Is a penchant for useless information nature or nurture? Whenever I speculate about a likely inborn inclination, I recall how my mother always made sure I learned the origin of every street name in any address at which we lived. So when my parents bought an apartment on Tel Aviv’s leafy Rehov Yosef-Eliahu (near the Mann Auditorium), I was sure to become the only kid around who could expound on who Yosef-Eliahu was. Continue reading →

The requiem for Labor is premature. Labor isn’t terminally decrepit. Nevertheless, its demise is inevitable if it fails to save itself from itself.

What’s at stake isn’t merely Labor’s misfortune but that of our entire body politic, which must be able to count on two responsible mainstream alternatives. Kadima – an opportunistic concoction without a weighty past, a promising future or any true adhesive to bind its cynical melange of expedient self-seekers – isn’t one. Continue reading →

Way back in the antediluvian era of American media, there was a daytime TV offering called Queen for a Day. Many consider it the early forerunner of at least some reality television genres – the sort that focus on family tragedies, personal agonies and other assorted heartrending crises. Each episode featured four contestants vying for the “most miserable” or “most pitiable” distinction. The dubious winner’s bitter lot was rewarded with big-prize giveaways.
It was up to the audience to judge which of the four unfortunates was closer to rock bottom and therefore worthy of their sympathy. That sympathy was grotesquely measured by an “applause meter.” The loudest clapping presumably meant that the circumstances unfolded in one of the competing sad stories were the harshest. Continue reading →

In 1933 FDR hinged his first inaugural address on his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Binyamin Netanyahu should inaugurate his second administration with this exact sentiment, stated as boldly and as unambiguously. Unlike the morale issues of Depression-era America, in our case irrational fear is an existential threat. Continue reading →

In the spirit of Purim, I quipped a few days ago that if it were up to me, I’d appoint ex-Black Panther Charlie Biton our new foreign minister.

It’s actually not altogether preposterous. Tzipi Livni eminently proved that proficiency in the English idiom is no prerequisite for the job. Moreover, Charlie says it like it is, passionately, from the gut, without pedantic quibbling, pseudointellectual hairsplitting or any niceties to speak of. He doesn’t try to be liked. Continue reading →

The textbook notion of government is that the executive branch, headed by the prime minister, is actually in control, formulates policy and calls the shots. That’s the naïve theory. But as Sir Humphrey, Yes Minister/Prime Minister‘s quintessential civil servant has relentlessly striven to enlighten TV audiences worldwide, true power resides elsewhere. When James Hacker assumed office, Humphrey lost no time to put him in his place. Continue reading →

Some of the folks who voted for Tzipi Livni or the luckless candidates to her left – whose electoral prospects she greedily devoured – are inveterate “Kumbaya” singers. No matter how hard and insensitively reality slaps them in the face, they still naively prefer the pose of pious believers in the honorable intentions of a genocidal enemy whose openly declared and entirely unconcealed aim is to obliterate them. The world may be a tad unkind, but the optimistic sham of unwavering trust in human goodness is too good to give up. Continue reading →

Argumentum ad hominem (Latin for “argument against the man”) is an insidiously effective and widespread polemical technique. Its essence consists of attacking a given person in order to discredit his message. There may be no objective fault with said message – indeed, it may be cogent and excellent – but it’s never properly evaluated because the messenger is spitefully trashed. Continue reading →

Frustrating as these pages’ preelection deadline may be, it does allow us to look back and revisit what the past news-packed weeks somewhat swept aside. Perhaps most galling is how Israel’s self-defense in the South invigorated the most radical elements of Israel’s far-out far-left.
Next time we carp about knee-jerk Israel-demonization abroad, we might ponder what weeds our democracy nourishes in our own overlooked backyard. Continue reading →

She wasn’t at all aware of Proverbs 26:11 and had no idea how Bing Crosby’s 1944 Academy Award-winning song “Swinging on a Star” remotely pertained to her pseudo-intellectual angst. The complexities of life were overwhelming enough without additional bewilderment. Continue reading →