s look at some of the actual changes endorsed by the state board of education…
- Label the U.S. a “constitutional republic,” not a democratic one. Nobody who has observed the cozy relationship between lobbyists and Congress can truthfully assert that our nation is a democracy. Good decision, Texans.
- Demote Thomas Jefferson from the ranks of political philosophers who influenced the revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Acceptable but politically suspect: granted, I always thought the Sage of Monticello got way too much mileage out of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — it was a borrowed idea, after all. But his demotion wouldn’t have anything to do with his unorthodox religious beliefs, would it?
- Use B.C. and A.D. (not BCE and CE) to designate historical dates. Cheers for the willful archaism of the Texas decision. BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) mysteriously crept into common usage without anyone voting on whether we wanted to discard the Christian underpinnings of the old style. Since the dates still revolve around the (erroneous) date for the birth of Christ, why camouflage them with post-Christian initials?
- Include Clinton’s impeachment in the litany of presidential scandals. This one’s a no-brainer; presidential impeachments don’t happen every day, and there’s no reason to overlook Clinton’s (other than willful whitewashing by loyal Democrats).
- Replace “imperialism” with “expansionism” when describing U.S. foreign policy. Marxists love to jabber about U.S. imperialism, but aside from the isolated excesses of the Mexican and Spanish American Wars (totaling four years of U.S. history), our country hasn’t worked at building a far-flung territorial empire in the manner of the Romans or British. Even “expansionist” probably goes too far. “Meddling” is closer to the mark. “Exceptionalist” works, too. So does “self-righteous.” But enough about us.
- Recognize that Communists actually did infiltrate the U.S. government during the McCarthy era. Huzzahs for this one: as long as the Texans don’t glorify the reckless, obsessive and slightly unhinged Wisconsin senator, this fact needs to be recognized after half a century of studious obfuscations by the left. McCarthy didn’t need to look under his bed for Communists; they were skulking around the State Department.
- Explain how Arab rejection of the state of Israel has led to ongoing conflict. Well, duh! Any naysayers here? But don’t portray Israel as a faultless victim, either. Balance, balance!
- Cover the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 90s, including Reagan’s role in winning the Cold War. Absolutely — this is indisputable history, though we don’t want to canonize Reagan or portray him as a solitary superhero who singlehandedly brought down the Iron Curtain.
- Discuss alternatives to federal entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, especially in light of the growing retiree-to-worker ratio. Yes, we have a serious problem here, and it’s eminently worthy of discussion. Let the kids decide whether their folks deserve all that generous federal aid in their dotage.
- Exclude hip-hop from the study of American popular music. Well, we don’t like hip-hop either, but you have to be blind or deaf (or dead) to ignore its influence. Thumbs down on this one.
- Examine the efforts by global organizations to undermine U.S. sovereignty. OK, now we’re bordering on paranoia. The last time the U.N. had any influence was during the Kennedy administration. And that’s probably giving the international body too much credit. Thumbs down.
- Compare the speeches of Confederate president Jefferson Davis with those of Lincoln. Are they sure they want to go through with this? (There must be a few closet Yankees on the Texas Education Agency.) Certainly harmless enough.
- Analyze how the abandonment of the gold standard affected the value of the dollar. Not a big deal, except perhaps to William Jennings Bryan. Feel free to discuss.
- Call capitalism by its more euphonious and people-friendly name: free enterprise. Sort of like the way liberals renamed themselves “progressives” because liberalism had become a dirty word. Sneaky move, but it really doesn’t change anything.
- Compare the phrase “separation of church and state” to the actual language of the First Amendment. Hallelujah! I’m no theocrat, but I’ve long objected to the use of that secularist catchphrase as an excuse to drive religion from all public arenas. The First Amendment simply (and wisely) promised that the federal government wouldn’t establish a state church (like Anglicanism in England or Catholicism in France). Just as important, it promised that Congress would never prohibit the free exercise of our religious beliefs. Merry Christmas, and God bless us every one!
