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6/6/03 09/03 10/17/03 11/25/02 9/5/02 5/20/02 12/19/01 10/23/01 7/20/01 4/30/01 4/2/01 2/20/01 12/4/00 10/20/00 9/7/00 8/18/00 6/2/00 4/27/00 3/13/00 3/00 Nov. 2, 2007 Dec. 30, 2005 Sept. 9, 2004 My New Writing On Dennis Prager 5/20/02 The Moral Threat Of All Nude Slumber Parties Dennis Prager devoted the third hour of his nationally syndicated radio show to a letter to Ann Landers about all nude slumber parties. Somebody called up Prager's producer and said the letter was a hoax. Prager repeatedly said he did not believe it was a hoax because of the moral deterioration of America and that the letter writer came from Burlingame, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a center of moral decline. Prager said that any woman who would host such a party would lose his trust. But he didn't mention anything about advice columnists and talkshow hosts who got suckered by such a letter would lose his trust. It's hilarious listen to Prager say he didn't believe all the callers who point out the letter is a hoax (though Prager did not take any of their calls on the air while I listened to the show). Prager says he's ready to bet that the letter is authentic. Why? Because if it is a hoax, it is not funny. There's nothing funny or titillating about such a letter about nude slumber parties, it is only morally depraved. Prager was concerned that 15 and 16-year old girls at such nude slumber parties would begin touching each other and experimenting with lesbian sex. DP says: "I had no problem showering with other guys. The issue is not nudity. The issue is spending twelve hours together with no clothing on. It is not possible in the sexually bombarded era in which we live that this prolonged nudity would not lead to same sex experimentation. The concept of modesty is appropriate for same sex, not just opposite sex. The battle for civilization is just against Al Quada." From Newhouse News Service: Relax, parents. Nude slumber parties full of 15-year-old girls are not "all the rage these days," as seen in the Ann Landers column of May 16. Nor were they when the letter first appeared in print in 1995. Landers is the latest of several prominent advisers to receive -- and answer -- the letter from a "Baffled Mom in Burlingame," troubled that her daughter wanted to attend one of the parties. Dear Abby received a very similar letter three weeks ago and didn't bite. "I think it's a hoot. I dismissed it as a young boy's prepubescent fantasy," said Jeanne Phillips, who writes under the pseudonym Abigail Van Buren for the column founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. "If this is a trend, I certainly haven't seen an avalanche of mail about it." A nearly identical letter, signed "P.M., Burlingame, Calif.," appeared in the Ebony Advisor column of Ebony magazine in September 1995. (``Oh, I don't think we'd want to make any comment on that," a spokeswoman for Ebony said with a laugh.) Phillips' mother, the original Dear Abby, received and published the letter from "Perplexed Mom in California" in April 1996. Her answer: "Tell her that you were not raised in an atmosphere that condoned casual nudity and you are uncomfortable with the idea of her attending nude slumber parties. Period." Child psychologist T. Berry Brazelton published it (name and address withheld) in his May 1996 newspaper column, answering, "The nudity sounds pretty stimulating; I don't know why the other mother would encourage that. Maybe all you mothers should get together to discuss it." While nude slumber parties were not and never have been a trend, "Nude Slumber Party" is the name of an adult videotape that promises to show what happens when "the clothes come off and the intimacies begin." "What would really happen," Jeanne Phillips said from her Los Angeles office, "is once the girls stopped giggling they'd get cold and want to put something on." The whole thing sounds suspiciously like an urban legend, said Cylin Busby, author of the upcoming book, "Pajama Party Uncovered." Busby recalled rumors of nude all-girl slumber parties as early as 1993 -- the same year she wrote a thesis on the role of women in urban legends. Busby also was senior editor of the former Teen magazine. "Of all the letters we got, and we'd get hundreds a week, I never saw one from any girl that had been invited to a nude slumber party and was wondering how to respond," she said. Neither was child psychiatrist Elizabeth Berger familiar with nude slumber parties. "No, I've not heard of naked girl parties," she said from her office in Elkins Park, Pa. "It's certainly not inappropriate for girls of 15 in the context of a hot summer day to jump into a lake," she added, but the emphasis there is on the lake, not on the nudity. The subject intrigued Ann Landers. "We received a letter, it seemed legitimate," said Marcy Sugar, Landers' spokeswoman. The columnist "had not heard of anything like it before." In fact, Landers admitted as much in her answer to "Baffled in Burlingame." "I'm as baffled as you are," she wrote, adding that "as long as you trust the mother of these girls to supervise for the duration of the party, I see no harm in it." Coincidentally, Burlingame, Calif., is Jeanne Phillips' "old stomping ground." She graduated from Burlingame High. "And," she added, "I can assure you that nude slumber parties were not the trend back then." Todd writes on the Prager List: As bright as he is, the fact is Dennis Prager is extremely naive on alot of matters. This is just another example. Soggy writes: Actually the naivety is on your part.... Was not the substance of Prager's comments about the moral implications of the behavior not ascertaining fraud and hoaxes? Since virtually anything one can imagine about humans has been done there is little question that the supposed behavior could have or did happen sometime or someplace. Did anything he said actually depend on the exact "story" being true or otherwise? Were his generalizations entirely dependent upon the story or was it merely the stepping stone to a larger picture? The inability to actually deal with the substance of his comments (pro or con) is more your lack than his. Mike writes on the Prager List: If this is all either of you find interesting/provocative in his remarks, then there is no point in my continuing to monitor this list. I'm listening to discuss thought provoking and challenging issues to help me both share my beliefs and clarify them. Perhaps you could start another group. I've got a few suggestions: alt.prager-flaming Dennis is not the only commentator that has been making comments on this issue lately. Also, hoax or not, it is an interesting topic that is not entirely implausible considering our society's current moral direction. Alan writes: I guess that using lies to make ones point does show a certain lack of moral rigor and as that much of what one hears on certain conservative talk radio programs is of similar quality, perhaps it is indicative of a decline - or not. If the letter is a hoax then it isn't an example of moral decline. Peel enough of these things away and there is no case for a moral decline - i.e. DP et al lose their issue. Which they should as there isn't a moral decline. (BTW if I remember my Bay Area geography Burlingame is hardly representative of Bay Area demography, if by Bay Area one means Berkeley/San Francisco.) Your reasoning is a perfect example of what's wrong with ideological commitments; one no longer has to worry about the truth. Today he got a call from a Sacramento listener that the local NPR affiliate was discussing Japanese internment - I checked the schedule and it said they had Lynne Cheney discussing her new book on American patriotism. Another denunciation of NPR on another day involved a Pacifica program - apparently DP doesn't know the difference. There is just too much bad information on talk radio and DP's is no exception. Wisdom involves knowing ones limitations - the broadcasts from Israel were interesting and informative; as a general cultural critic there is much lacking. Luke says: The point is that Prager repeatedly said on air that he did not believe this letter was a hoax. The evidence is overwhelming that the letter is a hoax. With Prager's commitment to truth, one would expect him to apologize and clarify on the air. I have not heard him do this. Does anyone have any doubt that the evidence demands the verdict that the letter was a hoax? On what basis? It points to a deeper issue. I often feel like I am wasting my time listening to Prager because he is not taking issues on their merits and thinking through things, but instead he just slots issues that come up into his predictable thinking. I often walk away after spending three hours listening to his show thinking I've wasted three hours because I've not heard him say one thing that is new. I guess I'm increasingly disappointed in Prager's commitment to truth. I attended a lecture by Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe at UCLA on Sunday about challenges to modern faith. Wolpe is best known for his sermon over a year ago saying that the archaeological and other evidence overwhelmingly says that the Exodus did not take place the way it is described in the Bible. Wolpe listed off half a dozen other challenges to the traditional view that God wrote the Torah/Bible... I was deeply disappointed in Prager's facile dismissal of this evidence, which he has not studied, in his essay on the Exodus controversy... It reminds me of DP's approach to THE BELL CURVE and the role of IQ. IQ happens to be one of the best predictors for a person's success in life...and it so happens that different racial groups have radically different average IQs...but Prager refuses to look at this evidence because he thinks it is obnoxious. 