Egocentrism

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Brookline, MA, United States
I'll post rants here, and musings; articles and thoughts about articles. I'll keep it quite complex and yet astoundingly simple: whatever it is I am interested in at any given moment.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Sometimes, When it Rains, it Pours

There are days when either my mind or journalists' output just makes everything seem so interesting. So, instead of posting a dozen times today (the day is young, we still might have time for that), I thought I'd just help publicize some fascinating things that have caught my eye these past few days.

Slate explores the pompous absurdity of we Americans being so proud of ourselves for electing a minority, ignoring Disraeli (19th C, England), Sonia Gandhi (India), Daniel arap Moi (Kenya), and Alberto Fujimori (Peru), evidently leaving out Mandela because of the formality (as we might call it) of his election. I like the conclusion here, that, based on this particular criterion, Obama's lack of uniqueness need not be seen as detracting from the achievement, or his promise for the future.

Noam Schreiber, writing in the New Republic, makes an argument that choosing Emanuel (and how he chose Emanuel) portends a significant departure from the "No Drama Obama" of the campaign to a more chaotic administration, dominated by oversized personalities who will not make life easy for anyone (except, perhaps, Huckabee, Gingrich, Jindal, et al.). Schreiber relaxes, a tad, in the second half of the article, where he admits that, perhaps some types of drama might be good, particularly if they help to challenge the intellectually curious law-professor President who likes being challenged.

Also in the New Republic (which I don't usually read but I found the first article through an RCP link and this article through a sidebar from the first one), David W. Rohde encourages us to embrace Kerry's defeat in 2004 as the best thing to happen to the Democratic party since 1964. Of course, the first comment on the article notes that Rohde, therefore, is embracing Kennedy's assassination and the travesty of G. W. Bush's second term as the last two "best things" to happen to us. Could be a compelling historical read; still a sick one.

Patrick Smith, Salon's resident pilot-columnist outlines what Obama should do with the airline industry, including delays, congestion, air traffic control, and the TSA, which is reserved for some special lambasting. Smith notes here, as elsewhere, the immediate irrelevance of the 9/11 threat even by noon on 9/11, and the TSA's insistence (though, admittedly, it makes me feel better) on focusing nearly exclusively on that threat. And Smith suggests that one way Obama can indicate America's move back towards enlightenment and sanity is a reform of the TSA. As someone who is petrified of flying - I didn't do it for nearly four-and-a-half years - and who is likely to be flying a lot more in the next few years than I ever have - I hope someone else is listening to Smith.

Ha'aretz reported recently on the creation of an alternative to the Rabbinical conversion courts in Israel, a massive victory for sanity in this country (and the Reform and Conservative movements). As my dear friend Charlie Schwartz said yesterday (in a different context entirely), it is difficult for Israel not to be seen as a complicating factor for liberal Jews' Jewish identities (most of all the leadership of the liberal streams - their Rabbis) when the only country willing to exert the energy to declare that Conservative and Reform Rabbis are not actually Rabbis is, well, Israel. I hope the creation of this alternate path to conversion (and marriage) allows for a real alternative, and the realization of the long-gestating but as-yet-unfulfilled hope: יש יותר מדרך אחת להיות יהודי.

Drake Bennet, writing for boston.com, imagines what a new Depression would look like for America. Haunting and scary. But I do love TV.

The Washington Post identifies five myths (as in falsehoods) from the recent mythic (as in narrative-establishing) election. I have to say, I agree; though I think that Obama did receive a mandate, I do not think that the obituaries for the Republican Party are in place, nor necessarily those for conservativism in the U.S. I am, however, relatively compelled that Reaganism, as we know it, has been replaced - but more, I imagine, by a pragmatic Rooseveltianism than the imagined liberal extremism embodied by the Kennedys. I do, however, disagree with myth #4 - implying that a Republican candidate - the right one - could have won the Presidency. I think too many of McCain's mistakes down the stretch contributed to Obama's win and had the right candidate (even the real McCain) ran a near-perfect campaign (as Obama did), properly distancing themselves from Bush while indicating competency on the economy and enthralling the Republican base, then they could indeed have won. (Does this make me a run-of-the-mill Democrat who has a significant inferiority complex? Perhaps.)

The following video tour, from Slate's spin-off The Big Money, confirms what I've always known: I wish I worked for Google. Unbelievable. Could I work somewhere like that? Shouldn't schools be set-up like that? Camps? Universities? WOWZER.

JTA published the only report I have yet to see of the Independent Minyan conference at Brandeis last week. (As I think I keep saying on the blog, though haven't yet begun formally to write,) I'm working on an article about indpendent minyanim and find the analysis and observations that this article (and others in the past) raises to be nothing short of fascinating.

And, on the הכרת הטוב front, note the similarity of emotions that Obama and the Giants can evoke in my brother-in-law.

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