Chutzpah 101 חוצפה

For those readers who followed Binyamin Netanyahu's recent Likud campaign for re-election as Israeli Prime Minister, the Machiavellian two-step is not yet exhausted. A spot on "Dancing With the Stars" is not out of the question if the PM can get the time off from the stellar job he has been doing managing things in two great nations.

You may recall that “Bibi” was reported to be trailing in the polls and an immanent Labor victory was being predicted just days and hours before Bibi's supporters crushed the challenge to his rule. Not being very astute, I found myself wondering how the polls could seemingly be so off? Truth be told, I have no idea what happened, but I was watching one of my favorite TV shows last night and got a bit of insight into how politics is “played.”

Devotees of “The Good Wife” who enjoyed last night's episode, “Red Meat” will have noted that on election day, as the good wife herself , “Alicia Florrick”, was discovering a taste for first-person shooter games (and her partner “Diane Lockhart” was distantly discovering the pleasures of shooting actual furry, hooved animals), someone pointed out to Alicia that her husband, Illinois governor “Peter Florrick,” had torpedoed her chances of winning by announcing on TV from the polls, where he was voting early that morning, that his wife had the election in the bag, sewn up or some-such.  

                                                                                                                                                                               CBS TV

  This over-confidence by her husband, someone ("Eli Gold"?) pointed out, would lull those of her intended voters who planned to vote later in the day into a sense that their votes were superfluous—thus dissuading a number of them from going to the polls and costing her an election she was predicted statistically to win. It dawned on Alicia that her hubby was not being supportive (the same hubby who had been caught with a call girl in season one.)  She felt betrayed but didn't lose her head. Instead she did something to get his attention and let him know that she knew what he had done (I was in the kitchen at this point and don't know how she lowered the boom on him, but she did and he recovered things and she won in the end--hey, this is broadcast TV!)
I wasn't paying close attention to the show and so may have missed speculation as to why a husband would do such a thing to his wife, whom he had encouraged to run for office in the first place? The possibilities with this pair seemed unwholesome at best. But, as they say, that's politics. Alicia had just had an affair with her campaign strategist (I think.) No one's hands are exactly clean. This used to be the best stuff on TV. Now I'm growing increasingly weary of these people. What's wrong with ME? Stay awake, dammit! 
Don't expect me to tell you how things turned out—you need to join me in watching this increasingly dull show every Sunday evening on CBS, or go on-line.  The fact is the Good Wife has nowhere to go except DC, so I hope it will be going bye bye after this year.

                                                                           Photoshopped Bibi?                                                    The Jerusalem Post

What, you ask, does this have to do with Mr. Netanyahu playing the race card in a big way by announcing on election day, or the day before that (“funding from foreign governments to get more Israeli Arabs to vote worked”) the Arabs were swarming out of the souk, knives in teeth and/or ululating menacingly as they headed for the polls to unseat Bibi?  Well the easy answer is that the PM was manipulating his voter base with the basest scare tactics imaginable and people would have had reason to be shocked and appalled except that this has been SOP for this man for 30 years. He knows no other way. If peace broke out tomorrow, what would become of Bibi?  He would still be at the window peering through binoculars at the nearest horizon, Look!!!

         Henri Cartier-Bresson                                                                                                                                        Magnum

Apparently his US ambassador (former US citizen, Ron Dremer) had not prepared Bibi for the possibility that people who didn't like him would actually vote against him. Given that video of the above described fictional events has yet to surface, and given that Bibi's sleepy base obviously dragged themselves out to make the difference, one is startled indeed to hear this morning that Mr. Netanyahu has apologized for his despicable behavior. Hunh? At the time he made his race-baiting interjections (But wait, aren't they all Semites?) it was widely predicted that he would “take it back” ere long. 

 

                                          The Golan will stay with us.(approximate)                              NY Daily News

Apparently the suspense was more than the PM could live with: he has taken it back. One imagines Bibi sitting alone in a dark room on election morning, a pair of steel ball-bearings working absentmindedly in his right hand, when suddenly he picks up the phone and dictates the statement to his secretary with instructions to put it out NOW... 
 