4/30/02 Dennis Prager broadcasts this week from Israel. I've listened every hour but haven't learned much. Prager is not a good interviewer - too ponderous. He feels a great need to share his views, which I've already heard 100 times, with his every guest, which winds up often sounding like Prager preaching to those he's purporting to interview. 4/22/02 Dennis Prager spent the weekend in Chicago with his family. He delivered a couple of lectures. DP's youngest son Aaron loves to wear his hat backwards. DP hates that. When Aaron turned nine years old, DP decreed that he could no longer wear his hat backwards. Being a Prager, Aaron now likes to wear his hat sidewards. In Chicago, a policeman warned him that he could get killed in certain parts of Chicago for wearing his baseball hat the wrong way. And DP loved the policeman's response. DP says stranger can play a powerful role in raising kids. DP knows how much he has influenced the lives of other people's kids. DP says that clothing is of staggering importance. What you wear affects you. Often a child wearing his hat backwards will act differently, just like kids wearing a school uniform will often act differently. DP called former president Jimmy Carter a fool (referring in particular to his Op-Ed piece in Sunday's New York Times). "He wouldn't know the difference between good and evil if it kicked them in the teeth." DP praised this Safire column: Democrats vs Israel William Safire writes in Monday's New York Times: Most of the leaders of the Democratic Party and its liberal media voices distanced themselves from Israel in the midst of its defense against Arafat's war. Their echo-chambered furor caused George W. Bush to waver temporarily, but an outcry of moral dismay from Republicans stiffened his administration's spine. Too partisan a reading? Consider: As the Palestinian murder of Jewish civilians exploded, Democrats blamed Bush for having been "disengaged." This charge of "noninvolvement" had one plain meaning: Bush should have continued the failed policy of Bill Clinton, pressuring Israel's newly elected leader to offer again the dangerous concessions of Camp David and Taba. From Mary McGrory in The Washington Post to Mark Shields on CNN, a falafel curtain has descended across our continent, transmogrifying the Arab aggressor into the victim. ABC-Disney leads that parade, as the BBC vies with Al Jazeera to inflame the European street. Pro-Palestinian journalists gain cover from Israel's dovish Haaretz, but such dissent is a democracy's strength; if a Ramallah paper criticized Arafat, the editor's body would be dragged through the streets as a "collaborator." Eight out of ten American voters who are Jewish have been voting for candidates of a Democratic Party that now only tepidly supports the government overwhelmingly chosen by Israelis. 4/16/02 Dennis noted the good behavior by the 100,000 pro-Israel demonstrators yesterday in Washington D.C.. As opposed to the pro-Palestinian crowd which often takes over buildings. A man drove a truck full of explosives into an ancient Tunisian synagogue, killing 15. A pro-Palestinian group claimed responsibility. Dennis says the new ABC TV show Bachelor is worse than sleazy. The LA Times asked DP to watch it. The Bachelor takes a man, a Harvard graduate... So women know that he can make a lot of money and that he has a brain. In his late 20s, living in San Francisco, he works as a management consultant. Then they had 20 women vie for his attention and love. And these women are really falling in love with him. This is not a farce like the Fox show Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire. [But is produced by the same man - Mike Weiss.] This is compelling. Pathetic. With other women clamoring for him, the bachelor becomes desirable. There is something wrong with people opening their homes to TV cameras like this. Caller: Women are competitive and this man becomes more desirable because so many women are clamoring for him. DP: These women from good decent families are still desperate. The original impetus may have been to get on TV but now these women are giving themselves in a deeper way than sexual. They are more bare than if they were nude. The Bachelor executive producer Mike Fleiss calls in. DP: Don't you think it is humiliating for this women to see this man hugging and kissing other women? Mike: All the women have told me that they would like to do it again. Mike sounded like a typical brash fast talking Sammy Glick Hollywood Jew intent on creating a spectacle and oblivious to moral concerns. DP read this article in full, by Italian leftist Oriana Fallaci: I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swasitka, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem. I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them “martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.” I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as Mussolini’s avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist badge. I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-semitism. That in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be taken back and conferred on the dove with the olive branch in his mouth, that is on Arafat. I find it shameful that the distinguished members of the Committee, a Committee that (it would appear) rewards political color rather than merit, should take this request into consideration and even respond to it. In hell the Nobel Prize honors he who does not receive it. In his third hour, Prager hosted author Rabbi Yaakov and Susan Deyo from Aish HaTorah's Speeddating program. 4/10/02 In his second hour, DP discussed this week's Maureen Dowd column in the NY Times where she wrote about men's egg shell egos. DP says Dowd is a cute writer, but not deep. DP says that men and women have fragile egos, just in different areas. Men need to feel like men and women need to feel like women. DP wondered if Maureen Dowd's attitude to men will make it easier for her to find one? Dowd commented on a 60 Minutes story by Leslie Stahl, a less than wise person. DP: Men need to feel that he has a special role in the life of the family, as a woman needs to feel that. Men usually will get that feeling from being the principle provider. That will allow him to feel that he is the head of the household. Contrary to what Dowd writes, a large number of men, says DP, are aching to be supported by a woman. But those men aren't wanted by these women. They want men who are at least as successful in the outer world. But such men don't want women who will be business partners. They want to come home to be nurtured. Men want feminine women. When women become lawyers or doctors or MBAs, they frequently become less feminine. And feminine does not mean unchallenging. A woman who gets an MBA from Harvard isn't any more challenging to a guy than an average woman. Every women is challenging. "There is not a couple I know where the wives do not regularly challenge their husbands." 4/9/02 DP says Bush's ordering of Israel to pull back will result in one of three possibilies: 1) Real peace in the region. 2) Show that the need for Israel to destroy terrorist facilities is as great as it was for the US in Afghanistan. 3) Mark the decline of the United States as the Lone Ranger, the beacon of world morality. DP thought he might live to see the end of Europe as a Western civilization. 2nd Hour: DP discussed Enron's offer to the women executives of Enron to pose nude. DP discussed Swedish female professional golfer Karen Kotch who won an internet poll about who you would most want to see pose nude. The golfer said she had no interest in doing so. DP said that made her even more attractive. DP: I know why a young unknown woman would want to pose for Playboy - the money, fame, opportunity to meet famous actors. But what about women who have made it. Why would they want to? If a man posed for such pictures, he'd be a laughing stock. People would deride him. It would undoubtedly hurt his career. This women of Enron issue will sell well for Playboy. Why? The women of Enron aren't more attractive than normal women. This reveals the dark side of sex. Men want to get women out of their clothing. This is a power play. We can get any woman to get naked for us. Luke says: This issue, like the Darva Conger issue, will sell well because of the vicarious thrill of seeing a woman humiliate herself. Scariest Time For Jews Since Holocaust Dennis Prager writes on WorldNetDaily.com: This is the scariest time for Jews since the Holocaust. The Jews are being abandoned. Again. From the Jews' perspective, the world can be divided into three groups – those that hate the Jews and want them dead, those that ignore this hatred and aid the haters, and Americans. Because Europe fears its immense Muslim population, because of its own anti-Semitism, because it is leftist, because it is dependent on Arab oil, and because America supports Israel, Europe is the primary support of those who wish another Jewish Holocaust. Europe, which has been a decaying civilization since the end of World War I, has reached a moral nadir – and once again at the Jews' expense. So here we are, just one generation after nearly every Jew in Europe was murdered, and the remnant that remains in the New Jersey-sized Jewish state is threatened with extinction. 