Richard Kaye Remembers Bob Tashman at the New York Review of Books

A nice memoir of our late friend by one of his co-workers at NYRB:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/50-years/2014/jan/21/the-room-you-wanted-to-be-in/

The other aesthete—unkempt, straight, Jewish-guy division—was Bob Tashman, as nervously fast-talking as David was mellifluously smooth-talking, an assistant editor for many years at the Review. For some time Bob and I did not get along. It was an office joke, of sorts, our everyday friction and bitchy bickering, and thinking about this now I am not sure why. But then, suddenly, we did get along, a development that may have had something to do with Bob’s basic sweet nature and perhaps my telling our mutual friend Arthur Goldwag at the Reader’s Subscription that I thought Bob was one of the smartest people I had ever met. Heck, he was the smartest man in the office, in the entire Fisk Building. It got back to Bob, as I wanted it to. Usually dressed in a bland preppy blue shirt and jeans, hair sprouting from everywhere, Bob would careen from office to office at the Review and do fiendishly accurate impressions of people, myself included. (Something about me saying “Iknow!” into the phone when I was talking to a friend.) 

Very tough-minded intellectually and yet hilarious in a way that would have served him well in vaudeville, Bob had all sorts of complex, fancy tastes in literature and plays and music and art and he could get quite emotional about some of those opinions. He loved to pick little fights about cultural matters. Wasn’t Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight absolutely the best film adaptation of Shakespeare ever made? Wasn’t James Joyce’s story “The Dead” the “greatest piece of fiction in the language”? He would become almost physically taunting about—or alternately physically gratified by—your tastes in books or music, depending on whether your judgments fit his own finely honed refinements. He would rant, cajole, become irritated. Bob was one of those brilliant people who almost always drop out of Ph.D. programs in which they are uneasily enrolled, as I would later understand, because their brilliance invariably is too ornery and unsystematic. Seldom would he yield to another person’s argument or a “school of thought.” Somehow Bob always brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s comment about Henry James having a “mind so fine no idea could violate it.” (Bob passed away from cancer several years ago.)

Eliyho Matz's New Year's Blessings for 2014...

Blessing, Blessings for 2014

A Compilation, by Eliyho Matz

For the past 35 years, I have been working in Manhattan in the Stationery business (i.e., pens and pencils), and it has been my daily habit to read The New York Times.  I cannot testify to my mental condition after analyzing the many complexities and ideas found in this newspaper.  

Following are some interesting pieces I have accumulated over these thirty-five years as a result of my work and my daily meditations on life and the Times.

*******************************

An Ode to “Best” Pencils

 O’, God, give me Black Wings, to fly among the Mongols, to see the Ticonderoga river, and the Velvet birds in the Valley of Lead, where the Best pencils are made.

                                                                                               

E.M.

Of Blintzes, Lox And Poetic Expression

            “The muses on the Lower East Side must have been hungry to inspire such an ode. 

            It is taped to a milk machine at the B&H Dairy Restaurant at 127 Second Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth Streets.  The manager, Raul Morales, promises to keep it there ‘for quite a while.’

            Two patrons, Jonathan Robbins and Peter Lamborn Wilson, handed the poem to Mr. Morales one day after lunch.

Blessings on your counter tops,

Bruchas on your pans and pots,

B&H, the Dairy princes,

Lords of sour cream and blintzes!

Young and fresh or old and gnarly,

All must slurp your mushroom barley;

Even wealthy uptown fogeys

Grab a cab for your pirogies!

If we had a dozen wishes

Never could we wish a dish as

Good as your gefilte fish is!

Though your premises be narrow

You have stuffed us to the marrow;

Still, we cannot leave your table

Till we wheedle or finagle

One more lox or one more bagel!

                                                Susan Heller Anderson

                                                David W. Dunlap

                                                The NY Times: April 8, 1985

Haiku

“One of the most celebrated haiku by the poet Basho, Japan’s Wordsworth and Shakespeare rolled into one, is: ‘furu ike ya/kawazu tobikomu/mizu no oto.’”  Translated: “’old pond/frogs jumped in/sound of water.’…The beauty in Japanese comes from its allusions; to the season, the setting, and the sound of water conveyed by the onomatopoeic ‘oto’.”