- Refer to the slave trade as the “Atlantic Triangular Trade.” Whoa there, pardners! Say what? Let’s be thankful that the Texans decided to reject this abominable euphemism, and that saner voices prevailed.
The Texas Board approved more than a hundred other modifications to their social studies textbooks, but these seem to be the most significant of the bunch. The majority are harmless and several are praiseworthy — at least to this diehard moderate. But of course they’re still the by-products of the perpetual tug of war between the American right and left.
Opponents of the “Texas Textbook Massacre” (and their numbers are legion) are lambasting the State Board of Education for allegedly rewriting history. But the Texans are just rewriting textbooks — fallible works of scholarship that reflected the left-wing biases of the past half-century.
Of course the conservatives are rewriting those books in their own image. But I detect no evidence of hallucinatory extremism — no laments for the lost Confederacy, no calls for the reinstatement of Jim Crow or Creationism, no proclamation that the United States is a Christian nation. The Texans are simply thumbing their noses at left-wing political correctness, a gesture that I think was long overdue. By definition, political correctness stifles diversity of opinion and even free speech. A little heresy is what it needs, and the Texans have happily provided it.
History is written not so much by the victors, but by the team that has the upper hand at the moment. For fifty years the left ruled the educational roost, and it still does. It just doesn’t rule in Texas, and that’s probably a good thing for all of us.
Vacationing During the Apocalypse
I almost feel guilty grabbing a week for family fun and solitary exploration while the world is melting down. I’m flying down to New Orleans, renting a cheap car and driving along the portion of the Gulf Coast affectionately known as the Redneck Riviera. Destination: Pensacola, Florida, where my only niece is graduating from college.
What better time to get away? The crisis in Greece appears to be spreading throughout the Western world like some sinister virus with a violent urge to replicate. The Dow plunged nearly a thousand points during one breath-stopping hour last week, and I don’t care to view similar plunges again in my lifetime. It would be ironic if Greece turned out to be both the alpha and the omega of Western Civilization — there at the creation and the destruction of our sputtering 2500-year experiment in freedom and philosophy.
Yes, I’ll be escaping from the discontents of civilization for an entire week. Though not entirely. All week long I’ll be skirting the great oil slick now spreading its tentacles toward the Gulf Coast. I hope to hit those blinding-white “sugar” sand beaches before the oil slick does. But in case I don’t, I’ll try to post some first-hand observations (via cell phone) of my close encounter with ecological disaster.
Meanwhile, try to stay centered, everyone!
You’d almost think Arizona had decided to brand all its Hispanic residents with a scarlet H. That’s how ferociously the American left (and even the near-left) has been reacting to Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the state’s desperate attempt to attack the spreading wildfire known as illegal immigration.
Should Arizona police be authorized to stop illegal immigrants?
Why was Arizona desperate? Simply because the federal government has done nothing to manage the ongoing illegal immigration crisis, other than propose a vague program that allows illegals to make a lawful transition to legal status — with full amnesty for their past offenses, of course. But meanwhile, who’s minding the border?
The new law, signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, calls for police to be more vigilant in ascertaining the legal (or illegal) status of the state’s residents. Current estimates place Arizona’s illegal immigrant population at just under half a million — not exactly small change for a desert state with one large city. Recent headlines have driven home the message that illegal immigration entails a shocking amount of Hispanic-on-Hispanic crime and abuse: “Immigrants Become Hostages as Gangs Prey on Mexicans“… “Smugglers Torture Illegal Immigrants in Phoenix Drop House” … “67 Illegal Immigrants Found in U-Haul” … Critics of the Arizona law should try living there before they jump to premature conclusions about racism and nativism.
The bill went decidedly overboard at first, with its veiled implications that police could stop anyone who looked vaguely suspicious (and vaguely Mexican) at any time, for any reason. But within a week, the state senate modified the bill to rein in the power of the police: now their investigations would be restricted to suspects who had already been stopped for other offenses.
In other words, aside from whipping out your driver’s license when the police tap on your car window after you’ve been caught speeding, you’re now expected to produce proof that you’re not an illegal immigrant. Could someone explain to me how that’s a violation of anyone’s civil rights? We’re not targeting immigrants, after all — just illegal immigrants. Lawbreakers. Is that a crime?