4/8/02 DP blasted the news media, particularly LA radio station KFI, for sensationalistic coverage of the sex abuse accusation by a paranoid schizophrenic against Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney. DP wrote an article years ago saying that the rape of a name is a rape. In his second hour, Prager talked to Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. They began by discussing why the Bush administration has asked Israel to halt its attack against the Palestinian Authority. "It was their worst decision in six months," said Krauthammer. DP: "As sure as the sun rises in the East, Israel will withdraw and more Israelis will be slaughtered [by Palestinian terrorists]." Krauthammer said the Bush move was started by a front page New York Times article criticizing Bush for doing nothing about the Middle East conflict, meaning, that Bush hasn't restrained Israel's counter-attack. 4/3/02 Dennis says his support of the Oslo Accords was his biggest mistake of his radio career. DP says the current Israeli offensive into the Palestinian Authority is long overdue. DP says that CNN, ABC News and others essentially take the point of view of the Palestinians. DP praised this George Will column: Israel's policy of isolating Arafat in a room, clustered with a few henchmen around guttering candles, is reasonable because it underscores his dependence on "world opinion," and especially Europe's appeasement reflex, which is still strong 64 years after Munich. But it is unreasonable for Israel to allow electricity into his compound. Enabled to recharge his mobile phone, he continues to use the international media as his megaphone. And when a gaggle of leftist European supporters of terrorists -- described on CNN, which sometimes sounds like the voice of the Palestinian Authority, as "international peace demonstrators" -- walks past Israeli tanks and into the compound, can Jesse Jackson be far behind? Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's once and perhaps future prime minister, can say of Sharon, as Teddy Roosevelt said of his successor, William Howard Taft, that he "means well, but he means well feebly." But 54 years after the founding of Israel, Palestinian "refugee camps" -- cities, actually -- exist because Arab nations have been unwilling to absorb Palestinians and want cities that are hothouses for developing irredentist fanaticism. Sharon reportedly wants to exile Arafat, the chief fomentor of such fanaticism. If so, why the tentativeness? Sharon should ship Arafat to Europe, where there is much official sympathy for him. Arafat would like today's France, where he could place his phone calls by the light of burning synagogues. DP notes the many calls, largely from the left and Europe, for President Bush to get more involved in the Middle East. But the US was immersed in the Arab-Israeli conflict under Clinton and what good did that do? A terrorist state and more deaths. The left repeatedly wants to do things that have failed. 3/26/02 DP says he only found out about National Review's Victor Davis Hansen six months ago but now he considers him one of his ten favorite columnists. DP read from his column on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Why do Middle Easterners become excited and haughty as they gloat to you that Americans are unpopular in their countries, but suddenly grow shocked, silent, and hurt when you politely and calmly explain why the feeling is becoming — and perhaps should be — mutual? Why do so many from the Middle East come here to find freedom, security, and safety — and then criticize the country that they would never leave as they praise the country that they would never return to? Is there a word for profiling or irrationally hating Americans? Americanophobia? Misamericany? Why did we incur only anger from Eastern Europeans and Orthodox Christians for saving the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia from Milosevic, but no praise at all from the Islamic world itself? Is there a difference between Palestinians preferring to kill Israeli civilians rather than soldiers, and Israelis preferring to kill Palestinian fighters rather than civilians? From Dennis Prager's third hour: Why does the mainstream press so rarely mention the sex of the victims of Roman Catholic priests? Because the press is a herd. They think the same, talk the same and vote the same. To mention that the great majority of victims in the Catholic Church scandal are boys is to raise an issue that they don't want raised. We all know that heterosexuals abuse girls. So it is no smear on homosexuals to note that these are probably gay priests. It doesn't mean that homosexuals are all child abusers. But anything that might cast any aspersion on gays is forbidden in the news media, particularly the New York Times. The pro-gay agenda of mainstream press has rendered the gay press unnecessary. Why bother reading The Advocate when you can get gay news and gay advocacy in the NY Times? Luke says: Read Lavender Mob. DP says: These Roman Catholic scandals show why the Boys Scouts don't want to have gay scout leaders. Why would you want scoutmasters who can be sexually attracted to their charges? If you had to leave your boy in the care of an adult, would you rather the adult male be gay or straight? Of course you'd prefer to leave him with a straight. A caller wondered why there were so many more gay priests today than historically. Does a celibate priesthood lead to homosexuality? Prager said that mainstream clergy over the past generation have become more therapeutic and anti-macho than morally prescriptive. And that discourages macho males from joining up, and perhaps encourages other types to join. A caller suggested that homosexual priests were more likely to molest than heterosexual priests. DP said he was agnostic. 3/25/02 Dennis Prager watched the Oscars last night. He was impressed with Sidney Poitier's dignified appearance. Sydney dedicated his talk to the whites who helped him break down the barriers of racism. Unfortunately, the video presented about Poitier only showed blacks. It's racist to ignore the central role played by so many good decent whites. A caller noted that blacks like Sidney Poitier, who come from outside the United States, are more grateful for the opportunities that the US affords. Black actress Halle Berry won for Best Actress and seemed to only thank blacks. As reported by the LA Times: "Oh, my God," Berry said, her mouth agape, almost unable to comprehend the moment as tears streamed down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said in halting gasps, as she clasped the gold statuette. "This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women who stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox, and the nameless, faceless women of color who now stand a chance tonight because the door has been opened. I thank the academy for choosing me to be the vessel ...." Is Hollywood that racist that there has been a block to black actors? Compare Sidney Poitier's dignified talk to Halle Berry's overwrought cry... Halle went on and on, crying, almost out of control, about winning an award for a movie. It was no breakthrough against racism. DP: Here's why I think she cried. Her tears were more personal. She's had a troubled life. She was involved in a hit and run accident. She's had a string of abusive relationships. She wanted the moment to be greater than it was. She thanked her mother, who is white. Interesting that she used "women of color" instead of "black women." Why is a woman of a white mother and a black father a black woman? Why isn't she a white woman? Her black father was an alcoholic who abused her mother. The only winner to say "God bless America," was the English writer of Gosford Park. He thanks Americans for being a generous people. Ironically, the director of Gosford Park was Robert Altman who made the derogatory remarks about America a few weeks ago. Prager says that if he hadn't planned to do a show on the Oscars, he would not have watched its four hour and twenty minute length. Along with Sidney Poitier, it was another lovely moment when director Arthur Hiller received a humanitarian award. He fought against racism, cast the first black as a doctor, helped the handicapped, and helped refuseniks in the former Soviet Union. I wonder if one percent of the audience understood what "refuseniks" were. I wonder why the word "Jew" was not used? Because the word is too passion-filled? Why did Dennis Prager spend his time on something as trivial as the Academy Awards? Because a billion people watched and Hollywood has a huge impact on people's lives. The New York Times wrote 3/10/02: LONDON -- SITTING in a cozy Kensington apartment that is home while she films a new James Bond movie, Halle Berry is so poised and stunning, it's hard to imagine that she ever suffered so much as a scratch in her life. But Ms. Berry is blunt about the punches she has taken, physical and emotional. She was beaten by one boyfriend so badly that she lost 80 percent of her hearing in one ear. Her encounters with racism in Hollywood, though subtler, have been equally painful. "What's hardest for me to swallow," she says, "is when there is a love story, say, with a really high-profile male star and there's no reason I can't play the part. They say, `Oh, we love Halle, we just don't want to go black with this part.' What enrages me is that those are such racist statements, but the people saying them don't think they are. I've had it said right to my face." There was the time, she says, when she was turned down for a role as a park ranger in the John Woo film "Broken Arrow" because a studio executive decreed that there was no such thing as a black park ranger. "I always have to rise above it," she says, reaching for some green grapes on the coffee table. "I can't go off like a raving lunatic even though my heart wants me to. I say, `O.K., take a deep breath,' and I realize that's the insidiousness of racism. People don't even know when they're being racist." 