Thursday, February 20, 2014

DOWNTON ABBEY DIARY: The Mad Memoirs of Rebecca Eaton--A Review by Laurence Jarvik


MAKING MASTERPIECE: 25 YEARS BEHIND THE SCENES AT MASTERPIECE THEATRE AND MYSTERY! ON PBS, Rebecca Eaton (2013), Preface by Kenneth Branagh, NY: Viking, 285 pp., $29.95

Masterpiece Theatre premiered on American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Sunday, January 10, 1971, some 42 years before Rebecca Eaton's Making Masterpiece was published. It is still on the air. That is a very long run indeed for an American television series, especially a dramatic anthology. For purposes of comparison with other American shows, consider that Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone produced new episodes for approximately ten years; Studio One, also ten years; Playhouse 90, four years; GE Theatre, nine years; Omnibus, nine years; PBS’s American Playhouse, 11 years; and NET Playhouse, eight years. Only Hallmark Hall of Fame has had a longer shelf life as a dramatic anthology—yet although it premiered in 1951 and still produces new programming for American television, more recently episodes have appeared only from time-to-time as occasional specials, rather than as series. Thus, longevity alone makes Masterpiece (as it is now called) a unique television institution in the United States. There is quite simply nothing else like it being broadcast over American airwaves.

Executive producer Rebecca Eaton attempts to explain her program’s remarkable run in a new book, Making Masterpiece: 25 Years Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! (2013) Interestingly, Eaton combines autobiographical details such as medical and psychological problems, marriage and divorce, the tensions of working motherhood, her relationship with her parents, and own education alongside a discussion of business and artistic developments related to television classics such as Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, and mysteries including Prime Suspect, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, and Sherlock Holmes, among others. Thus, Making Masterpiece is valuable at once as memoir, history of television, and corporate saga.

Eaton is at times refreshingly frank. She admits that when she became executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre, “I wasn’t a regular Masterpiece viewer—I wasn’t even a Masterpiece fan, really.”  But, apparently that did not matter. As Eaton’s book explains, the reason is fairly simple.  In the beginning, key decisions were made by the sponsor, Mobil Corporation, in conjunction with British television producers. So, WGBH was essentially koshering a commercial series for a non-commercial television network. Thus, placement of the Boston station’s call letters served as a secular hechsher for shows which otherwise would have been banned under PBS guidelines.

The book definitively documents the crucial role of the Mobil Corporation as original sponsor for Masterpiece Theatre. Her account of working with Russell Baker, Alistair Cooke’s successor is intriguing. Unlike Cooke, a veteran television performer and host of Omnibus, Baker was uncomfortable in front of cameras. He fidgeted, and his hands waved uncontrollably at times—so much so, that he took to literally sitting on them while on air. In addition, Baker had to obtain a waiver from his then-employer, The New York Times, for his work on the Mobil-sponsored PBS show violated the newspaper’s existing ethics guidelines.  Apparently, the Times wasn’t worried about conflict-of-interest charges. Baker got approval to host the series, which he introduced for over a decade. Apparently, some ethics guidelines are more binding than others…

Likewise, Eaton’s book is noteworthy for its documentation of the series’ almost complete collapse and fragmentation after the withdrawal of Mobil’s sponsorship—which eventually led up to “rebranding” the series in 2008; split into Masterpiece Classic, Mystery and Contemporary. Eaton’s account of focus groups, corporate consultants, and bickering with a Hallmark Hall of Fame producer over American-themed (as opposed to British) literary adaptations makes for what might have been a Bretts-like behind-the-scenes comedy of the absurd.

After Exxon-Mobil pulled their $10 million annual sponsorship, ratings plunged, the series began a hegira to different days, different times, different formats, and different hosts--and clearly lost its way. De facto, it was no longer a unified television series, just a time slot with a venerable title.  Then, almost uncannily, Eaton reprised PBS’s 1970s rejection of ITV’s original Upstairs, Downstairs (glossed over in her account) with her own refusal to buy ITV’s Downton Abbey, in favor of the BBC’s more pedestrian sequel to Upstairs, Downstairs (which nevertheless achieved a respectable 6.5 rating on PBS, prior to BBC’s cancellation). Ironically, although Downton had been Eaton’s and PBS’s second choice, it proved to be a PBS audience favorite, and garnered the highest Nielsen rating for the series--a reported 8.1. Once more, a British commercial production had become the jewel in the crown of American public broadcasting.