Has it really come to THIS?
Ever since the anti-immigration faction passed the bill, the anti-anti-immigration faction has been busy shouting at protest rallies, encouraging a boycott of the entire state and even pointing menacing fingers at baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, whose roster is roughly one-third Hispanic and whose owner emphatically did not support the bill.
What is it about stemming the incursion of illegal immigrants that has all those left-leaning knickers in a twist? Let’s not mince words: they’re protesting because the majority of illegal immgrants are 1) poor, 2) Spanish-speaking 3) people of color. And good liberals know that poor, Spanish-speaking people of color are to be defended to the death, even when they’re breaking the law. (The law shouldn’t really apply to oppressed peoples, they’d argue — because the law is designed to oppress oppressed peoples.)
All well and good… yes, yes, we shouldn’t go out of our way to oppress people who are already oppressed. But let’s apply a little common sense here.
Back in my college years, whenever I’d hear some passionate soul extol the virtues of Cubism, Marxism, black separatism or some other fashionable ism that all enlightened progressives were expected to embrace, I tended to look past the rhetoric and ask myself “Why is that GOOD?” (It’s a habit I’ve developed that probably justified the cost of my college tuition.)
So today we have a steady stream of poor people sneaking past the border (often as part of drug-smuggling and human trafficking operations), settling around the country in staggering numbers, taking lower-tier jobs from working-class Americans, depressing local wages, committing abundant crimes, straining our overburdened social services and conveniently neglecting to pay income taxes to their city, state and country. And I have to ask, at the risk of offending right-thinking liberals and standing on the wrong side of history, “Why is that GOOD?”
Peter Beinart of The Daily Beast has labeled the crusade against illegal immigrants as the latest wave of hysterical American nativism. When right-wing Americans aren’t busy hating blacks, he argues, they hate the foreigners in their midst. Even legal ones.
Would Arizona police question the immigration status of a blond, freckle-faced family if they were caught speeding? Probably not, because illegal immigrants from south of the border tend not to be blond and freckle-faced. “Ah, but that’s racial profiling!,” a conscientious liberal would protest. And that’s a legitimate concern.
But if the occupants of the car happen to be dark-haired and copper-skinned (like me, for example), they have nothing to fear as long as they have nothing to hide. Simple as that. If I were questioned, I’d produce my evidence of citizenship, solemnly accept my ticket for speeding, bid the officer good evening, and ease on down the road (at moderate speed).
It's not just a border problem, it's a national problem.
I confess that the mass incursion of immigrants from a single, non-assimilating ethno-linguistic group makes me worry more than usual about the future of this republic. My apprehensions have nothing to do with the color of those immigrants. I’d be just as uneasy if we found ourselves invaded by an unrelenting stream of Russians, for example, who created a parallel culture in our midst, balked at learning English, caused the Russian language to sprout on packaging and public signs, formed a permanent underclass and produced two or three offspring for every one of ours.
I think of the creeping Islamization of Europe, which makes me shudder. At least our Hispanic immigrants aren’t innately hostile to our society, but their presence will change it forever — and probably not for the better. Eventually we’ll come to resemble a traditional Latin American republic: a vast realm of impoverished workers and peasants dominated by a tiny, self-perpetuating ruling class living in luxury.
Come to think of it, we’re already heading there even without assistance from our illegal immigrants.
When Is a Genocide Not a Genocide?
This past Saturday in Philadelphia, home of The New Moderate, members of the local Armenian community went for a walk. It wasn’t the glorious spring weather that brought them out. It was the date: April 24.
Armenians have a thing about April 24, and here’s why. Back in 1915, the Young Turk leadership of the crumbling Ottoman Empire chose this particular date to round up, torture and/or execute 800 prominent Armenian intellectuals, poets and community leaders in Constantinople. This symbolic decapitation of the Armenian community signaled the start of a horrific and deliberate ethnic cleansing that swept through the historic Armenian homeland at the eastern edge of the empire.
