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LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 28, 2010
Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. (Unlike the biblically-based Jewish holidays, this is one, like Chanuka, on which I’m allowed to blog!)
As well explained in the Book of Esther, it’s the holiday of turnabout, surprises, false identities, intrigue, perhaps some emotional legerdemain, and not a little spiritual confusion. The outcome isn’t always funny, or even fun, except perhaps in the sense of the divine comedy.
It all comes around in the end, though!
Posted in Faith and Works, Futurama, Heart and spirit, Orient, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 26, 2010
About a month ago I published a lengthy discourse, doomed to obscurity, in which in my somewhat pedantic way I tried to tutor my Dean’s World buddy, the often open-minded Aziz Poonawala, on what he should and should not be sensitive to–in his role as Islam’s ambassador to the rest of us, I suppose–in terms of what we Juice Jews consider a “blood libel.” It came up in the context of Charles Johnson, Aziz himself and a tale he later regretted passing on that the Israelis were preparing biological weapons:
My point is this: Antisemitism is an important element of gentile anti-Zionism. They are not the same, but those who claim that they are unrelated are, well, antisemites, actually. And when Israel is accused of committing war crimes, or preparing to; and these war crimes are redolent of medieval accusations of well-poisoning as well as the classic blood libel, you can see a certain similarity: The Jews are claimed to be agents of not only mayhem but bearers of malefaction, poision, offal into the otherwise pure nature of things. This, then, is not such a nutty analogy.
You’ve got to understand these things. In fact, the real dedicated anti-Semites do come in all sorts of sizes and varieties, much like a can of mixed nuts left out in the August sun for a couple of weeks. And now, thanks to Meryl Yourish, they bloggy kind have been thoroughly categorized in a new taxonomy of online little Hitlers:
Eight years ago this spring, at the height of the suicide bombings of Yasser Arafat’s terror war known as the second intifada, I started blogging about Jewish and Israeli issues. This, of course, brought out the anti-Israel crazies. I came up with a corollary to Godwin’s Law to describe these trolls: “In any internet discussion area concerning Israel, politics, or religion, the probability of anti-Semitic comments approaches one.” (In fact, I’ve seen comments threads that have absolutely nothing to do with Israel, politics, or religion still devolve into anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing, but that’s a post for another time.)
And so, based on the thousands of comments and emails I’ve read over the years, both here and on other blogs and media sites, I present The Blogger’s Guide to Anti-Semitic Comments Trolls. Below are the some of the types of anti-Israel commenters I’ve identified over the years, but the list is by no means complete.
Bloggers: Consider yourself guided!
Posted in Faith and Works, Sisyphus, Stragety | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 18, 2010
My friend Aziz Poonawalla, via Insty who, interestingly, links to the story guilelessly (I can’t buy a link these days–should I get a turban?), lays it right out:
Today is the one-year anniversary of the landmark stimulus bill which most economists agree has staved off a second Great Depression. The evidence that the stimulus has worked is overwhelming – the New York Times has an in-depth article looking at its actual impact on jobs, and an indispensable graphic showing a timeline of key economic indicators before and after its passage. There’s another beautiful chart based on job loss data from Dec 2007 to Jan 2010 which also makes the impact of the stimulus crystal clear. The recognition of the stimulus’ success isn’t just data-driven – Republican lawmakers who have publicly denounced it for political gain have been quietly and hypocritically scrambling for stimulus money for their districts – as documented by the Wall Street Journal and by the Washington Times.
The only real flaw in the stimulus bill was that it wasn’t big enough . . .
Aziz, Aziz, Aziz. Where do we start with this?
Posted in Faith and Works, Gelt, Medialites | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 25, 2009
In light of all the Thanksgiving blogging and tweeting, I am reposting this piece, originally posted a year ago — or was it two? — on the eve of Rosh Hashana. It was not being the first time I’ve raised the same point on Thanksgiving. Both days are fundamentally about thankfulness — and the introspection that it demands — so I’m bumping it up here again today, with minor tweaks, and with apologies for the seemingly clichéd title, which I really meant in the sense that, yup, it’s the season for inspirational reruns again!
Recipient
It has been an extraordinarily eventful year for me on many, many planes, overwhelmingly in ways for which I am very grateful to God. Gratitude is the alpha of service of God, and of self-fulfillment, too — two endeavors that, to the thoughtless, appear to be opposite, but which are in fact one. From my point of view, neither is achieved fully without the other.