That Downton was written by a Tory aristocrat (Grantham was Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary seat), while Upstairs, Downstairs had been penned by working-class Labour supporters, somehow added to the irony. Downton was Upstairs, Downstairs on steroids. It was bigger, badder, soapier, and more outrageous than the original. In a word: camp. Almost a self-parody. Too big too fail; it was the best Masterpiece Theatre could do to attempt to recover its original formula for success as a show window for British drama in the United States. Needless to say, Up, Down Anglomania once again worked its charms on the PBS audience.

Eaton’s account records the phenomenal success of Downton Abbey, the double nostalgia of which (for Britain’s aristocratic past and the old-fashioned programs of the original Mobil Masterpiece Theater) has provided the secret formula needed to attract two new sponsors: Viking River Cruises (Eaton christened the Viking Long ship Freya in the port of Amsterdam on March 12, 2012) and Ralph Lauren.

Surprisingly to this reviewer, Eaton plainly calls Masterpiece’s new underwriters “sponsors.” Although the term had been one which dare not speak its name when this author wrote about PBS some twenty years ago, officially nonexistent, in her memoir Eaton appears to be perfectly comfortable with Viking River Cruises and Ralph Lauren’s corporate support, and expresses her gratitude without the snarkiness once heard from PBS executives. But if sponsorship is indeed a net positive for the series, then what is the rationale for non-commercial claims by the PBS network? If it is a sponsor-supported corporation; and if that sponsorship was attracted by quality programming such as Downton Abbey, then logic would dictate the conclusion that corporate sponsorship is not opposed to quality—rather, the opposite: that corporate sponsors might indeed wish to be associated with quality television.

In addition to limning a corporate dimension, Eaton’s confessional illuminates the closed shop of American public broadcasting as a manifestly elitist institution redolent of unearned privilege. Her peek behind the PBS station curtain is fascinating to an outsider as a glimpse of an insular institution as formidably insulated from the hoi polloi as the mythical Downton Abbey. Not surprisingly, the author early on declares her blue-blood New England bona fides, complete with Maine family retreat. Eaton’s father, Paul Eaton, was MIT-educated dean of English at the California Institute of Technology. Her mother, Katherine Emery, was a Southern Belle from Alabama, who became a Broadway actress in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, then a Hollywood star at RKO. Eaton majored in English at elite Vassar College, in 1969 a “seven sister” for the education of privileged females; afterwards worked at the BBC in an exclusive “Anglo-American swap deal” with Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall during the “swinging sixties.” No wallflower, Eaton writes of buying hashish in Piccadilly Circus (but claims it was a bag of dirt), and of the influence of Mary Quant, Twiggy, and “my new friends from the British ‘upper class,’ country houses and all.” Her favorite television program, Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilization (curiously, Eaton misspells his surname as Clarke). Of British country weekends, she says, “As I recall, I was pretty much drunk the whole time.” Yet, she says she became estranged from her aristocratic companions. Like a Henry James heroine, Eaton claims she “felt that I was in the wrong place. I loved my own country. In Britain, I went from being antiwar and anti-U.S. government to realizing how deep my American roots actually were.” Well, let us say, from the account it appears that New England roots may not spread far beyond Boston.

Eaton says she cried on her BOAC flight back to the USA in 1970 (not usually the reaction of one happy to return home). Class privilege and sexism allowed Eaton to quickly obtain a job at WGBH’s National Public Radio station, due to “my Vassar degree, my BBC credentials, and my miniskirt…” Like many American children of privilege, she could afford to work without pay at first (the BBC had paid her $35/week). She was eventually hired for a “public access” television show called Catch-44, produced by Henry Becton (later to head WGBH), and to become a documentary producer.

In 1985, aged 37, Eaton married an artist named Paul Cooper, in a church in Kennebunkport, Maine—home of Presidents Bush, among other American Brahmins. Since 1984, she’d been on a leave of absence from WGBH, co-producing an independent feature film for American Playhouse directed by Jan Egelson (probably The Little Sister (1986), which appears in her IMDB listing, although the title is not mentioned in the book). Becton asked her to read scripts for Joan Wilson, the station’s Masterpiece Theatre producer at the time, who was dying of cancer. “He’d been considering me for the job of executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre in the event of her death.”