Men were murdered in front of their families or snatched from their homes and never seen again. (My great grandfather, Parsegh Gulbenkian, was among the latter.) Most of the women, children and old folks were rounded up and forcibly marched toward the Syrian Desert to the south.
Dead Armenian civilians along a Turkish roadside: war casualties or genocide victims?
Hundreds of thousands of these unwilling marchers died from starvation, exhaustion or the often unspeakable depredations of marauding Turks and Kurds. In all, somewhere between a million and 1.5 million Armenians perished — out of a total population of just two million.
We Armenians call it genocide. So do France, Russia, Sweden, Greece, Canada and numerous other nations large and small. The U.S. and Israel do not. And of course, neither does Turkey.
The Turkish government has been denying the genocide for 95 years, and they’re not likely to come to Jesus after all that assiduous stonewalling. To concede now would be to imply that they were wrong for nearly a century, and no government wants to make itself appear more foolish than necessary.
Turkey generously concedes that large numbers of Armenians died, and that the increased mortality rate wasn’t simply due to influenza or cigarette smoking. The official government position is that World War I was raging, and that the Turkish Armenians located along the Russian frontier posed a dire security threat during wartime. (Their Russian Armenian brethren were poised to invade Turkish Armenia and liberate the region from its oppressors.) So the Turks simply attempted to move the entire Armenian population from one part of the empire to another. C’mon, can you blame them?
Putting the genocide on the map: historic Armenia at its greatest extent (gray), genocide hot spots (red), Armenia today (pink)
Yes, it’s unfortunate that so many Armenians died, the Turks admit. But this was World War I and the Ottoman Empire had to think of its security. No matter that nearly all the Armenians who met their doom were unarmed farmers, merchants, professionals, artisans and their families.
The U.S. and Israel have been participating in a massive enabling venture for at least half a century now. The Turks are strategic allies, after all, and we don’t want to alienate a strategic ally by implicating it in the first genocide of the twentieth century. Let the Turks and Armenians resolve the dispute on their own, the argument goes.
Time and time again, Congress has proposed resolutions to acknowledge, on record, that the deaths of all those Armenians did indeed consititute genocide. And time and time again, those resolutions have been quashed by higher powers before they could go to an actual vote.
Last month, it was President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton who did the quashing. Why would two well-credentialed progressives deny the Armenians their right to a long-overdue vindication? You guessed it: we can’t risk offending our “friends” over there in Asia Minor. Why can’t we offend them? Because our “friends” might take out their frustrations on Israel and, at the same time, deny us the right to use their strategically positioned airfields to launch tactical strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This hard-nosed, unsentimental, wholly pragmatic approach to foreign policy is known as Realpolitik, a suitably Germanic term that can be roughly translated as “Give the Devil his due.” The problem is that if you kowtow to the Devil often enough, you’re essentially doing his work.
Genocide, shmenocide: what’s in a name, anyway? Back in 2008, candidate Obama pledged to acknowledge the Armenian genocide as genocide as soon as he reached the White House. Since then, he’s made eloquent overtures and attempted to soothe those ravaged Armenian souls by empathizing with their pain. He’s danced gracefully around the central idea. You know he wants to say it. But to date, the man who wrote The Audacity of Hope hasn’t mustered the audacity to utter the dreaded G-word.
This past weekend, speaking in Asheville, NC, the president commemorated the genocide by declaring it “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.” He added, “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed. It is in all of our interest to see the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”
Nice display of Realpolitik there, Mr. President: We know what’s in your heart… we know you’d really like to use the G-word… but we also know you can’t come out and say it without ruffling some choice Turkish feathers. Wouldn’t be prudent.
Circling a little closer to the unspeakable truth, Obama concluded that “the indomitable spirit of the Armenian people is a lasting triumph over those who set out to destroy them.”
This is about as close to a U.S. acknowledgment of genocide as we Armenians can allow ourselves to expect. After all, if the president notes that somebody set out to destroy the Armenians, we can reasonably conclude that those Armenians were victims of genocide. He just hasn’t used the G-word or furnished us with the identity of the perpetrators. But those of us who know our history can fill in the blanks.