I say “from my point of view” even though my cousin Debbie, the writer, taught me many years ago that when you write something you need not say such a thing, because of course it is your point of view. You wrote it. But I say it so as not to offend my many friends who read here and who disagree and are, by habit, less offended if a proposition is put forth in a manner that sounds less absolute. It is a form of apology, and of course we know just how apologetic your blogger is at any time!
More of my point of view is my reiteration that when speaking of “gratitude,” God is the Whom to which gratitude must be directed, which is not to say that gratitude toward other individuals for their specific kindnesses is not also appropriate. But “I’m grateful” without an object — this makes no sense.
In fact I have never understood people expressing free-floating generic “gratitude” directed at … nothing. I do not consider it to be any more logical to say, “It is directed at the Universe,” which is essentially the same exact thing. I believe that people who express “gratitude” without acknowledging the source of the benefit to which they claim to be grateful, are saying words, but not, really, expressing gratitude. Gratitude must have an object because it is an acknowledgment of need, or lack, fulfilled by the other. Failing to recognize the other nullifies gratitude, and makes it merely a statement of fact, not an expression of thanks, that the empty stomach is now full; the infirm is now cured; the benighted, enlightened.
But I am not here to fight, not today. Forgive the digression — there, apologies again! Well, regret may be part of the introspection born of gratitude, too.
Round and round
And I for one am grateful, grateful to God, for a year that has been very good to me, and to many of the people I care about the most. Much progress, some of it incremental, but progress all the same.
I am grateful to have reached a point where I can perceive and appreciate incremental progress, too.
I am grateful to be able to interact with so many fine, deep, multifaceted people whose intentions are good.
I am grateful for middle age. I was born to be middle aged and now I am home. I hope I get to stay here for a long time!
I am grateful for life, for perspective, for wisdom, judgment, the ability to give, the powers that I have, for the judges who are starting to listen and the clients who do their best to pay.
I am grateful for the things that ought not be written, but should be said.
Grateful… step one. It is the first step, and while we must go beyond it, gratitude is the step that is never completed.
Thank you.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 12, 2009
I asked, in a comment to a post on Dean’s World once again debating whether or not “Islam” is what does all this killing, or is it merely Muslims, or maybe none of the above, the following question: But what’s the point of all this? What if we all agree, even our friend Aziz Poonawalla — yeah, Islam, or something that calls itself Islam with some meaningful level of authority, has a tendency, and a bad one, to give potential killers an internal moral, psychological and social green light to follow through on their rage and pull the trigger, in a way that no other “major religion” has?
Now what? Where does that get us?
This guy’s ravings were lunatic enough that he should have been put on ice a long time ago, and the Army completely dropped the ball. Is our point that it did so because it treats Muslims with kid gloves (even as the military most assuredly does not do regarding certain other religious minorities)? If so, then let’s focus on that point — because we aren’t about to outlaw Islam or do anything that is either constitutionally or politically impossible about it.
Dave Price, always insightful, answered as follows — and I think he’s right:
“Now what? Where does that get us?”
The first step in dealing with any problem is an honest assessment of the problem. In fact, it is often the most important step.
The acknowledgement of a uniquely Islamic problem with religious violence should lead to increased efforts to moderate Islam — shunning violent radicals, embracing moderate imams, separation of mosque and state, as well as an increase in efforts to reconcile Islam with women’s rights and gay rights.
If the problem was Christian extremists, we would not be having this discussion; they would be openly mocked and derided. There is a cult of political correctness in the West: “Ooh look how tolerant and inclusive I am! I am above tribalism! (except of course my tribe of PC moral relativists which is actually the best tribe!11!1!).” It shuts down debate by refusing to acknowledge any reality that might involve anything resembling xenophobia.
Well, as I alluded to in the link to the David Tenenbaum story above (here’s another), which unfortunately is not unique — it’s not as if the military is scared of anything resembling xenophobia. But, you know, it is usually different with the Jews, right? Anyway, Dave’s point is an important one.
Posted in Faith and Works, Orient | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 5, 2009
What could make the director of a Planned Parenthood Clinic quit her job and join an anti-abortion group?