3/20/02 A magazine of the Left, Dissent, publishes a withering critique of the American Left by a man of the Left, Michael Walzer of Harvard. 3/18/02 Dennis Prager rejoiced in attending a convention for pipe makers. For one thing, it was all men. And there are few places left, outside of traditional religion, where only men gather. The importance of hobby has diminished in the age of constant entertainment. It is much healthier to gather with people who devote themselves to pipes than to sit at home and watch television. In his second hour, Dennis Prager discussed the big deal the liberal mainstream news media is making over the release of tapes showing the Reverend Billy Graham and President Richard Nixon making anti-Semitic remarks. DP says remarks in private do not matter as much as public behavior and speech. And President Nixon, by his public actions, such as during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, was supportive of the Jews and the Jewish state. The view that the Israelis and the Palestinians are two tarantulas in a bottle, equally morally tainted, may be the view of the New York Times but it is not the general view of New Yorkers, according to a recent Gallup poll. It may be the view of the LA Times but it is not the general view of Los Angelenos. DP says the New York Times, which ran a big story on this yesterday, wants to use this story as an opportunity to bash evangelical Christians, the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel part of the Christian world. The mainstream liberal press wants to do anything to show the failings of the non-liberal Christian world. While the NY Times covers in detail private comments from 30 years, it ignores the blood libel charges in Saudi Arabia, that Jews slaughter Gentile children for Passover pastries. From Sunday's NY Times: It seemed impossible, when H. R. Haldeman's White House diaries came out in 1994, that the Rev. Billy Graham could once have joined with President Richard M. Nixon in discussing the "total Jewish domination of the media." Could Mr. Graham, the great American evangelist, really have said the nation's problem lies with "satanic Jews," as Mr. Nixon's aide recorded? Mr. Graham's sterling reputation as a healer and bridge-builder was so at odds with Mr. Haldeman's account that Jewish groups paid little attention, especially because he denied the remarks so strongly. "Those are not my words," Mr. Graham said in a public statement in May 1994. "I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms." That was the end of the story, it seemed, until two weeks ago, when the tape of that 1972 conversation in the Oval Office was made public by the National Archives. Three decades after it was recorded, the North Carolina preacher's famous drawl is tinny but unmistakable on the tape, denigrating Jews in terms far stronger than the diary accounts. "They're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff," Mr. Graham said on the tape, after agreeing with Mr. Nixon that left-wing Jews dominate the news media. The Jewish "stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," he continued, suggesting that if Mr. Nixon were re-elected, "then we might be able to do something." Finally, Mr. Graham said that Jews did not know his true feelings about them. "I go and I keep friends with Mr. Rosenthal at The New York Times and people of that sort, you know," he told Mr. Nixon, referring to A. M. Rosenthal, then the newspaper's executive editor. "And all — I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances." ........ A Christian woman phoned DP to say that she's jealous of the Jews close relationship to God. How they're God's Chosen People. And she teaches her kids to love Jews because God loves Jews. DP noted that many liberal Jews are uncomfortable with the notion of Choseness just like many liberal Americans are uncomfortable with the notion that America is somehow specially chosen. 3/12/02 Dennis Prager, one of America's most respected and popular nationally syndicated radio talk-show hosts, begins writing a weekly column for WorldNetDaily today. By exclusive arrangement, Prager's column will appear every Tuesday in WorldNetDaily – before it appears anywhere else on the Internet or in print. 3/11/02 Dennis Prager praised last night's 9/11 CBS documentary by the two French documentary filmmakers who got footage from inside the WTC after the terrorist attack. DP wondered what CBS did not show out of sensitivity to victims families. DP criticized those who went to bat for victims families and asked CBS not to show the documentary, or to sanitize it, to avoid causing the families trauma. DP said that it was narcissism - wanting to deprive America of confronting evil for the sake of their private feelings. Dennis said the CBS program did not shock him (though he will never forget the sound of the bodies smashing down) because he's spent most of his life confronting evil. But many Americans are naive and they need to see such things. Prager blasted the Red Cross over this, as reported by the 3/10/02 Los Angeles Times: A student troupe canceled a Sunday performance at an American Red Cross luncheon after the charity barred it from using the words "God" and "prayer." Seventh- and eighth-graders from the Orange County High School of the Arts had planned to sing a medley of "America the Beautiful," "Prayer of the Children," and "God Bless the U.S.A." Group director Cherilyn Bacon said a Red Cross representative told her the lyrics might offend some of those attending the annual Volunteer Recognition Awards of the Orange County chapter. Another vocal group from the same school was to perform. "We have to be neutral and impartial in all situations," said chapter spokeswoman Rebecca Long. 3/7/02 Dennis began his show with this item from the Drudge Report: A CNN internal memo warns staffers to hold off reporting on a new book which presents a damning portrait of former CNN host and civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. The CNN memo obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT, penned from the network's Chicago bureau, points out how the author of SHAKEDOWN: THE LIFE OF THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON -- may not be trustworthy! "Kenneth Timmerman is a long time writer and investigator touting conservative causes," the CNN memo notes. "He is recently a failed political candidate [ran for US Senate in Maryland] whose own bio points out he studied creative writing at Brown." 3/5/02 DP writes in the Washington Times: Given the anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiments that are held by many Muslims in the West, it is not surprising that there has yet to be a single reported Muslim demonstration in the United States or Europe against Islamic terrorism. Just as it is unsurprising that the leader of the Islamic terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl was British born and educated. The second frightening lesson of the Pearl killing is the degree of evil emanating from parts of the Muslim world. Let's be honest: Islamic terrorist groups and their many supporters are morally indistinguishable from Nazis - they invert good and evil, are sadistic, are imbued with a belief in their superiority over all other groups, and seek to dominate the world. Yet many in the West deny this evil. Some view Muslim terrorists as inevitable products of the poverty of their societies (despite the extraordinary wealth of bin Laden and the affluence of Omar Sheikh); or as an understandable reaction to U.S. sanctions on Iraq and support for Israel (as if containing Saddam Hussein or enabling Israel to fight Islamic terrorism are not moral policies); or as simply one more example of religious fundamentalism, comparable to American Christian fundamentalism. Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis likened Attorney General John Ashcroft, an evangelical Christian, to Osama bin Laden. Perhaps those Americans and Europeans who resist applying the term "evil" to U.S. enemies (whether to the Soviet totalitarians during the Reagan era or to the Muslim totalitarians now) ought to be compelled to view the videotape of Daniel Pearl's throat being cut for the crime of being an American and a Jew. Come to think of it, Muslim school officials should also see the tape. Dennis Prager mentioned this column by Cal Thomas: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ And the Rev. Billy Graham was embarrassed by release of a 30-year-old tape on which he was heard telling President Richard Nixon that Jews had a "stranglehold" on the American media, which needed to be broken because it was ruining the country. "You believe that?" asked Nixon. "Yes, sir," replied Graham. "Oh boy. So do I," said Nixon, adding, "I can't ever say that but I believe it." "No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Graham said in a reassuring tone. Graham also tells the president: "A lot of Jews are great friends of mine (because)... they know I am friendly to Israel and so forth." But then Graham gives in to the lower nature in us all, possibly fearful of offending the man whose company he enjoys keeping: "But (Jews) don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them," he says. "You must not let them know," replies Nixon. Had Graham spoken "truth to power" and said of Nixon's derogatory remarks about Jews, Mr. President, those were wicked and sinful things to say about Jewish people," chances are excellent that Nixon would never again have granted the evangelist access. That's the way the game is played between politicians and clergy. And the clergy always lose in the end because it is their principles that must be sacrificed if their proximity to supposed power is to continue and their illusion of influence to be maintained. IN PRAGER's third hour, he praised the movie Trembling Before God, a documentary about homosexual Orthodox Jews. DP said it made him and his wife Fran cry. 3/4/02 About two years ago, Dennis Prager advised California Republicans that they should vote for the candidate (John McCain) who's most likely to defeat Al Gore, rather than the candidate (George Bush) who best embodies Republican principles. Today Prager said California Republicans should vote tomorrow for the man of Republican principles (William Simon) rather than Prager's friend Richard Riordan, who's essentially a moderate Democrat with some fiscally conservative views. Prager repeated how much he likes Riordan and how he's eaten at Riordan's home, and how the two of them raised money 16 years ago to help the Afghans expell the Soviets. 2/26/02 Dennis Prager read most of a 2/22/02 Wall Street Journal article: Word has finally come that Emory University is going to investigate Michael Bellesiles, the award-winning author of "Arming America ." It was about 18 months ago that Mr. Bellesiles published one of those rare books that purport to turn both history and modern politics upside-down. In "Arming America " he claimed that very few early Americans had actually owned guns, opening a debate over whether the Second Amendment had been designed to protect individual gun rights. Mr. Bellesiles originally received lavish praise from left-leaning reviewers and historians and was even given the prestigious Bancroft Prize. But since then, "Arming America " has spiraled into an enormous academic scandal, with scholars from every quarter claiming his work is at best sloppy, at worst falsified. Emory will undoubtedly be investigating specific claims about Mr. Bellesiles's research. In truth, all the university needs to do is look back at the past 18 months of the author's shifting stories, and his disregard for academic methods, to realize he doesn't meet the standards of the scholarly profession. SECOND HOUR: Dennis Prager interviewed prospective author Anne Marie who's just written a book against shacking up before marriage. Both Anne and Prager agreed that it is a bad deal for women. The ultimate compliment a man can give a woman is to ask her to marry him. Anne says every woman who's told her that she's shacking up evinces a sense of shame about it. Anne lived with her present husband for eight years before they married. Women who live with men hope that the experience will show him that he should marry her. DP's wife has a two year rule. If he hasn't married her by then, drop him. 2/25/02 In his final hour, Prager praised conservative Christian Dr. James Dobsen's courage in his recent column on masturbation. Question: My thirteen-year-old son is in the full bloom of adolescence. I'm suspicious that he may be masturbating when he's alone, but I don't quite know how to approach him about it. Should I be concerned, and if so, what should I say to him? Dr. Dobson Responds: I don't think you should invade that private world at all unless there are unique circumstances that lead you to do so. I offer that advice while acknowledging that masturbation is a highly controversial subject and Christian leaders differ widely in their perspectives on it. I will answer your question but hope you understand that some Bible scholars will disagree emphatically with what I will say. First, let's consider masturbation from a medical perspective. We can say without fear of contradiction that there is no scientific evidence to indicate that this act is harmful to the body. Despite terrifying warnings given to young people historically, it does not cause blindness, weakness, mental retardation, or any other physical problem. If it did, the entire male population and about half of females would be blind, weak, simpleminded, and sick. 2/21/02 Prager last hour seemed an awkward affair. He said he'd just seen the new movie Dragonfly and enjoyed it. His praise seemed stilted and forced. He said the movie was opening for the general public tonight and he was interviewing the director Tom Shadyac. Obviously Prager got a special screening of the movie, thinking it might appeal to him, so his nationally syndicated radio show could boost the movie. Prager's hour seem stilted. It felt like he'd gotten boxed into interviewing the director and Prager tried to use the time to take calls from people on whether or not they believed in the afterlife. Joe Morgenstern writes in the WSJ: "Dragonfly stars Kevin Costner as an emergency-room doctor whose dead wife, a doctor herself, speaks to him through gravely ill patients. Seeing the movie is a near-life experience, but not all that near. Mr. Costner has never been further from the lively, engaging actor he can be, or at least once was. First his doctor, Joe Darrow, lashes out, dully. Then he withdraws, dully. Then he yearns, mopes, mumbles and whines, all dully, though when a grief counselor tells him he needs to grieve -- how did she think of that? -- Joe snaps back that he doesn't need her to tell him how to feel. It's a welcome jolt in a weeper that keeps telling us to feel moved when we're really feeling drugged by greeting-card solemnity about rainbows, mists and the bright light at the end of life's tunnel." Jerry Zucker said about 12 years ago that Prager's teachings inspired his movie Ghost. Variety.com reports: HOLLYWOOD -- Hollywood movie premieres are not normally the place to discuss spirituality, but that's what happened Monday night as Universal unspooled "Dragonfly" at the Directors Guild theater. "I want evidence before I totally believe in an afterlife," star Kevin Costner said. "I know my existence is not all my doing. There is definitely a guiding hand over my life." Shadyac told Variety.com: "The story was very real to me because of what I encountered with my mom's death. I hope unbelieving audiences will come away from the movie open to the discussion of faith." 2/20/02 DP discussed this LA Times article: UC Berkeley has suspended a course on male sexuality amid allegations that its students engaged in an orgy at a class party and watched a student coordinator have sex onstage at a strip club. The university suspended the student-run, for-credit class after its coordinators failed to show up for a meeting last week with a faculty sponsor. Allegations about the course were published Friday in the campus newspaper, the Daily Californian. UC Berkeley spokeswoman Janet Gilmore said the university is investigating the course and also reviewing its counterpart, a class on female sexuality. "Obviously, the events described in the Daily Cal are not part of the approved course content," Gilmore said Tuesday. The Daily Californian reported Friday that several students involved in the male sexuality class said the orgy occurred at a party held at the home of an instructor and was intended to help students get acquainted. It was not mandatory, an instructor said. Chris Bolton writes on the Prager List about the alleged connection between religiosity and gun ownership: I think Dennis is missing something here. I think religion and gun ownership are symptoms of the same social condition rather the former causing the latter. I think that rural people are more individualistic while urban people are more collectivistic. For example - Rural people grow and can their own food (relying on themselves) Urban people shop at the grocery store (relying on others to grow it, transport it, etc...) Urban people call the repair man to fix things (relying on others) Rural people fix it themselves or call a friend to do it (relying on yourself) Rural people rely more on nature (weather, good rain, few pests, etc...) to succeed than urban people and therefore realize that they need God more than urbanites. Urban people think that they can do it on their own. Gun ownership is done in part to feeling responsible for your own safety. Urbanites, being more collectivist, rely on others (government) for protection while rural folk rely on themselves. Rural people also use their guns to gather food, Urbanistas don't. They think hunting is immoral while rural people see the deer, rabbits and elk eating in their gardens. Urbanites are more collectivist in nature and therefore vote for the collectivist political parties while Rural folk, being more independently minded, vote for the parties that teach individual freedom. Just look at the USA Today voting map that showed that all of Gore's votes came from heavily urban areas while Bush was strong in rural areas. Guns and religion are more common symptoms of rural lifestyles. One does not cause the other. 2/18/02 On Presidents Day, Dennis argued for reintroducing Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays as national holidays. On the issue of Washington and slavery, he cited this website On the Palestinian TV show “The Children’s Hour,” children sing about becoming suicide bombers. 