History isn't erasable: it's time for Turkey to own up
I didn’t join my fellow Philadelphia Armenians in Saturday’s genocide commemoration. I’ve always felt ambivalent about parading our victimhood in public — and besides, I had a porch ceiling to repair.
I’m even ambivalent about the importance we Armenians attach to the G-word. Genocide, shmenocide: what matters is that the Ottoman Empire deliberately destroyed an ancient nation in its own homeland, with over a million casualties, and that ninety-five years later, Turkey still refuses to fess up to the deeds of its ancestors.
As if to rub salt more deeply into those gaping Armenian wounds, Turkey still clings to territory it illegally snatched from the fledgling Armenian Republic following World War I. Turkey lost the war but won the greater part of Armenia without so much as a blink from the international community.
Just as dastardly, to my mind, is the ongoing Turkish campaign to expunge Armenia from its history books: all those ruined medieval churches that dot the now-desolate landscape of eastern Anatolia are simply the relics of nameless vanished Christian communities, their stone walls reduced to barns for Turkish and Kurdish livestock — or convenient quarries for local builders.
When is a genocide not a genocide? Proponents of Realpolitik would answer, “When it would adversely impact one’s foreign policy.” But of course, the real answer is “Never.” In this best of all possible worlds, truth and justice should always trump the demands of diplomacy.
Taking a Razor to Wall Street
Sweet revenge at last! Investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs is being sued by the S.E.C. for securities fraud. It was always a mystery how Wall Street’s alpha-bankers weathered the pounding everyone else took in 2008. Now we have an answer: they stand accused of selling their clients the riskiest possible mortgage-backed securities, then secretly betting that those same investments would fail. (They won the bet big-time, in case you had any doubts.)
It’s a long story, and an impossibly convoluted one. Shortly before the real estate bubble burst in 2007, Goldman Sachs apparently collaborated with hedge fund manager John A. Paulson to assemble a package of “collateral debt obligations” hand-picked for their weakness in a housing market that Paulson predicted would collapse.
Billionaire hedge fund manager John A. Paulson: Ain't capitalism grand?
The portfolio named in the lawsuit — Abacus 2007-AC1 (it sounds like some sinister c0mputer virus) — was just one of 25 such misbegotten “products” that Goldman supposedly palmed off on its unsuspecting clients. Here’s the most diabolical part: Goldman Sachs would market the doomed portfolios while allegedly betting against them. When the investments tanked and their clients (including numerous pension funds) lost their collective shirts, Goldman Sachs reaped a bundle.
So did Paulson, to the tune of $3.7 billion in 2007 alone. (Yep, that’s $3.7 billion for his personal use, which no doubt helped pay the mortgage on his $41 million Long Island palazzo — with spare change for acquiring a Caribbean island or two. He made only $2 billion in 2008 — obviously an “off” year — followed by another $3 billion in 2009.) Paulson isn’t implicated in the lawsuit, because he also made billions for his wealthy hedge fund clients by having them bet against the bad securities he packaged. Capitalism is full of wonders, isn’t it?
But Goldman Sachs has been caught in its own web (about time, most of us burned investors would sigh). Think of a baseball manager publicly boasting about his team’s prowess while secretly advising them to throw the World Series — and personally betting that his team would lose. Think of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. That’s the kind of crime Goldman Sachs is accused of perpetrating. It ain’t pretty.
I’d like to take a razor to Wall Street. So would several million other small investors who lost half their money in the conflagration of 2008. But as much as I enjoy my revenge fantasies (admit it: so do you), I have no intention of jeopardizing my relatively good standing with the law, an overdue $321 Philadelphia parking ticket notwithstanding.
No, the razor I have in mind is Occam’s Razor, a sturdy 14th-century rule of thumb developed by a 14th-century English monk of the same name. (It was actually Ockham, but that’s another story.) Anyway, Occam’s Razor goes like this: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In other words, eschew superfluity and obfuscation. Strive for the simplest possible structure, because it’s usually right.