Oh, just abortion:
“I had never seen an abortion happen on an ultrasound,” she said. “My job during the procedure was to hold the probe on the woman’s abdomen. I could see the whole profile of the baby 13 weeks head to foot. I could see the whole side profile. I could see the probe. I could see the baby try to move away from the probe.” . . .
Although she had seen ultrasounds before, including during her own pregnancy, Johnson said she had never seen an ultrasound image during an abortion. She is unclear why, as the director of the clinic, she was asked to be in the procedure room on that day, because it was not a normal part of her duties. Still, Johnson said, the experience changed her forever.
“I just thought, ‘What am I doing?'” she said. “And then I thought, ‘Never again.'”
The controversy years ago over The Silent Screen (careful) was never based on accusation that the depiction of an eleven-week-term abortion was anything but misleading. It was based on the concept that “a woman’s right’s to choose” — which, today, is the official name of abortion in Democratic politics — should never be connected in the public mind, or in any moral way, to what is actually being chosen, and who, or if you like “what” else, it affects.
Because that would be some sort of cheating, I guess. Making people feel bad and all about what happens when they want to exercise “a right” is so wrong.
UPDATE: This seems to be the some of the most active blog coverage I’ve seen. Otherwise, not much compared even to the MSM, much less the religious blogs — because, guess what: The so-called right wing blogosphere is mainly libertarian, and this is an issue that doesn’t, er, skew so great for it.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, O Mores! | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 5, 2009
From the Telegraph of London (via Insty):
A photograph of the Iranian president [Ahmadinejad] holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
Oy, not only an antisemite — but the worst kind! A Jewish one! And from a family in the shmatta trade, even!
This is only partly funny. It is also only partly surprising. Jews do have a way of rising in prominence regardless of where they are. When they are in the wrong place, unfortunately, their rise … does the Jews, and the world, no favors. And typically, unfortunately, they assert their purported non-Jewishness very assertively against Jewish values and people, perhaps to “prove” how not-Jewish they are or, perhaps, for more complex moral and psychological reasons.
Which is why they should, you know, be in the right place, by which I do not mean a place found on the map.
And in this case, by the way, what’s the real story? Well, continue with the article:
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
Well, there you have it. No wonder they converted — they had a Jew-hating mamzer like this for a kid!
UPDATE: Glad I got that in before the inevitable debunking:
Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. “There is no such meaning for the word ‘sabour’ in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name,” he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word “tzitzit” to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article’s findings that the “-jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending,” he stated.
Turban-tip to LGF.
Posted in Faith and Works, Oppression, Orient, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on September 27, 2009
I first posted this two years ago. But it’s so good I’m posting it again (joke will become readily apparent).
I have been pondering this link from Instapundit for a couple of days now. It is about, in 
one sense, a cutesie trend on American campuses now called a “last lecture”:
Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted “Last Lecture Series,” in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?
Now the lecture in question in the article really was the last chance, for all practical purposes, for the professor involved, who is dying. I was, however, rather put off by this idea. The man was facing his end, I realized; how churlish could I be about such a topic?
On the eve of Yom Kippur, however — when among Jews the congregation as a whole admits to a state of sinfulness generically, but as individuals reserves the most intimate of confession for the private communication between Man and his Creator — I’ve had the chance to contemplate the matter some more. Regrettably for those among us who circulate heart-warming emails and who yet care about my opinion (uh, hi, Mom), I want to go with my initial instinct, at least as to the general trend; as to the case in the article, perhaps that requires more thought.
The “last lecture” trend is truly the emblem of ours, history’s most narcisstic era. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Narcissus Rex | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on September 24, 2009
This post was originally posted on my LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® blog (where it was off topic, but in those days it was the only blog I had) almost exactly four years ago. A friend reminded me of it today, and I thought it was perhaps appropriate to republish it in the season of solemn introspection between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur:
Last spring, I got a comment on the blog from a gentleman named Bunker Mulligan. I don’t get a lot of comments, which isn’t surprising; our content is so mind-numbing that few of our innumerable readers are in any sort of shape to do something so pedestrian as “comment.”
But Bunker did comment, and thanked me for stopping by his site. I hardly remember what I did when I was there and what sort of tracks I left. It was really two bloggers passing in the night of cyberspace.
And during this real night I was doing some routine maintenance on the site, and I saw Bunker’s comment, and I clicked through to his blog… and was reminded that blogs are people.