2/14/02 Dennis interviewed Wendy McElroy about her column on taking back Valentine's Day: A play that claims to unveil the truth about vaginas but, somehow, overlooks the salutary role men play in most women's sexuality has no credibility. Worse than this, The Vagina Monologues equates men with "the enemy" and heterosexual love with violence. Betty Dodson — a leader of '60s liberal feminism whose life's work has aimed at demystifying women's sexuality — expressed well-deserved horror at the play. Describing Ensler as "an evangelical minister," Dodson believes that the play is a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality. After all, the 24-year-old woman who seduces the drunken 13-year-old is portrayed as "rescuing" her from male violence. DENNIS: It's like taking Mother's Day and turning it into a day protesting mothers who abuse children. 2/6/02 Dennis: "I am never ad hominem. I never attack people. Maybe I've done it once or twice. Perhaps if Pat Buchanan had children, he would think this country was worth fighting for. I distrust angry people [like Pat]. I wonder about the tremendous time he has spent trying to clear Nazi criminals. What moves your passions tells a lot about you." Indiana 11-year-old shoots and kills man who has a box cutter at his mother’s throat. St. Joseph County Prosecutor Chris Toth says “Just because a shooting is ruled as being justified doesn't make it any less tragic." So, the killng of a career criminal who had a knife at a woman’s throat “is no less tragic” than if the mother would have been killed. 2/5/02 DP read this entire column: Why Support Israel Regarding the New York Times publishing an editorial from Yassir Arafat this past weekend, DP wondered why it was necessary when all the points Arafat made have already been made by the New York Times Middle East correspondents. In his second hour, DP suggested it was good for a parent to vacation alone with one kid, as a way of developing intimacy and getting to know your kids better. 2/4/02 Prager laughed about this comment by scientist James Watson in Sunday's New York Times magazine: "I divide men into those who think of women 90 percent of the time and those who think about them 99 percent of the time. I was a 90-percenter." Dennis says his wife has never revealed to him anything about women that he found undecipherable. Foreign, but not non-understandable. But male sexuality will seem to the normal woman as from another planet. 2/1/02 Dennis Prager noted a NY Times article about giving out free condoms to athletes at the Winter Olympics. What would happen if they gave out free cigarettes? There would be an uproar that this encourages smoking. Yes surely giving out condoms encourages sex. Giving out condoms in high school surely encourages sex. When you give out something, you encourage its use. DP discussed this Wendy McElroy column: According to a round of studies conducted in North America, Europe and Australia, one reason for the increase may be the discrimination fathers encounter in family courts, especially the denial of access to their children. If a similar rise in female suicides was occurring, a public crusade would demand a remedy. Yet the extraordinarily high rate of male suicide is rarely discussed. What are the statistics? According to a 1999 surgeon general's report, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in America, with men four times more likely to kill themselves than women. 1/28/02 Dennis Prager appeared on a Fox News TV talkshow today about U.S. traitor Johnathan Walker, whose father left his wife for a man when John was 16. A liberal Boston talkshow host berated Prager for homophobia for pointing this out. 'Are you saying that homosexuality causes terrorism?' DP points this out as another example of political correctness. If the New York Times had reported this on its front page, then it would've been all over the media within a week. The media are a sheep-like herd, lacking courage. The news media want to get along with each other and confirm each other's liberal instincts. Why is the press going along with John Walker changing his name to John Lindh? John Walker took on his mother's maiden name of Lindh when John's father left the family for another man when John was 16. It's a rupture in a child's life when a parent declares a different sexual orientation. John's lawyers talk about how much they like their client. They have shaved him and dressed him conservatively, and had him drop his Islamic name. Part of DP hopes that John Walker is acquitted so people can see how capricious American justice is. Caller: I must commend your parents. They did such a good job with you. You were so polite. I wanted to strangle that Boston woman. DP: One reason I am so polite is so that people like you will have that reaction. Staying polite is one of life's great secret weapons. Dennis spent his third hour on TV addiction. He praised this article in Scientific American: Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the struggle for survival is how easily organisms can be harmed by that which they desire. The trout is caught by the fisherman's lure, the mouse by cheese. But at least those creatures have the excuse that bait and cheese look like sustenance. Humans seldom have that consolation. The temptations that can disrupt their lives are often pure indulgences. No one has to drink alcohol, for example. Realizing when a diversion has gotten out of control is one of the great challenges of life. Excessive cravings do not necessarily involve physical substances. Gambling can become compulsive; sex can become obsessive. One activity, however, stands out for its prominence and ubiquity--the world's most popular leisure pastime, television. Most people admit to having a love-hate relationship with it. They complain about the "boob tube" and "couch potatoes," then they settle into their sofas and grab the remote control. Parents commonly fret about their children's viewing (if not their own). Even researchers who study TV for a living marvel at the medium's hold on them personally. Percy Tannenbaum of the University of California at Berkeley has written: "Among life's more embarrassing moments have been countless occasions when I am engaged in conversation in a room while a TV set is on, and I cannot for the life of me stop from periodically glancing over to the screen. This occurs not only during dull conversations but during reasonably interesting ones just as well." Dennis recommends these links: David Horowitz on the Middle East. Why the Southern states seceded, forcing the American Civil War. How Dennis Prager Changed My Life Ellen Rosenfeld writes: There are a number of things that Dennis has been very influential in: 1) Having me really examine the laws of kashrus, and start taking steps in that area. I have stopped eating veal and pork, and have an 8 point plan I call "Road to Kashrus". 2) Having me realize much of the failure, hypocrisy, and malaise of most liberals and many Democrats. I actually voted Republican twice after only voting Democrat before. 3) Validating the feelings I have had my whole life (and for which I was usually told I'm oversensitive) of compassion and caring for others, and my abhorrence toward meaness and unfairness. 4) Giving me the permission and ability to reclaim parts of Judaism without feeling I have to become Orthodox. I have registered for 3 programs at a local JCC; attended Torah study at a Reformed synagogue; am going to services at a local egalitarian, progressive temple; and am becoming more committed and tangibly dedicated to tzedakah. 1/9 From ABCNews.com: So-called "never-marrieds" are one of the fastest-growing groups in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Singles constitute more than 40 percent of the adult population, and 10 percent of all adults will never marry, according to 2000 census statistics. In less than 30 years, the number of people who have never walked down the aisle has more than doubled, as the median age of marriage has reached a historic high: 25 years for women, and 27 years for men. DP says: This is a serious problem for individuals (singlehood breeds narcissism) and for society. Part of the problem is the romanticizing of marriage, so people seek soul mates, rather than folks with common values. A couple of Christians said they sublimated their desire for marriage by dedicating themselves to serving God. Crispin Sartwell is the philosopher that DP interviewed Tuesday. His website is: http://www.crispinsartwell.com: The other day my wife attended a funeral of an acquaintance who had committed suicide. The minister who preached the funeral sermon recounted the story of a period of despair in her own life when she had thought about killing herself. But God intervened, she said, and saved her. I suppose the man she was burying wasn't good enough to be saved by God, or perhaps it just wasn't God's whim to stop him from blowing his brains out. 1/8/02 Dennis delivered his almost annual diatribe against women wearing slacks like Hillary Clinton (not counting tight jeans and form-fitting feminine pants which accent femininity). He says they defeminize the female. Pants suits defeminize women. I don't like when men dress like women and women dress like men. DP thinks that male-female differences are a great thing and whatever enhances the differences, within moderation, is a good thing. People dressed nicer in the 1950s to go to a baseball game than many people wear today to weddings. Dress matters. Even if you dress down, you are doing it to send a message. If