Slashing wretched excess to the bones since 1340
I like it that Occam’s Razor abides by its own principle: it’s admirably short and to the point. (A 21st-century version would probably run on for 250 pages in the manner of a Malcolm Gladwell bestseller. He’d call it Slash!)
Applied to the nightmarish and incomprehensible malignancy that is Wall Street today, the old monk’s adage could prove that it still has legs. When someone like Alan Greenspan couldn’t foresee the coming trainwreck, you know that Wall Street desperately needs to be simplified.
If I took Occam’s Razor to Wall Street, the first thing I’d slash would be short-selling, known in the trade as “shorting.” I’d outlaw it, criminalize it and consign it to the eternal flames.
Anyone who takes a short position in an investment is betting that the price will drop rather than go up. Seems innocent enough on the face of it, but look again: when enough speculators short an investment, they actually accelerate the downward drop.
This is what Goldman Sachs and John Paulson did with those shaky mortgage-backed securities, the difference being that Paulson was up-front with his clients and helped them profit from the collapse. But the fact remains that in order for Paulson & Co. to win, somebody had to lose. Millions of us, as it turned out.
The line between investing and gambling has always been a blurry one. I invest in companies I like, try to make a profit, and sell when I’ve amassed enough of a gain or (more likely these days) loss. But at least I invest in earnest: I want the company to succeed, and I wish my fellow shareholders equal success. In an ideal investing world, everybody wins.
Unlike traditional investing, shorting is a zero-sum game: your win comes only at somebody else’s expense. Even worse, you actively root for other investors to lose. And if you have enough short-sellers on your side, you’re actually undercutting the long-term investors, causing them to lose, and swiping their loot for yourself.
Capitalism, like natural selection, is a fundamentally amoral system. It matters not who’s good or kind or even brilliant — only who’s clever enough to succeed. But shorting is immoral. It helps destroy companies and wealth for the benefit of a few weasels. Wall Street needs to take a razor to it before the American people take a razor to Wall Street.
Tiger Woods, Nike and the Fine Art of Media Manipulation
The Tiger Woods Nike commercial: soulful, creepy, manipulative or all of the above?
The fallen idol — chastened, forlorn and almost tearful — stands in a stark landscape. The photography is stark, too: no-nonsense black and white, slowly approaching the idol’s penitent face for an unsparing close-up.
He looks like a vulnerable seven-year-old who was caught trying to take the family car for a joyride. Motionless except for the blinking of his eyes, he gazes directly at the camera (at us!) while his father’s disembodied voice seems to administer a gentle lesson in tough love from beyond the grave.
“Tiger,” the voice of the late Earl Woods admonishes his famous son, “I want to find out what your thinking was, what your feelings are, and did you learn anything?”
The swoosh logo, emblem of the world’s only company that never needs to display its actual name, tips us off (in case we’d spent the past week on Mars) that we’re watching a Nike commercial. And of course, the penitent face in that stark black-and-white landscape belongs to golfing legend Tiger Woods.
Tiger’s image needed to be rehabilitated fast — not only in time for the Master’s tournament, but for the entire upcoming season of major golf action. Nike had to make the world safe for its number one endorsement artist. Tiger used to sell Nike; now Nike was selling Tiger.
There could be no groping for justifications of Tiger’s serial adventures with his bimbettes. So the tarnished golfing legend and merchandising tycoon stood there in unaccustomed humility while his late Dad (and all of us, by proxy) called him onto the carpet for a quick lesson in manly morality.
Except that the late Mr. Woods wasn’t actually talking about Tiger. He was talking about himself. The admakers harvested the voiceover from a 2004 interview in which Tiger’s father commented on his own marriage, contrasting his open and curious nature with that of his more authoritarian spouse.
Happier days: Tiger with his late father, Earl Woods
“I am more prone to be inquisitive,” Earl Woods told the interviewer, “to ask questions, promote discussion. I want to find out what you’re thinking…” etc., etc.