Bunker — his real name was Michael Reed; he liked golf, so his pen name was Bunker Mulligan — died. He passed away at the beginning of the summer, a total surprise to everyone; he was only ten years older than I am and looked a lot more fit than I do now.
Here was his last post:
I really don’t understand why folks who dislike the military are often the same people who push for diversity. I can tell you from personal experience that the military is the most diverse group of people you will ever meet. We’ve got ’em all. Including members of a royal family. From Nigeria. Capt. Wisdom Osagiede-Ogbewekon. He is in Iraq, working to help get their nascent government operating. As he has a perspective they can respect.
“I tell them, ‘Look at me. What does that tell you? I’m an African who is an officer in the most powerful army in the world,'” says Osagiede-Ogbewekon, a member of the active Guard and reserve. “I’m a very good example of what America is.”
In fact, Bunker Mulligan was at least as good an example. This is a little about who Bunker was:
I have lived in many places. I am a Texan, and an American, and quite proud to be both. . . .
I support President Bush and see him as the embodiment of Teddy Roosevelt, who was also disparaged as a cowboy. I also support our troops, two of whom are my sons. One of them will go overseas soon, and the other one recently returned from Afghanistan. I have less concern for their safety than I do for my other son who is a police officer. He, unlike his brothers, can’t shoot first and ask questions later.
My daughter, the youngest, is in LA making her way in the entertainment business doing casting and production.
I’ve coached baseball at every level from T-ball to NCAA junior varsity, and football up to high school. I watch sports, but am not very serious about it above high school level. I play golf, and enjoy the game more than others due to the individuality, honor, and sense of community in it. . . .
I am NOT a celebrity watcher. I get frustrated to turn on the news. With everything of import going on in this country and around the world, the lead stories are Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, and Michael Jackson. It is easy TV, and not hard to put a story together around them, so something more important gets overlooked because it takes real work to get the story.
So, welcome to my site. I hope you find something you like!
I have little in common with Bunker. I don’t care much for golf; I was never in the service — he was an Air Force veteran, evidently with combat experience, though I can’t really tell; he was Christian, and I’m a Jew. I fancy myself something of an intellectual, and although Bunker had two degrees, including a Master’s in international relations, he seemed more down to earth than that. But for the love of God I can tell you that I was hit so hard when I saw this personal, honest, specimen of American life blog that I just broke down.
I like to say that some people have the ability to project personality on an Internet web page. What could be a more powerful projectile than, “So, welcome to my site. I hope you find something you like!” I don’t think anyone within 50 miles of where I am, on the crest of the ancient Passaic River basin overlooking New York City, could write a more earnest sentence.
And it has been a hard day that way, seeing as how earlier this afternoon I left my office and helped bury the father of a longtime friend and neighbor — he also died suddenly, scant months after the death of his wife after a long illness.
The dirt from the cemetery is still on my heavy-soled lawyering shoes. My friend, Mike the professor, spoke beautifully, passionately, eloquently at the graveside — eloquently as in I didn’t know Mike had it in him — about how his father knew so little peace during his lifetime, pursued as he was by hard knocks economically; and how he pursued his obligation to honor his own mother, especially after his father’s early death, to a degree beyond fashionable in our times; and then how his dad had to watch his wife get sick and then predecease him… and how his solace and his joy had been his children and his grandchildren — Mike, the professor; his brother, Eric, a Harvard graduate and succesful consultant, whose children attend the local Jewish school with mine…
Mike’s dad and Bunker Mulligan weren’t linked by anything but me and by being “good examples of what America is.”
It’s been a hard, hard day in real life, outside the blog world, separate from the Redweld folders whence come and whither go all the papers I analyze, generate and quote from while I generate more; separate from the adversaries, the clients, the judges; blogs, the politics; the trademarks and the copyrights alighting on the heads of pins. A hard day for a white-collar guy feeling the earth for a change.
It’s Rosh Hashana in a few days, and God has done me the favor of shaking me up but good on the last Wednesday of the year. All it cost was a little sweat as I shoveled the dirt, and the cost of a shoeshine.
Solomon said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.” Ecclesiastes 7:2.
It was better.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on September 18, 2009
Click here for our Rosh Hashana prayers. And here for some fancy hornblowing.
May we be inscribed for a year of life … of sustenance… of peace.
I’ll be back next week.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