                                                      (I do not recall the source – E.M.)

Chinese Poetry

[At age 102, Mr. Qian is back in school, with many like him.]

         “Mr. Qian manages to walk to the class on his own, and he hears and sees well enough to follow the teacher most of the time.  The first class he took was on health care for the elderly, and he says he found it very useful in looking after his wife, who died a few months ago at the age of 100, and his daughter, who is 81 years old and in fading health.

            A lover of traditional poetry, Mr. Qian scarcely paused when asked for a few lines of his favorite poem.  The room fell silent as he recited from memory this ancient Chinese poem:

                        The clouds are wispy this morning,

                                    the breeze is light.

                        As I pass the pond, I see flowers

                                    and willow trees.

                        The passers-by don’t know the joy

                                    in my heart.

                        I’m like a kid at play.

                                                                                    The NY Times:            December 6, 1990           

Papusa

[One of the most tragic poets of the Twentieth Century, Papusa was a Polish Gypsy and an exceptionally great poet who suffered because of her writing.]

                        No one understand me,

                        Only the forest and the river.

                        That of which I speak

                        Has all, all passed away,

                        Everything has gone with it –

                        And those years of youth.

******************************

For a further understanding of humanity, please read Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan.

Following is a short example of The NY Times reports on events:

First Example – On November 19, 1986 (p. A4), The NY Times reported

“’The camel is an extremely smart animal,’ said Dr. D.P. Singh,

a livestock official.  “He can easily recognize his master and his environ-

ment.  He knows how to perform and please his master.  But if you beat

him, he will take revenge, even if he has to wait for a year to do it.’”

Second Example – On February 3, 1988 (p. B3), The NY Times reported in an AP news item titled “Park Fined in Camel Attack”

“JACKSON, N.J., Feb 2 (AP) – The Federal Occupational Safety and

Health Administration has cited the Six Flags Great Adventure Amusement

Park for two safety violations in a camel attack on a worker last July 4,

officials said.  The camel knocked down the employee, Susan Wright, 32

years old, of New Egypt in Ocean County, and sat on her.  Each violation

carries a $1000. fine.”

Dear Reader, please feel free to connect the dots!

New Statesman: Will We Regret Pushing Christians Out of Public Life?

http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/01/new-intolerance-will-we-regret-pushing-christians-out-public-life

Cristina Odone writes:

Without a change, the work that faith groups have carried out for millennia – charities, hospitals, schools, orphanages – will disappear. Communities will no longer be able to rely on the selfless devotion of evangelists and missionaries who happily shoulder the burden of looking after the unwanted, the aged, the poor. Feeling stigmatised and persecuted by the authorities and the establishment, Christians, Muslims and Jews may well become entrenched in the more fundamental shores of their faith.

Equality is already becoming the one civic virtue universally endorsed; equality legislation, the overriding principle of law. In this new scenario, yesterday’s victims are today’s victors. Gays and women, among other scapegoats from the past, now triumph over their former persecutors. But they have learned no lesson from their plight. As they promote a one-sided tolerance, they act as if their rights now include this: to have no one disagree with them.

This is not the sign of a healthy society. Ordinary citizens should not live in fear of saying or doing “the wrong thing”. Diversity means respecting conscientious objections and making reasonable accommodation to let subcultures survive. Erasing God from the public square, and turning religion into a secret activity between two consenting adults in the privacy of their home, leads to what the poet Seamus Heaney calls the hollowing-out of culture. A no-God area can only sustain a fragile and brittle civilisation, a setting worthy of a broken people.

Anti-Israel academic boycotters demand Freedom From Criticism

Anti-Israel academic boycotters demand Freedom From Criticism

Pamela Geller on Israel-Hating Jews in the Los Angeles Times

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2014/01/pamela-geller-jerusalem-post-jews-for-jihad.html# 

Read my column here in today's Jerusalem Post on the execrable Carolyn Karcher, who maliciously flaunts her Jewish birth in a LA Times article to provide cover for her unbridled anti-semitism and vicious hatred of Israel. Truth be told, had she not identified herself as a Jew (which she does almost immediately), the unsuspecting reader might think her a member of a neo-Nazi or jihadi group.