                                                                                                                          Columbia Pictures

Now everyone is waiting to see if he will retract his other "outrageous" remark—his repudiation ofthe “two-state solution” that a succession of American administrations stretching back to James Polk have used as a fig leaf to disguise tacit approval of a certain land-grab ongoing in the West Bank... President Obama is holding his breath so tight that bottled oxygen now accompanies him everywhere he goes.The Florricks have yet to talk over their little contretemps.

As for me, I can spell chutzpah and I enjoy pronouncing the word in private.    ?חֻצְפָּה

Eenie, meanie, mynie, MO!

Word in today's New York Times that a gaggle of constitutional scholars have (has?) announced that the web-posted video of white University of Oklahoma student members of the SAE fraternity and friends singing a vile racist ditty on a party bus is protected speech, protected by the First Amendment. Well, of course it's protected speech here in the US of A. Some of our forefathers made that deal and we all live with it. You got a problem with that?

Yup. Saying racist things IS protected by the Constitution. So is denying history or calling for the overthrow of the government or burning the flag after peeing on it. Isn't that AWFUL? There's no law against it! Can't be in this country---only in France and Germany and every other country that claims to honor "freedom of expression"! Does anyone see the smug little SAE jerks being led away in handcuffs?

"Little Black Sambo and his mother Black Mumbo," John Rae Neil 1908

But publicly self-identifying as a racist (or being "outed" as one) can have consequences. AND IT SHOULD. A great university is within its rights to exclude from its population people regarded as socially so retrograde and destructive as to hinder the operation and mission of the university, right? Overt, committed racists in a public university would seem to me to fit that bill. Is that who these idiots are?

Freedom of speech means you have the right to speak or publish or signify without being silenced or imprisoned by the governing authority.  Read the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law..."   It does not mean people are obliged to stand silent or even to applaud. Or give you a job--ever. If you insult someone's beliefs or her mother's religion and that someone decides to punch you in the nose or burn your newspaper down, then that person is guilty of a range of felonies and will go to prison. The system works FINE. And you can burn that flag as long as you bought and paid for it.

So give the OK gentlemen their grade transcripts and send them on their way...

OR, treat this as a teachable moment and follow the suggestion of several African-American commentators who have counseled an attempt at dialogue and possible forgiveness (both students and their families have been vociferous in their expressions of shame, embarrassment, regret and apology) before invoking the "nucular" option. Or don't.  Also, ask yourself if you have ever drunk a snoot-full and sung lyrics you wouldn't want hung around your neck like the proverbial dead chicken?  I rest my case. Almost...

                                  Mom's  after-school snack and object lesson, 1955                         ChappiePic

"Eenie meanie mynie Mo, catch a NI--- by his toe!"  I sang it to my Mom ONCE, aged 6, and I can taste the ensuing soap sandwich yet.  She taught me the Golden Rule, as well.

Teach your children well, OK?

Nuts & Bolts & No Knead BREAD

Yesterday's news included the announcement that wheat has been present in the British Isles for 8,000 years. We have long known that wheat, barley and rye were first domesticated in the Middle East, but this news about food choices in a corner of Northwestern Europe is notable.

  Continuing this food thread and my NY Times bias, I just completed making a loaf of the "no knead" bread described below about 18 hours after I started. That's what you read: 18 hours. That's a good average time for this recipe. However, it involves almost no labor and a short baking time. Basically you mix flour, salt, yeast and water and leave the mess covered for 12-20 hours. I used cornmeal in place of wheat bran in the recipe.

     http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

I used a very average flour, Gold Medal not King Arthur, and it is absolutely delicious. I'm not just saying this. I was used to my bread, especially anything whole wheat, having a slightly moldy taste. I was astounded when I tasted this.  I think this is a result of the extremely long time it spent "cogitating."  The taste was faintly like Triscuits crackers but without all the salt. Unbelievable crust. Crunchy, thick and chewy. You need a good bread knife to cut this thing. Astonishing. I have never baked anything better, and I have been trying a long time!  See photo at bottom...

Note that you'll need an iron dutch oven with top because you dump the dough, which is moist and flaccid, into a super hot dutch oven (which gives the loaf shape) after 12-20 hours and cover it and bake for 20-30 minutes on 500. Then another 10-20 uncovered. That's where the crust comes from.

My only caution would be with regard to the burn potential from handling the Dutch oven and its top. Be sure you have good pot holders/oven mitts...and maybe the cold tap water running.

