Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Braggadocio Broadcasting

Anti-Semitism, Glenn Beck, Judaism & Jews, Media, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Glenn Beck was once informative and edgy. No longer. These days the Fox News Talker is mostly tedious, windy, preachy and plain spaced-out. “Spooky Dude” is a sobriquet Beck uses to describe his latest personal nemesis, George Soros, about whom he intones for hours on end, aided by the usual indecipherable charts. Beck is one spooked-out dude.

Beck is too boring and marshals too few facts to persuade me of anything he says these days. However, no matter the number of fatuities Beck disgorges in one session, one thing is clear: he is not an anti-Semite. Beck is no hater; he’s a nice guy. He has just become so fat-headed that he believes his own hype. A muddle-headed man who has deluded himself about being a philosopher king will ad lib himself into trouble.

Our man from La Mancha is aping Bill O’Reilly. BO’s show revolves around BO and his encounters. The mental midgets of The View will pick a fight with BO, and BO will devote the week to discussing the implications for the nation of his squabble with some bitches. Their body language he’ll dissect (“analyze” is his term for wanking on-air with junk science), his body odor his expert will break down; he’ll invite guests on to praise him and damn the dames, and vise versa, on and on.

But even BO picks up on more news items, these days, than does Beck, whose hour is bereft of any information. Beck, once a humble man, has adopted Bill O’Reilly’s braggadocio broadcasting. (Warning, Glen: that’s un-Godly!)

So now the Jewish, liberal establishment is having a go at Beck for rambling incoherent about Soros.

This is what happens when one let’s the ego take over, as Glen has done. It all began when Glen discovered that Soros had donated money to combat the Beck tidal wave. Thereon-in Beck was like a man possessed; high on his own importance for drawing Soros’ attentions. The dybbuk did not pay dividends.

On November 12, Simon Greer, president and CEO of Jewish Funds for Justice, went on Countown [sic] with Keith Olbermann to discuss Glenn Beck evoking anti-Semitic sterotypes [sic] to attack a prominent Jewish philanthropist and Holocuast [sic] survivor. In his three-day “Puppet Master” series, Mr. Beck accused Geroge [sic] Soros of “helping send the Jews to the death camps” when he was 13 years old. There has been an overwhelming response condemning Mr. Beck’s grotesque falsehoods from Abe Foxman calling it “horrific” to Elan Steinberg calling it “monstrous.”

If you’re interested (I’m not) read more about the developments on this badly spelt website.

EGO TV has taken a predictable tumble. I don’t agree with a word he says, but Simon Greer seems a sincere, refined man. This is more than one can say of Countdown Keith, into whose trap Talker Beck stepped.

“Rhymes With Fagin”

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East

That’s the title of the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens article describing last week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”:

“If you’re a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel’s prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: ‘Rhymes with Fagin,’ the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?

The magazine’s other characterization of Begin was that he was ‘dangerous.’ A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there’s something in the magazine’s DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, ‘Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.’ That’s one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Mr. Vick’s essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. ‘We’re not really that into the peace process,’ says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. ‘We are really, really into the water sports.'”

It’s hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: ‘For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away,’ Mr. Vick writes.

Indeed it isn’t: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?” READ ON.

[SNIP]

What TIME cretin Karl Vick is describing, and depicting with the aid photos of good looking Israelis on the beach, is a plucky people engaged in LIFE; working, playing, making money (horrors!), and having fun, in the face of daily existential threats. This is to be admired not condemned.

My daughter, who was decidedly not pro-Israel when she visited there, came back enthralled with the country and its people (she wrote about it HERE). Never before had she met such tough, positive, feisty sorts (and certainly not in the Jewish school she once attended in South Africa. Israelis and diaspora Jews: never the twain shall meet).

As admirable as is the Israeli absorption with the good life, I’m afraid that regular Israelis need to learn to be more guarded with creeps likes Vick of TIME. And maybe to revive some of that founding patriotism, once again.

Update III: Thomas Tomfoolery (& Jewish Stupidity)

Anti-Semitism, Democracy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture

“Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.”
~Ann Coulter, February 23, 2005

Ms. Coulter got called a racist for that mild dig at Thomas. And she’d be called an anti-Semite if she came out with this Thomas tomfoolery:

UPDATE I (June 6): I don’t know what is more pathetic, Thomas or the organized Jewish response to her. More later.

UPDATE II (June 7): The reason the weak, uncharismatic Democrat Lanny Davis is so popular with Demopublicans is that he is, well, weak and inconsequential.

Now he wants to muscle the outlets that make use of this ancient idiot Thomas’ output. (Why does he not petition her syndicator to drop her, and hire this Jewish Woman–your host? Thomas has had a good run. It’s time for new blood.).

Of course the the old sow is apologizing; the public apology is a ritual as meaningful as are tears on Oprah.

Why extract this meaningless muttering from this woman?

As I once wrote, “It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act graciously—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering.”

Thomas may be a fool, but Davis and Ari Fleischer are incorrigible, pushy purveyors of political correctness.

UPDATE III: Robert Glisson is sad to see a woman who had it all blow it away. Sympathies here are misplaced.

And why on earth? Although I liked some of Thomas’ anti-war sentiment—has it been up to snuff with Obama?—I’m thrilled that the cow has been put out to pasture. She’s had a good run. When else, but in the age of mass mediocrity, would such a banal bitch obtain such iconic stature?