You'll notice that I never mention Karcher's name in the piece. This was at the request of editors who were worried about legal troubles. I understand that, although everything I say in this piece is true and accurate. But it is interesting that Karcher can feel free to libel Israel, but Israel's defenders have to be extra careful, in today's political climate, when responding to such libels.

Happy New Year!

All the best to all our readers in 2014!

Penny-A-Page Press Announces Acquisition for 2014 Publication

Brushstroke: A Novel by Alice Goldfarb Marquis--coming in 2014 from Penny-A-Page Press…

Merry Christmas!

...And a Happy New Year!

Mark Horowitz: A Harvard Professor's Fraudulent History of Hollywood

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/156539/jewish-hollywood-collaboration

It sounds like another cracked, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory dredged up from some Truther website, but it’s the thesis of a recent book from Harvard University Press, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler, written by a freshly minted young Berkeley Ph.D., now Harvard Junior Fellow, Ben Urwand, and supported by documents culled from German archives, pages of supplemental notes, and back-cover bona fides from respectable historians like Richard Evans, who also reviewed the manuscript for the Harvard Press. “It is time to remove the layers that have hidden the collaboration for so long,” the author writes in his prologue, “and to reveal the historical connection between the most important individual of the twentieth century and the movie capital of the world.”

The Collaboration, however, reveals nothing of the sort. The book’s astounding claims are not only flatly contradicted by more credible accounts the author inexplicably ignores, but his thesis is undercut by evidence, old and new, he himself provides. The author misunderstands classic films, not to mention the social and political history of the period. One can’t help wondering why the Harvard Society of Fellows thought this book worthy of support and what Harvard University Press intended by publishing it.

More on this topic here, from Alicia Mayer: http://hollywoodessays.com/2013/12/18/face-to-face-with-ben-urwand-the-question-i-asked-and-his-reply/ 

Still more here, from Clare Spark:

http://clarespark.com/2013/12/07/ben-hecht-v-ben-urwand-the-un-jewish-left-and-assimilated-jews/

Alan Luxenberg Outs American Studies Association Boycott Leadership

 http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/12/20/hypocrisy-thy-name-is-asa/

The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter.  To show that irony, and the deeper problem it illustrates, you need to know that a couple of weeks before the ASA vote, the ASA’s 20-member National Council, which administers the ASA and is elected by the ASA membership, pre-voted in favor of the Israel boycott—and did so unanimously.

Can you imagine twenty serious scholars in any discipline voting unanimously on any controversial issue? I can’t, so I thought it worthwhile to examine the composition of the ASA’s National Council and to peruse its members’ academic profiles, as described on the webpages of their home institutions. This simple exercise reveals a stunning lack of diversity of intellectual interests and perspectives in a sector of American society, the university, that explicitly places a very high premium on “diversity.” The apparent obsession with gender, gay and race studies (or of U.S. imperialism) among the members of ASA’s National Council seems to come at the expense of scholarship on just about everything else.

You don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself or, if you like, scan through the abridged academic profiles below of 18 of the 20 members of ASA’s National Council. All the information is drawn from the faculty profiles as presented on university webpages; none of the language is mine.

Ann Coulter - December 18, 2013 - MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS

Ann Coulter - December 18, 2013 - MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS

Michael Oren: US Congress Could End Israel Boycott

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/will-congress-stand-up-for-academic-freedom-101379_full.html

But merely protesting this abhorrent decision will not succeed in reversing it or discouraging other similarly bigoted organizations from following suit. What’s needed is a way to fight back, and Congress can do it.

A successful precedent for that fight already exists in the defeat of the Arab economic boycott of Israel. That embargo began in 1945, before Israel's creation, when the Arab League voted to ban "Jewish products." Over the next 30 years, this boycott damaged Israel's economy—until America stood up.