This is the kind of bread that seems like a complete food. As if this is what those proto-Brits might have been eating 8,000 years ago (if they could have made flour like this and didn't just turn it all into alcohol!) It uses almost no leavening (.25 tsp of dry yeast) Cost for this loaf (absent the heat) about $.90

You can mix it before bed and bake it the next afternoon when home from work.

Killers, Snipers, Soldiers, Warriors...Rolling in the Role Models...

This will be a brief test posting. I have decided to enable the comments feature for anyone, even readers who are not vaccinated. Let it all hang out, Babycakes.

My thought for the day has to do with the burgeoning movement that has grown from the original Mike Brown/Ferguson/Don't Shoot/Hands Up demonstrations and which now seems to be localizing. The shooting death of a homeless man in LA a few days ago and the mass shooting of a rock throwing Mexican man in Pasco, Washington join the really egregiously WRONG killings of two young black men in Ohio last year to make clear that this is not a narrowly conceived or cynical "movement" (Tawana Brawley?) but perhaps a seminal moment. 

The "Black Lives Matter" marches may be the beginning of a deeper and long term shift in Black Consciousness (and White perceptions and response) whereby needless deaths are no longer matters to be routinely absorbed as they have been to a greater or lesser degree since the first Africans were landed here in chains nearly 400 years ago. Black lives have never mattered as much as white lives. Not even when they were paid for with the slave master's gold.  This is not arguable. It's in all the books. It is also not arguable that black lives have not mattered as much with blacks themselves: the staggering black-on-black homicide statistics allow no serious dissent. And this fact is deeply painful and shaming to blacks themselves. Yet, what can a black person do?

Die Blau Schuyte by Pieter van der Heijden, circa 1530 (after H. Bosch)

No individual, no family, no neighborhood can turn the tide of this self-destructive mayhem. All the theories attributing the slaughter to the evil designs of the Man or the System, to White malevolence, to someone else, don't fool the very people who utter them and publish them. They know that no one can really force you to commit suicide. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, you can lead a young woman or man to crack or prostitution or drive by but you can't make them light up or give it up or pull the trigger: that is ultimately a choice. To deny this is to deny the agency of millions of people. But this is a problem affecting millions of people in a complex relationship with their country, their larger society and with History itself, so this Ship of Fools is not easy to turn around. Herein lies the real challenge and paradox.

My initial reaction to this movement was negative, but it was a complex negativity. In the first place, I had found the use and abuse of the Oscar Grant tragedy extremely tedious. Yet I also think the film "Fruitvale Station" is a minor masterpiece. I am one of those people who reacts negatively to being treated as if I were stupid by someone who actually may be or who is cynical. This reveals a certain lack of confidence on my part. After all, what do I care what any particular "moron" thinks, right? But apparently I want even the morons to have regard for my intelligence. Obviously I'm needy and naive! Part of my naivete is a tendency to examine any public event as minutely as possible so that I can form a working theory as to what happened. Did you ever know anyone like that? Yikes.

Consequently, I have very specific reasons for believing that JFK was killed by Oswald working alone. I had reasons for believing Johannes Mehserle, the cop who "murdered" Oscar Grant, had unbelievably drawn his pistol instead of his Taser. No other explanation was possible unless Mehserle was insane. He didn't seem to be. No one else seemed to think he was. He seemed totally depressed and defeated from the first time we saw him. A racist murderer who executed a young man in full view of scores of witnesses? Please. The real thing is out there, get up off the couch and go find him. Oscar Grant was the victim of stupendously negligent homicide. And the system worked despite the deranged efforts of the formerly oppressed to lynch an obvious retard.  Sorry. I said it. But that is how Mehserle seemed to me and all testimony bears it out... How many black men suffering from tourette's were lynched by whites shocked and angered by being disrespected and feeling their power nonetheless? To hell with Lord Acton's axiom about power: all power corrupts if it is not counter-balanced. In Mehserle's case, he wisely resigned immediately, kept his mouth shut while everyone demanded he speak and no one really wanted to hear him, and told the awful and unfathomable truth: he made a mistake that none of the rest of us, in our vast competency, could or would ever have made, right?