you look like a mess, you chose to look like a mess. If you didn't shave, you chose to send that message. Why do half of movie directors wear baseball hats backwards? Prager won't allow his two sons to wear baseball hats backwards. Prager recommends these two books on the Arab-Israeli conflict: From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. Myths & Facts:A Guide To The Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard 12/27 Dennis condemned the Christian pastor who's leading a book burning of Harry Potter. DP says the pastor makes God and religion look stupid. Reuters reports: A New Mexico church plans to burn Harry Potter books because they are "an abomination to God," the church pastor said on Wednesday. Pastor Jack Brock said he would have a "holy bonfire" on Sunday at the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo in southern New Mexico to torch books about the fictional teen-age wizard who is wildly popular with young people. "These books encourage our youth to learn more about witches, warlocks, and sorcerers, and those things are an abomination to God and to me," Brock, 74, told Reuters. DP kvelled over a new poll that shows President Bush the most admired man in the history of the poll. DP says he has friends across the country who said to him, 'Dennis you are so bright. How could you vote for such a dummy?' DP now feels justified in his year 2000 vote for Bush. Bush fooled people because he did not talk like an Ivy League educated intellectual but rather like a Texan. 12/26 Dennis says that he and his family watch a movie or two a week at home on DVD. The older he gets, the more he loves movies. Tuesday Dennis and his family went to see Joe Somebody, starring Tim Allen. DP says Hollywood films reflect society more than they push society. Hollywood particularly reflects urban liberal opinion, as the people who write and make the movies are urban liberals (aka Jews). When Joe (Allen), a divorced, listless, Minneapolis corporate drone, gets beat up by a coworker (Warburton) over a parking space, humiliating him in front of his daughter (Panettiere) on "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day", he decides to fight back. His new quest for vengeance revitalizes him, even leading to romance with Meg Harper (Bowen), a young office counselor... (Belushi plays a "former B-movie star turned martial arts expert who becomes Joe's mentor and helps him prepare for his rematch with his coworker." (source: The Hollywood Reporter, 3/7/01) On his nationally syndicated radio show, DP says Hollywood films reflect society more than they push society. Hollywood particularly reflects urban liberal opinion, as the people who write and make the movies are urban liberals (aka Jews). DP says we can live without "Bring Your Daughter To Work" day. As for the movie, Allen's about to park in the lot for employees who've served more than ten years when a new employee takes his place. Then the bully smacks Allen down. Allen is humiliated and he resolves to fight the bully again and beat him. DP asks: What does the movie want you to think about Allen's desire to fight the bully? Do women prefer men who fight bullies? What is the right thing to do? The movie teaches that if you are a real man, you don't hit back. You are gentle. You're a peace maker. To DP, sometimes it is right to hit back and sometimes it is right to be a peacemaker. But to the Hollywood mindset, to be a real man is to be essentially pacifistic. It is the burning desire of men to attract lovely women. And the beautiful woman in this movie pushes Allen in the direction of a non-physical response. But if a bully hits you and humiliates you, it is a good idea to hit the bully. Recent articles have claimed that protector-men are now in. Women want men like the New York City firefighters or police. And men will do almost anything to get women. Women's primary power is in signalling to men what they want. Joe Somebody says you get the beautiful woman if you don't hit back. DP says it is important to see ordinary and boring Hollywood movies as well as great ones, because boring movies heighten your sense of great movies. Just like it is good to go on a few boring dates. In Prager's second hour, he wondered why more media attention has not been given to the fact that John Walker's father Frank Lindh, when John was 16, left home and his marriage to live with a man in a homosexual relationship. San Francisco Examiner columnist P. J. Corkery wrote: NOT THAT IT MATTERS a whit to us here in the cool, gray city of love what Frank Lindh, daddy of the Taliban warrior from Marin, does, did or dreams of doing with other consenting adults, but shouldn't he come clean with us about all the facts in the odd odyssey of his son? Frank Lindh has been quoted time and again as saying it was his son John's reading of the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" when John was 16 in 1997 that turned his son's head and heart towards Islam. But something else then going on in the family's life may be have been just as pertinent. When Frank Lindh left his family in 1997, it was to move in with a male companion. Yep. ... The man with whom Lindh lived has since been described as "a family friend," but other family friends say the men lived as a gay couple. It would take a specialist in family issues to map the constellations of feelings and problems that would describe John Walker's path toward Islam in 1997, but sources close to the family say the father's turn of life from married man to modern gay man startled and flustered the 16-year-old. Given the pummeling that the Walkers and marvy Marin County have taken from the national press over their wayward son, you can't blame the old man for wanting to suppress reporting on his sexuality. ... Luke says: Prager often blasts the news media for reporting gossip about people's private sexual lives. Today he blasted the media for not reporting gossip. Journalist Ed Walsh writes on Medianews.org: "I thought San Francisco Examiner columnist PJ Corkery did a great job reporting with the Johnny Walker/Lindh item on Tuesday. Since everyone is speculating about why Walker would convert to Islam and eventually join the Taliban, I think it is germane that Walker's conversion to an extremely antigay religion came at the same time his father separated from his mother to be in a gay relationship. Walker signing up with the Taliban is like the son of a Jewish man signing up with the Nazis." Gay journalist David Ehrenstein writes: There was nothing "disgusting" (Jayne Afrate) or "unnecessary" (Jason Lloren) about P.J.Corkery's mention of Frank Lindh's gayness. No "outing" is involved when someone is already "out." Of course to Afrate and Lloren being gay is truly shameful and the status quo of secrecy -- called "privacy" -- must be maintained at all costs. Truth to tell, they've actually got a lot in common with Lindh's son who joined a group of religious extermists that execute Afganistan gays by dumping brick walls on them. DENNIS PRAGER said that John's attraction to the Taliban may partly stem from the Taliban's degradation of women. A caller thought it may have stemmed from the Taliban's policy of executing homosexuals. DP called Lindh's leaving home to live an authentic homosexual life narcissistic. He should've stayed with his wife until his son was at least 18. Sometimes it is good to stay in the closet. Usually it is best to be out of the closet but in some instances it is best to stay quiet. Prager said it was more likely that Lindh's leaving home to live with a man was more influential on John Walker's psyche than reading the Malcom X autobiography. In his third hour, Prager read the entire column by Yossi Halevi Klein in the Los Angeles Times Christmas Day: JERUSALEM -- However improbably, Jesus is emerging as a figure through whom Jews and Christians are discovering each other. For many centuries, Jews viewed Jesus with resentment and dread. Even uttering his name was considered an act of unbearable intimacy with the person Jews regarded as the ultimate apostate, responsible for their persecution. In the name of Jesus, after all, Jews were martyred and humiliated and forcibly converted. And so Jews referred to Jesus as "that man," or avoided invoking him altogether. Growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1960s, I'd cross the street rather than pass the local Catholic church, which I imagined a place of menace, where Jews were kidnapped and forcibly baptized. I avoided even glancing at the crucifix displayed outside: The image of a Jew hanging in agony seemed to me a taunt. For their part, Christians revered a dejudaized Jesus, emphasizing those of his sayings that seemed to repudiate Jewish law while ignoring those which upheld it. Jesus' mission was equated with the spiritual displacement of the Jewish people--supplanting God's covenant with the Jews with the new Christian covenant. In its religious paintings and statues, Western Christianity remade Jesus into its own image, European rather than Semitic. Now, though, as growing numbers of Christians confront the Judaic roots of their faith, the historical Jesus is reemerging in his inevitable Jewishness. And in a reciprocal gesture, some Jews are discovering their spiritual kinship with Christianity and their literal kinship with Jesus. DENNIS PRAGER got pranked three times by the caller who hates God. The guy is brilliant, calling up under various guises and accents and topic. It drives Prager wild when he's upstaged and not fully in control. Prager ranted at the guy, saying you should go back on the medication and stop abusing my listeners. I suspect that many, perhaps most of Prager's listeners, get a kick out of the crank's ingenuity at making Prager look pompous and a control-freak. 