And that is how PBS stations worked then and now. It didn’t matter that Eaton had a very slim track record in drama, for she had the right breeding, the right bloodlines, the right schools, the right social formation, to do a PBS job—which, in 1985, was to serve as a glorified go-fer to the Mobil Corporation, by her account. That is the reason Eaton is able to write, without apparent embarrassment, that when offered the Masterpiece job, “I was pretty sure I didn’t want it.” 

That is also why Eaton is free to state that she had “disdain” for Masterpiece. She apparently felt superior to proles in commercial television, as her condescending description implies. That is why Eaton declares taking the helm of the most prestigious program on American television at that time  “would mean becoming an administrator, a manager of other people’s work, rather than a ‘creative’ person who actually made programs.”  For Eaton knew, and everyone at PBS knew, that in 1985, Mobil made Masterpiece Theatre programs with its British partners. WGBH was just a delivery service. She didn’t want the job, she says, and I believe her. Luckily, her then-husband pressured her to take the position. When Eaton applied to Henry Becton, she says that she had been the only person on the station’s shortlist who read The Mill on the Floss.  What does that say about the educational level at an American PBS station in 1985? Not much.

Eaton’s remarkable disdain continues to be expressed in her description of meeting Frank Marshall, a former Xerox speechwriter turned public relations consultant, who owned the trademark Masterpiece Theatre at one point (he later turned it over to Mobil, which eventually turned it over to WGBH). She slams Marshall as a “consigliere” (a Mafia term from The Godfather) to Mobil vice-president Herb Schmertz; describes his Vermont farmhouse as “in the middle of nowhere;” goes into detail about how awful she felt to be considered for the Masterpiece job, and links it to her pregnancy. Now, why would Eaton need to visit the middle of nowhere to see a corporate consultant—unless the consultant had approval rights for personnel hires?  Eaton’s very story establishes that Mobil, as sponsor, was running the show for Masterpiece Theatre at WGBH as late as 1985—not Henry Becton, not WGBH, and not PBS. Mobil had right of approval on personnel.

Which is why Eaton says that she didn’t want the job of executive producer in the first place—working for public broadcasting was, among women of a certain class in America in 1985, “U,” in Nancy Mitford’s terminology. At WGBH, PBS productions meant documentaries like “Frontline” (although a number of those episodes reworked British material). PBS was classy because it was “non-commercial.” Indeed, it was ostensibly above commerce. Such was the legacy of Puritanism in Boston and at PBS. Indeed, the Boston PBS station’s call letters stand for “God Bless Harvard,” a Puritan version of the Tetragrammaton. One could not serve PBS and Mobil, in good conscience; for PBS was doing God’s work, while Mobil was doing Mammon’s. 

Yet Eaton's story of bureaucratic and personal drift and disarray at Masterpiece Theater after Exxon Mobil discontinued funding in 1994, in what might be called its disassociated state, evidences that Mobil's corporate sponsorship made possible, and Viking Cruises and Ralph Lauren may continue to insure, that Masterpiece Theatre remains a Masterpiece of American television. 

Monday, February 17, 2014

Pam Geller On The Pussies Behind Pussy Riot

I have a real challenge for these brave femmes: Stage a protest in a mosque. Protest clitoridectomies, honor killings, child marriage, forced marriage, women as and chattel. Then let’s see how many of their new friends they have at the end of the day. If Pussy Riot protested inside, say, the Blue Mosque, singing songs calling on Muhammad’s six-year-old wife Aisha to remove President Vladimir Putin from office, would the world be petting and fĂȘting the felines?
They would have been destroyed, smeared, banned. But they protested in a cathedral, so they are worshiped. That was enough to make them become overnight the darlings of the West.

Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/02/pussy-riot-fever-infects-u-s/#CDsymKqogZ16MXrv.99


Monday, February 03, 2014

Mark Steyn on Barry Rubin

From SteynOnline:
Barry Rubin, a great strategic thinker and cartographer of the emerging post-American world, died today in Tel Aviv. I read him regularly and cited him in After America re the collectively insane urge of almost everyone Nidal Hasan encountered as he wafted upwards through the US Army to look the other way and not see what was staring them in the face:
As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in US history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave it to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors - some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then Captain Hasan was, in fact, "psychotic", the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried "how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents".
I remember when I read Rubin's line about the PowerPoint presentation. Many of us had been groping in the same direction, but he was the one who came up with the perfect, piercing image for the madness that was going on. He did that a lot, right up to the end. Rest in peace.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

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.)