I have reasons for believing that Mike Brown was almost entirely (80%) responsible for his own death, but his is the only of the recent deaths of black men by police and vigilantes that I no longer question. Still, though one may argue about the extent of MB's attack on Officer Wilson, the videos of other police shooting suspects all over the country do not allow of serious question or justification. A cop is not supposed to shoot unless in reasonable fear of his own or someone else' s life, but the shootings, fatal and otherwise, in Ohio, South Carolina, Washington and now LA, can only be described as groups of cops (a single cop in SC) acting as a firing squad. So where does all this leave me in my thoughts?

                                                                                                                   Diane Arbus

American policing has undergone a number of tune-ups, and it seems another one is coming. When I was born, it was standard for police to beat confessions out of suspects. Phone books leave no bruises I always heard. Look at the quality of police in Alabama in 1965. You won't see anything like Bull Connor anymore. Not even the odious Sherrif Arpaio, a clear outlier among comtemporary law enforcement officials. Wannabees, perhaps, but the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department is real. The current anger and call for change arises partly in an objection to the military style of policing (a style said to have first appeared with Daryl Gates in the LAPD 50 years ago which was criticized after the Rodney King fiasco) which has gotten a huge boost with the paranoia and high-powered surplus equipment applied to our police cultures in the past dozen years. EVERYONE it seems believes that things are a bit out of hand: even a lot of cops do.

Most Americans want the police to stop shooting people who are clearly crazy or high or inebriated. Or as in the case of young Mr. Rice, obviously a child fooling around--why race up to within touching distance when unsure of the situation? Why not pause at a distance and order the person to relinquish the apparent firearm? I'm not an expert in proper police procedure, but then I dare say the murderous armed clown in the blue suit wasn't either. And who put him out there? There is near unanimity in wanting these cruel and stupid official murders to stop, whatever their number. 

One could argue that males between the ages of 15 and 25 are all insane, toxic on testosterone, often intoxicated and impaired and prey to cultural nonsense. Clearly law enforcement faces a tall challenge, but it seems that society has changed it's mind. WE want the law enforcement community to find a more effective way of dealing with US. We are going to need to work together. I imagine that we will do so (we already are in several venues.)  And how will this affect the real problem in the Black Community and our American Society: the shame of black on black homicide? I am hopeful that a solution to this problem of despair and hopelessness will make itself visible in the coming years if there is a sustained and courageous effort on everyone's part. And if we decide what the relationship between economics, wealth and our economy is with the survival of decent living in our nation. For sure it will have to begin with a dawning realization in the minds and hearts of young men (and women) of color that THEIR lives ALL matter and that killing someone who looks like you is a particularly obscene act, one not to be tolerated, one not to be protected by the "no snitching" rule.  Stay tuned.

By the way, the majority of homicides in the US are of white victims, and their murderers are also overwhelmingly white. The differences are merely of degree and how they affect the respective communities in the aggregate.


I have enabled "Comments" now and will leave them on.  I really would be glad to hear anyone's thoughts, unless they involve stoning me.

My First Three Scribbles Posted as One

ONE (02/28/2015)

Goodbye Mr. Spock. I never realized until now that I felt somewhat close to you.  I have not so many feelings about James T. Kirk and the rest of the crew. OK, maybe a frisson of warmth for Mr. Scott, the engineer. They were cartoons. Jolly cartoons for sure. But not you, Spock. You were the only really strange one, the only one I'd never seen the like of before. I empathized with you. Always. Your social awkwardness. You inability to recognize others' jokes or gaffes obvious to others, your inability to grasp the meaning of the females surrounding you. But you did have a feminine side, Spock, despite what anyone might have said. You had an utterly wonderful face.

                                                                                 Paramount

Now I understand that you were one of the first mixed-race characters on TV. And whereas the other mixed-race characters must have been endeavoring to hide their signal quality from the general public, if not from everyone, YOU, Mr. Spock not only made no "Bones" about it but understood that it was the only thing that qualified you to serve on the Enterprise. Your mother had been human, and you were one of us, so to speak. One day your character may be honored for this distinction...if the chintzy production values don't impede future popularity.

Except for the time Captain Kirk allowed you to believe that you had killed him in a struggle over a woman (brought on by your Vulcan “sexual heat”) and then surprised you joyfully with his reappearance, you never laughed at people or took the slightest pleasure in others comeuppance, defeat or pain. You were always visibly a bit defective. You hadn't a trace of ambition. You never even smiled ironically. You possessed no irony whatsoever. You were as earnest as a seven-year-old. A big boy in those knit pajamas. You weren't entirely convincing as a half-human.