In 1977, Congress passed a series of laws making it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with any boycott of Israel and imposing stiff penalties on those that did. The boycott, Congress concluded, was not only racist against Israelis but all Jews. In signing the legislation, President Jimmy Carter, though a frequent critic of Israel, pledged to “end the divisive effects on American life of foreign boycotts aimed at Jewish members of our society.” Subsequent bills further underscored America's commitment to safeguard Israel from prejudicial bans.

Predictably, the Arab League dismissed these laws as a "hysterical campaign" imposed on the United States by "world Zionism." But when confronted with American steadfastness, the boycott began to unravel. Companies such as Pepsi, Toyota and Xerox, which had formally complied with the blacklisting, began doing business with Israel. By 1994, six Gulf Arab states announced that they were backing off the embargo, and the following year, Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders pledged “all efforts to end the boycott of Israel.”

A similar legislative response could prove effective in quashing the movement to boycott Israel academically. Laws could be passed withholding federal or state funding from any academic program that knowingly blacklisted Israeli scholars or institutions or cooperated with associations that did. While an organization like ASA might prefer punishing Israel to receiving government funds, other academic bodies—including universities—most likely will not. At the very least, lawmakers on the local and national level can go on record expressing their unequivocal opposition to such boycotts.

Opponents of this approach will inevitably claim that it stifles academic freedom and open debate. The contrary is true. Legislation voiding prejudicial boycotts preserves the scholarly interaction essential for academic freedom. Open debate about Israel's—or any other country's—policies must continue unimpeded. What must not be allowed to continue is the isolation of one member of the international community on the basis of bigotry cloaked in academic righteousness.

As Israel’s ambassador to the United States and as an historian who believes in free academic exchange, I often spoke before college audiences and welcomed even those questions critical of Israel. But at the University of California at Irvine in February 2010, protesters tried to disrupt my talk and deprive all those present—students and faculty—of the right to discourse. No other visiting lecturer was singled out, only the Israeli. But 11 of those demonstrators were arrested, tried and found guilty of disrupting free speech. Academic boycotts of Israel aim at the same objective and they, too, can be legally stopped.

If the ASA vote were merely misguided, it might be overlooked. Unfortunately, history teaches us that even small acts of prejudice can multiply and become commonplace. But just as it stood up for American values in 1970s, so, too, today Congress can combat intolerance. By acting decisively now, legislators can assure that high education in American preserves its highest standards.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/will-congress-stand-up-for-academic-freedom-101379.html#ixzz2o3eoHNcB

Pam Geller on ASA's Israel Boycott

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/12/pamela-geller-the-jerusalem-post-.html

Read my column today in The Jerusalem Post.
Just as the sniveling American Jewish diaspora failed the Jews of Europe, we again witness these swashbucking cowards failing the Jews of the 21st century.
The above 3/4-page ad appeared in the New York Times in 1943. The ad was placed by the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews (CJA), a pressure group founded by Peter Bergson, Broadway impresario Billy Rose, and Ben Hecht, among others, and was in response to an offer that had been made to the Allies by upper-echelon members of the Romanian government to assist in the transfer of some 70,000 Jews from their fascist state to Palestine or elsewhere.
CJA was denounced by mainstream Jewish organizations as alarmist, unethical, and overly militant.Much the way my work, in particular my savage ads, were denounced by American Jewish leaders. Inaction, submission and cowardice. History repeats itself.

... Israel has not violated international law or UN resolutions, and if these so-called academics had even a rudimentary knowledge of history -- the San Remo resolution, Balfour, the White Paper, and Islamic Jew-hatred -- they would apologize and retreat with their heads hung in shame. The ASA ought to issue a resolution that Islamic anti-Semitism is a violation of human rights, and that calls for a Jew-free “Palestine” are a human rights violation, and the repeated “Palestinian” calls for the destruction of Israel are a monstrous human rights violation.

This boycott should also be a grim wake-up call for those swashbuckling Jewish philanthropists who give over their wealth to colleges and universities -- families like Tisch, Stern, Steinhard, Silver, Kimmel, Wasserman, Levy. What is their legacy? They have built the structures and the machinery that are serving the agenda of the annihilationists and Goebbels-inspired hate propaganda...