Sunday, January 19, 2014

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.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

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.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year!

All the best to all our readers in 2014!

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Saturday, December 21, 2013

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


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

Friday, December 20, 2013

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

Thursday, December 19, 2013

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 Bergson adagain 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

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

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.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

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....

Saturday, December 14, 2013

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.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Humberto Fontnova on Obama & Castro

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

Monday, December 09, 2013

Seymour Hersh: Obama Lied About Syrian Poison Gas

sa://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

The White House’s misrepresentation of what it knew about the attack, and when, was matched by its readiness to ignore intelligence that could undermine the narrative. That information concerned al-Nusra, the Islamist rebel group designated by the US and the UN as a terrorist organisation. Al-Nusra is known to have carried out scores of suicide bombings against Christians and other non-Sunni Muslim sects inside Syria, and to have attacked its nominal ally in the civil war, the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA). Its stated goal is to overthrow the Assad regime and establish sharia law. (On 25 September al-Nusra joined several other Islamist rebel groups in repudiating the FSA and another secular faction, the Syrian National Coalition.)
The flurry of American interest in al-Nusra and sarin stemmed from a series of small-scale chemical weapons attacks in March and April; at the time, the Syrian government and the rebels each insisted the other was responsible. The UN eventually concluded that four chemical attacks had been carried out, but did not assign responsibility. A White House official told the press in late April that the intelligence community had assessed ‘with varying degrees of confidence’ that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks. Assad had crossed Obama’s ‘red line’. The April assessment made headlines, but some significant caveats were lost in translation. The unnamed official conducting the briefing acknowledged that intelligence community assessments ‘are not alone sufficient’. ‘We want,’ he said, ‘to investigate above and beyond those intelligence assessments to gather facts so that we can establish a credible and corroborated set of information that can then inform our decision-making.’ In other words, the White House had no direct evidence of Syrian army or government involvement, a fact that was only occasionally noted in the press coverage. Obama’s tough talk played well with the public and Congress, who view Assad as a ruthless murderer.
Two months later, a White House statement announced a change in the assessment of Syrian culpability and declared that the intelligence community now had ‘high confidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for as many as 150 deaths from attacks with sarin. More headlines were generated and the press was told that Obama, in response to the new intelligence, had ordered an increase in non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. But once again there were significant caveats. The new intelligence included a report that Syrian officials had planned and executed the attacks. No specifics were provided, nor were those who provided the reports identified. The White House statement said that laboratory analysis had confirmed the use of sarin, but also that a positive finding of the nerve agent ‘does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination’. The White House further declared: ‘We have no reliable corroborated reporting to indicate that the opposition in Syria has acquired or used chemical weapons.’ The statement contradicted evidence that at the time was streaming into US intelligence agencies.
Already by late May, the senior intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood the science of producing sarin. At the time, al-Nusra was operating in areas close to Damascus, including Eastern Ghouta. An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.
On 20 June a four-page top secret cable summarising what had been learned about al-Nusra’s nerve gas capabilities was forwarded to David R. Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. ‘What Shedd was briefed on was extensive and comprehensive,’ the consultant said. ‘It was not a bunch of “we believes”.’ He told me that the cable made no assessment as to whether the rebels or the Syrian army had initiated the attacks in March and April, but it did confirm previous reports that al-Nusra had the ability to acquire and use sarin. A sample of the sarin that had been used was also recovered – with the help of an Israeli agent – but, according to the consultant, no further reporting about the sample showed up in cable traffic.
Independently of these assessments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assuming that US troops might be ordered into Syria to seize the government’s stockpile of chemical agents, called for an all-source analysis of the potential threat. ‘The Op Order provides the basis of execution of a military mission, if so ordered,’ the former senior intelligence official explained. ‘This includes the possible need to send American soldiers to a Syrian chemical site to defend it against rebel seizure. If the jihadist rebels were going to overrun the site, the assumption is that Assad would not fight us because we were protecting the chemical from the rebels. All Op Orders contain an intelligence threat component. We had technical analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, weapons people, and I & W [indications and warnings] people working on the problem … They concluded that the rebel forces were capable of attacking an American force with sarin because they were able to produce the lethal gas. The examination relied on signals and human intelligence, as well as the expressed intention and technical capability of the rebels.’