I saw you in person once. Disguised as Leonard Nimoy.  In the mid-80s as I was flying from LA to Idaho on my friend Charlie's very generous dime to go fly fishing at the Flat Rock Club. I had then no idea how lucky I was. We flew to Salt Lake City and went on by car, Roger Thomas driving. But it was in the SLC airport, before the drive, that I encountered Leonard Nimoy, who had unbeknownst to me been on my flight, looking slightly abashed at all the smiles directed at him as he collected his bag and headed for the exit. That's all. Oh, I had seen Redd Foxx at the curb in LAX tipping generously.

I confess to you, Mr. Spock,  that I have chosen your departure for the interstellar regions as the topic of my first essay because I had to write about something in order to launch my blog. I feel fairly certain that you would have been and perhaps ARE a bit sympathetic to my situation and don't mind being used this way. In keeping with your then and eternal emotional state, I can imagine you looking a tiny bit perplexed at me and asking “Why write a blog? Why now?”  Live long and check your punctuation.

TWO (03/02/2015)

I am stuck unpleasantly by the similarities between Chris Kyle and Brian Williams, both apparently rather stupendous public liars who have been treated very differently by their adherents and critics. Kyle seems to have told at least three stupendous whoppers—one of which cost his estate a 1.8 million judgement. His fans seem undisturbed by these stories (if they are aware of them--not a lot of readers there) and “blame” them on the leftist dominated press. Brian Williams will probably end up sacrificing quite a bit more than 1.8 million in lost wages, but at least he is alive and free to seek to re-ingratiate himself with the press and public.  I was surprised with what a natural entertainer BW was when I saw him on Letterman or somewhere. He might end up making much MORE money if he lands in the right arena for his talents (and I don't mean replacing Tom Bergeron on America's Funniest Home Videos.) The sad end of the Chris Kyle story is treated very fairly and thoroughly in a piece by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker 21 months ago.

To jump from Brian Williams, who isn't that interesting, to the shocking and ironic end of America's most famous...killer? A man who (under military orders admittedly) shot 250+ people and killed at least 160 of them couldn't be squeamish about being called "a killer" I think.  After all, no one is "a soldier" any more--everyone is "a warrior". This distinction deserves an extended comment, but not today. 

                                                                                                                                                  Chappie Pic

For me one striking similarity between Kyle and Eddie Routh, his killer (murderer the jury said), were the two women who loved each of them—their entire family circles in fact. The testimonies of the two women in the story is one of the remarkable things about this New Yorker pieces. The tragedy of the killings of Kyle and his friend, Littlefield, by a (to my mind as well as Kyle's)) clearly “insane” Routh will continue to reverbrate. Alas, the wrong lessons will be learned by almost everyone involved if past performance is any indicator. that's just the way we are when awful things occur. Now I'm waiting for an article covering the trial of Routh, who was convicted this week of murder. Details soon.

The final point to make regarding Williams and Kyle, is the Williams, who is accused of nothing more serious than exaggerating the implicit heroism of his own movements is thoroughly disdained by the public, but Kyle, the actual killer of many score of people in their own country, is adulated back here in his own country.

THREE (03/03/2015)

I have an old friend, an opinionated and contentious fellow not entirely unlike me, whom I have advised to join me in the Blogosphere. Yikes! He has twice demurred with the excuse (or explanation) that he doesn't want to face the horrible abuse, insults and death threats (I embellish!) that he will be heir to while riding his white charger forward through the rougher neighborhoods of the web. I suggested that he might find himself met by a deafening silence and that such a thought was perhaps more off-putting than the thought of a bath in the unpleasantness of strangers. No doubt the truth lies in between. This particular friend has published a number opinion pieces in conservative organs from the WSJ to (more frequently) The American Spectator and though I share few if any of his conscious political or social positions, I do note the advantage of putting it all in one place and inviting folks to stop by and try a sample. I hope he will reconsider.

Please understand that I have very little idea what I am doing, but then this is not an enterprise for brainiacs, if one goes by the typical offering one encounters on a given day online. Not that I mean to demean or otherwise oppugn anyone who beat me to the field of verbal contest. I'll figure it out as I go along. Yes, "oppugn" is a word. I learned it today.