They took those choice snippets of self-reflection, inserted a prefatory “Tiger” up front, and there it was: a posthumous lesson from Dad. So it was all a stunt.
Of course, any commercial using a deceased person’s voice has no choice but to be a stunt. But were Nike and Tiger exploiting the dead paterfamilias for gain and profit, as numerous commentators have commented? You expect it of Nike, the opinion-makers opined, but Tiger! — how could he stand there, faking humility, knowing that he was participating in the crassest sort of media manipulation… that he was essentially selling what was left of his soul (and his beloved father’s memory) to the legions of Mammon and Beelzebub? Is there nothing this sorry reprobate won’t stoop to?, they harrumphed.
What the naysayers overlooked is that our entire media culture thrives on illusion, whether we’re looking at the dizzying world of Avatar or swallowing the upbeat celebrity promos on Entertainment Tonight. The polished image of the pre-scandal Tiger might have been the greatest illusion of all: the myth of the perfect superathlete whose character and universal appeal matched his transcendent skill on the golf course.
Babe Ruth was no different, but his apologists would tell you that he was just being the Babe. His transgressions were easier to accept because he just couldn’t keep all that Ruthian exuberance to himself, and we loved him for it. On the other hand, Tiger’s extramarital flings with copious quantities of loose women shattered his public image as an exemplar of superhuman self-control. We mass-media consumers don’t like to be deprived of our illusions.
Illusion sells. Not only does it sell, it makes us feel good. (Of course, that’s why it sells.)
The Tiger Woods commercial intended to accomplish something like that: to make us feel reasonably good despite the sad face and fabricated fatherly reproach. How? By allowing us to enjoy a fleeting swoosh of superiority to our idol while welcoming him back to the land of the living. (And of course, if we feel good enough, we’ll buy enough.)
Would I have used my late father’s voice to serve my interests? Probably not, but I don’t have a multi-billion-dollar industry to protect. Not that protecting an industry is an excuse for chicanery, but I’m so accustomed to more egregious examples of media manipulation (see Fox News or Huffington Post) that the Nike ad didn’t really offend me.
Did Tiger Woods take Nike's advice too seriously?
Yes, the commercial is obviously maniupulative (not to mention a bit creepy). But it deserves a nod for taking a gutsy and memorable approach to a tough image problem.
An intriguing cultural footnote: among the countless comments on blog articles about the Tiger Woods commercial, one impish remark stood out in my mind.
“I’m relieved that Nike didn’t use its Just do it slogan,” the perceptive reader commented. I had to laugh.
Maybe Nike should modify its tagline to read “Just do what’s right.” We could all use a slogan like that. I wonder if it would sell.
Haven’t seen the Tiger Woods commercial? Watch it here while it’s still available for viewing.
A Holy Week of Horrors in Review
Easter 2010 is about to dawn in my time zone. As I sat down at my computer, I was tempted to write that Jesus would be turning over in his grave if he had one. Forgive me; it’s been that kind of week.
The ancient church entrusted to St. Peter and his heirs has been descending into a swirling funnel of infamy, censure, and ultimate irrelevance in what used to be known as Western Christendom. The accusations of pedophilia and cover-ups have simply caused the Roman Catholic establishment to stonewall more obstinately and batten down its hatches until the storm blows over.
I’ve got news: this storm will take a while to blow over. The church that finally emerges from the wreckage might be a shadow of its former self, reduced to proselytizing in Africa and the jungles of the Amazon — unless a reformist faction can emerge and grab the reins from the disgraced establishment. We might be witnessing the first resignation of a Pope since the Renaissance.
Elsewhere, a U.S. court of appeals commanded Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania, to pay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, the sum of $16,510.80 to cover the church’s court costs. If you haven’t already heard the story, be sure you’re sitting down: Snyder, whose son was killed in Iraq, had sued the church for picketing his son’s funeral with placards proclaiming “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” (The church believes that the U.S. is evil for tolerating homosexuality; therefore, anyone who defends the U.S. deserves to die. Neat logic.)