12/25/01 Dennis devoted his three hours to religion. He got a fervent call from a Christian wondering why Dennis and Michael Medved, religious Jews, never discuss why they don't believe in Jesus as God and Messiah. Dennis replied that he doesn't argue faith. If someone believes X about God, that's a matter of faith, and is not amenable to rational discussion. This Christian true believer sounded a lot like Orthodox Jews who argue with Prager over why he doesn't except the entire Oral Law as divine. Dennis is patient, which often seems to make his questioners all the more hysterical. 12/24/01 Dennis Prager disagreed with Time magazine's choice of Rudy Guiliani for Person of the Year. To say that he was the one who most affected the world for good or ill is incorrect. Guiliani was shocked that he was picked. DP says the Man of the Year, judged by who affected the world the most, was Osama Bin Laden or a generic Al Quada terrorist, or George W. Bush. Bush may have changed the world more than anyone, compared to how the US and the world would've reacted to the terrorism if Gore or Clinton were president. DP says Time picked Guiliani because it made the Time selectors feel good. DP gave his theory on why Time picked Albert Einstein for Man of the Century. Because he was secular, brilliant, and academic, like the Time selectors. DP argued for Hitler as the Man of the Century. Prager pointed out Time's numerous mistakes in the past including: 2000 - George Bush. For what? Getting elected? Dennis has played Christmas music bumpers on his show the past few days. Dennis, the religious Jew, loves Christmas even though he personally doesn't observe it. Still, he wishes his Christian listeners and neighbors "Merry Christmas." Dennis's brother Kenny sang Christmas Carols with his Glee Club at Columbia University, while wearing his yarmulke. In his second hour, Prager discussed shoplifting. He received a couple of sterling calls at the beginning of the show, including one from a lawyer who thanked Prager in part for inspiring him to turn to God and Christianity and gain the moral strength to stop stealing. A man who runs a non-profit organization to help shoplifters said many celebrities shoplift because they want to get caught. They feel they don't deserve their success. Prager's particular case was Winona Ryder's shoplifting recently in Beverly Hills. Dennis read from today's New York Times: The number of people on the make for the proverbial five-fingered discount always surges during holiday times as stores grow more crowded and thieves find it easier to blend in without detection. This year, however, loss prevention experts see a convergence of factors, including a weakening economy, psychological stress from the Sept. 11 attacks and the trend toward longer store hours with smaller staffs, that may swell the ranks of shoplifters much more than usual. Not until retailers do their final inventories in January will the damage done this season really be known, if ever. Major retailers are reluctant to discuss crime in their stores. "We hate to talk about anything negative this time of year," said a Bloomingdale's spokeswoman, Anne Keating. Several chains including Best Buys and Wilson's: The Leather Experts say they have seen no recent increase in shopper theft. Dennis Prager Speaks To Orthodox Union The only time, to my knowledge, the Orthodox Union (group of over 1000 centrist Orthodox synagogues in North America) has invited a non-Orthodox Jew to speak to them was Sunday afternoon, December 23rd, when Dennis Prager spoke about why many Muslims hate Jews and Israel. Prager's speech was the climax of the convention. Nobody can pack a Jewish crowd like Prager. While up to his speech, there were three sessions going simultaneously, for Prager's talk, they opened up all the dividers and packed everyone into one room. Aguda's Rabbi Yitzhock Adlerstein delivered a teasing, even insulting introduction to Prager. Rabbi Adlerstein said that Torah knowledge is not the only type of knowledge you need, and that Prager was here to deliver the non-Torah perspective. That was an insult of Prager but Dennis took in good humor. The rabbi described Prager as a gafly, outside the camp of Orthodoxy, all true. Dennis and Rabbi Adlerstein have known each other over two decades and regularly studied Talmud together for some time. Dennis often refers in his speeches to his Orthodox right-of-center rabbi friend and this usually refers to Rabbi Adlerstein. Rabbi Adlerstein said Prager has brought more people to Orthodox Judaism than any group in Southern California. Rabbi Cunin, leader of West Coast Chabad, says the same thing. Rabbi Adlerstein said he agreed with Prager on almost nothing. Prager got up and claimed they agreed on a good many things. Prager has more freedom to speak his mind than Rabbi Adlerstein because he's not beholden to any one constituency. It was kinda sad to see how Rabbi Adlerstein had to pander to his religious right wing to get away with introducing Prager to the Orthodox audience. Prager and the rabbi are not such good friends that they don't go years without seeing each other. As Dennis began to speak, he asked how much time he had. Rabbi Adlerstein said he had until Mincha (the afternoon prayers). Dennis smiled. "He just wants to find out if I know when Mincha is." DP recounted how he lived in this Pico-Robertson Orthodox neighborhood for 12 years (1985-1997). Now he lives in Calabassas, which boasts the fastest growing Jewish population of any US zip code. Prager said it is morally wrong for Jews to not visit Israel at this time of its distress and to not send their kids to Israel. Prager's son David is studying for a year at a yeshiva in Jerusalem. Though Prager strongly urged David to go to Israel, after the latest attacks, Dennis told David he was leaving the decision up to him. David chose to go. On the phone a few days ago to Dennis, David described his safety on a recent bus trip to Haifa as being "in the hands of God." Dennis then delivered his familiar speech on anti-Semitism. It was 30 minutes in before he got his first response from the audience. He got cheers when he said that Europe stinks. They're morally confused. This is the continent that had the French revolution, the Russian revolution, WWI, fascism, Nazism, WWII, the Holocaust and communism. And it still hasn't been morally chastened. Prager quoted the French government official in England who called Israel "a shitty little country." DP emphasized, and he was speaking to a group overwhelmingly composed of Orthodox Jews, that we should sharply distinguish between American Christianity and European Christianity. DP noted that probably a higher percentage of evangelical Christians support Israel than do Jews. DP said that every shul should have a sister Church. Rabbi Adlerstein shook his head at that and some of Prager's other points. Prager writes in the Milwaukee Jewish Journal: As a Jew, I am embarrassed when I read the number of Jews visiting Israel has declined since the latest Palestinian violence began. An Israeli recently told me that more Christians are visiting Israel than Jews (one of many negative effects of the relative lack of deep religious faith in Jewish life), and that while more than a few Jewish tour groups had canceled their tours, few if any Christian groups had. The implicit American Jewish belief here seems to be that only Israeli Jews should suffer for Israel’s survival—through terrorism and a worsening economy. This is terribly wrong. We Jews who live in affluence and without any threat of suicide bombers dismembering us or our children should be visiting Israel now in unprecedented numbers. Next year, every time I hear or read of another act of Arab terrorism in Israel, I will shudder. But when, God willing, David returns to America, he will return a better Jew, a better American, and a better man—just as my father did 60 years ago, and as I did 30 years ago. Prager On Diet The other day, Dennis devoted an hour of his radio show to discussing diet. The important thing, he said, was quantity. It did not matter so much what you ate. It was how much you ate that most mattered. In 1994, Prager hosted Dr. Barry Sears on his show for three hours to talk about diet. Prager was fascinated. He's long been interested in the subject as he's struggled to keep down his weight most of his life. For about a year or so afterward, Prager became an enthusiastic proponent of Dr. Sears' Zone diet of 40% carbohydrate, 30% fat and 30% protein. In the late 1980s, Prager was also giving his views publicly on diet. The important thing, he said he'd discovered, was that only fat makes you fat. So watch your intake of fat and you'll be ok. The other day on his show, Prager protested federal government guidelines for weight. According to the guideline, Prager should lose about 70 pounds, which DP declared was ridiculous. He'd look like a Holocaust survivor. Dennis said he should lose about five pounds but there was no need for any greater loss. Which sort of sums of Prager's approach to life. Wherever he is, he is about perfect, perhaps needing a five percent adjustment. The only exception I can think of offhand is the Oslo peace accords for Israel. Prager now says he'll never be able to forgive himself for supporting them. |
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