The Perfect Christmas Gift: David O. Strickland's "The FIrst Man Off The Plane"

The Guardian: How Margaret Thatcher Freed Nelson Mandela



was briefed off-the-record by her foreign affairs adviser on several occasions, but when he told me that she had called on the then president, PW Botha, to release Nelson Mandela, I found it difficult to believe. I did not report it as I could not source it. But it was true. In a letter to Botha in October 1985 she wrote: "I continue to believe, as I have said to you before, that the release of Nelson Mandela would have more impact than almost any single action you could undertake."
When Botha stepped down after a stroke in 1989, he was replaced by FW de Klerk, who met Thatcher at Downing Street in June. I was among a group of journalists waiting outside No 10 with the promise that he would give a press conference straight after. We watched him leave then ran up Whitehall to the South African embassy where he had promised to speak. He did not turn up. We were told later that he had been too shocked by Thatcher's vehemence.
Mandela was released on 11 February 1990 (I was at the gates of the jail but to my eternal chagrin I failed to spot him). That evening he made a speech from the balcony of the town hall in Cape Town which was televised, live, world wide. The speech was written by the hard-liners and communists in the ANC and was full of Marxist jargon. "Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960… was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid. The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue." Thatcher was appalled. She picked up the telephone to Robin Renwick, the British ambassador in South Africa, and demanded to know why she had ever bothered to battle for Mandela's release if this was the result.

Sunday, December 08, 2013

Angelo Codevilla on the Senkaku Islands Crisis

When the Prince Flunks Diplomacy 101

The Diplomad: The Legacy of Nelson Mandela

http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2013/12/nelson-mandela.html

As it turns out, I was right and wrong. The ANC was a lost cause; they did not believe in democracy, and had a large element of thuggery in their ranks. Many were terrorists who had received training in Libya, and were out for revenge and blood. Mandela, however, was more complicated than I had thought. He had had his violent phase, but only after trying peaceful opposition to apartheid. Both in and after coming out of prison, he proved an extremely intelligent negotiator and compromiser, reaching understandings with Botha and De Klerk, and turning down the volume of the anti-white message of the ANC. He seemed to have an understanding that whites and other non-blacks were essential for a peaceful and prosperous South Africa. He also, surprise, did not go full Mugabe. He won election--although the vote counting was suspicious--served his term, trying to unite blacks, whites, Asians, and others into accepting the new post-apartheid South Africa. He did not try to drive the whites out, and did not go around confiscating farms and businesses. He did not encourage revenge against whites and sought a reconciliation of the races. A practical politician, he turned a blind eye to the rampant corruption among the ANC, finding it better to let the party members expend their revolutionary fervor making money. At the end of his term, he stepped down. Yes, he stepped down. That is an amazing thing in Africa; he stepped down on completing his term of office. It does not happen much on that continent. He, however, never got over his deep mistrust of the USA, and despite his credentials as a victim of human rights abuse, refused to criticize Qaddafy, never gave up his fervent admiration for Castro--who, ironically, runs a racist regime in Cuba--and remained very anti-Israel.

Was he a great man? I think the answer is yes. He had great flaws, but great courage, drive, and commitment to his cause. He showed that a determined person can make a difference. He also showed that an African president can play by the rules and try to be president for all the people of his country. For that he deserves kudos and respect. He, nevertheless, did not establish a viable democratic political system in South Africa, and proved unable to stop the escalating criminal violence that has turned Johannesburg into one of the world's rape and murder capitals. His successors have proven notably less "great" than Mandela, and ANC corruption has gone into the stratosphere--including by Mandela's gangster ex-wife, Winnie. The white and other middle class flight he wanted to avoid proceeded and has grown. I think the jury remains out on whether South Africa can avoid the fate of Zimbabwe in the medium to long run. If I had to place a bet it would be that South Africa will not avoid that fate. Mandela's time in office, unfortunately, likely will prove a brief glorious moment of "what could have been but was not."

Nelson Mandela, RIP.