A lower court had originally awarded Snyder $3 million for his suffering at the hands of the church, but the court of appeals overturned the earlier decision and ordered the bereaved father to pay up. The new ruling had the rare effect of uniting both the right and the left in outrage. Righty pundit Bill O’Reilly has offered to cover Snyder’s bill, and the case will go to the Supreme Court this fall.
In Massachusetts, nine high school students were arrested and charged with felonies for systematically bullying a fellow student until she committed suicide. It’s about time bullies had their day in court, but of course the girl’s parents won’t ever see their daughter alive again.
A militant Christian militia group calling itself Hutaree was rounded up in Michigan (or at least we can hope). Members of the group were allegedly planning to kill police officers and battle the Antichrist.
Another wingnut organization known as Guardians of the Free Republic, intent on dismantling the U.S. government, sent letters to at least 30 governors ordering them to resign within three days. (Maybe they didn’t know that state governments have nothing to do with the federal government.)
In a Moscow subway, two teenage Muslim girls blew themselves up along with a few dozen innocent Muscovites. The suicide bombers hailed from one of those indistinguishable breakaway tribal regions in the northern Caucasus.
The news wasn’t all horrific: Newark, New Jersey, marked its first murder-free month since 1966. Praise the Lord.
THE NEW MODERATE 
Women in Politics: The “Meow” Factor
Let me confess right up front, before you and the Almighty, that I’ve never been an ardent fan of the women’s movement. Yes, feminism brought us (and women in particular) a bundle of long-needed breakthroughs in private and public life. Of course, it also brought us forty years of nasty, vituperative, extremist rhetoric that alienated reasonable moderate males like me.
But lately I’ve had to admit that men have made an unholy mess of things — even more of a mess than they usually make. Men in power have ravaged the world economy (and our personal finances) with their arrogant, obsessive high-risk gamesmanship. They’ve spearheaded murderous and idiotic terrorist movements in distant lands around the globe. They’ve embarrassed themselves in politics with their clumsy adulteries and clueless leadership.
In short, they’ve convinced me that we could use a little less testosterone and a little more estrogen in public life. I welcomed the sudden appearance of so many capable women on the American political scene. Surely these smart females would saunter into their jobs with the refreshing, no-nonsense “can-do” attitude that so many smart females have demonstrated in the working world. Surely they’d rise above pettiness and human frailty.
Surely they’d never make disparaging comments about their opponents’ hairstyles.
Well, scratch that last remark. In fact, get ready for a lot of scratching. The catfights have begun.
Yes, Carly, that's a live microphone.
Former Hewlett-Packard chieftain Carly Fiorina won the Republican Senate primary in California, then promptly dissed Democratic opponent Barbara Boxer’s hairdo. Quoting a female friend whose response to Boxer’s coiffure was a snarky “God, what is that hair?,” Fiorina meowed her own appraisal: “Soooo yesterday.”
Granted, Fiorina didn’t realize that her microphone was live. But live microphones can be more revealing than prepackaged political statements.
Fiorina regrets her televised gaffe but has refused to apologize, and that’s her prerogative. The more relevant issue is how she managed to parlay a disastrous reign as HP’s bombastic and widely disliked CEO into a political career. Some women have all the luck, not to mention the public support of influential men.
Boxer isn’t above catwoman antics, either. Just last year she publicly upbraided Brigadier-General Michael Walsh for addressing her as “ma’am.” Quoth the venerable Californian: “Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?’ It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. I’d appreciate it.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer: yesterday's hair?
I can understand Boxer’s appetite for due respect, but she was plainly wrong. “Ma’am” is the proper form of address for a female senator, just as “sir” would be for a male senator. If “ma’am” is good enough for the queen of England, it should be good enough for Barbara Boxer.
So what can we conclude about women in politics? Simply that they’re as human as men in politics. If the new generation of female leaders can extricate us from the wreckage that the men have left behind, I’m willing to tolerate all manner of frisky feline behavior. Aren’t you?
Speaking of which, did you hear the rumor about Sarah Palin’s, um… oh, never mind.
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