Camille Paglia: It's a Man's World

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

Read more: It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/12/16/its-a-mans-world-and-it-always-will-be/#ixzz2nvsFmyfK

ASA Israel Boycott May Violate Federal and State Laws...

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/schooling-the-asa-on-boycotting-israel/

Last week, the American Studies Association’s (ASA) national council, unanimously passed a resolution calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The ASA, which bills itself as the “oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history,” then took the unusual step of asking its reportedly 5,000 members to cast their own votes on upholding the anti-Israel policy. While the deadline to reject the resolution runs out today, Sunday, December 15, the ASA scholars, which fancy themselves as the leading authorities on all things American, seem to have overlooked one small matter – a boycott resolution of this nature violates international, federal and state law in the United States. They leave the ASA and its membership open to both civil and criminal liability.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas Opposes Israel Boycott

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4095/abbas-bds

It is ironic that while Abbas is saying no to a boycott of Israel, the American Studies Association, an association of U.S. professors with almost 5,000 members, voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli colleagues and universities.

The U.S. professors obviously do not care about what the Palestinian Authority president has to say about the boycott of Israel. The professors, like BDS supporters, apparently believe that Abbas is a "traitor" because he is conducting peace talks with Israel.

Abbas's attack on the BDS movement is a serious embarrassment for the anti-Israel activists, many of whom are not Palestinians.

The statements have enraged BDS activists worldwide, with some calling into question Abbas's right to speak on behalf of the Palestinians.

Prominent Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab noted that Abbas's statement in Johannesburg "naturally has angered many Palestinian and international supporters of the BDS movement."

Kuttab wrote that Abbas's statement "reflects the absence of any clear strategy from the Palestinian political leadership except for negotiations. It is unclear whether the reason behind the Palestinian leader's public attack at the BDS movement is a result of trying to protect the Palestinian elite or not wanting to anger the Israelis and their US allies."

Abbas did, however, call on people around the world to boycott products of settlements. "No, we do not support the boycott of Israel," Abbas said. "But we ask everyone to boycott the products of settlements because the settlements are in our territories. It is illegal."

Penn State Harrisburg to drop American Studies Assoc membership after Israel boycott

Penn State Harrisburg to drop American Studies Assoc membership after Israel boycott

From the comments section:

Like any parasite, the far left can only be controlled by cutting off its source of feeding. Get federal money out of higher education, and the political nonsense theater the left has been putting on the last 30 years or so will no longer seem so amusing when institutions have to fund it themselves.

The DiploMad 2.0: Joy to the World.

The DiploMad 2.0: The War on Joy: This post started off as a little discourse on the Christmas season and the sort of politically correct nonsense we see emerge at this time....

Wall Street Journal Shills For Boston Marthon Bombers

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304477704579254482254699674

Reporter Alan Cullison is either a fool or a knave, and his Wall Street Journal editors have no shame, to publish today's illogical, dishonest, contradictory account of his personal support for a Chechen terrorist family:

An insult to the dead.

Cullison declares: "I expected to write about Russia's Islamist insurgency in the future and I thought some Chechen expatriates might help me..." 

In other words, Cullison admits he was cultivating the Tsarnaevs because they were Chechens familiar with the Islamist insurgency, whom the Russians correctly called terrorists.

Rather than begging forgiveness of the people of Boston for befriending killers, he makes a cowardly attempt to pardon himself with an obvious lie that fails the red-face test.

"A decade ago, there was nothing about the Tsarnaevs to suggest any involvement in Islamist extremism..."

Except for the fact that Cullison specifically said he was developing the Tsarnaevs as sources on "Russia's Islamist insurgency."

Cullinson's pathetic screed is a shameful confession of the Wall Street Journal's immoral promotion of Islamist terror--in Chechnya and Boston alike.

UPDATE: More here: http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/boston-bomber-family-maybe-we-shouldnt-have-come-to-america/

Humberto Fontnova on Obama & Castro

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-obama-castro-handshake-a-confirmation/