Could Chinese wives be superior for similar reasons? I had a sage named Chaim Amalek often counsel me that what I needed most in life was a Chinese wife who would kick my butt into working harder and smarter.
Khunrum emails: “As I see it the Chinese are smarter than just about anyone else (‘cept the Jews perhaps) and they try harder. Chinese merchants and politicians run all the countries in Indochina. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, you name it. They’re clever. They’ll marry a Thai woman and the kids will be smart little Thai citizens. Thai Chinese are go getters. Thai Thais (I hate to say) are rather lazy and dense.”
Chaim Amalek emails: “Chinese people are going to revive racism in this country, both because they are often quite racist, and because the example of their success cannot be beneficial to the duskier denizens of America.”
“Are you familiar with the p-k hypothesis? You can have many offspring and invest little in each, or have few and invest a lot in them. True of animals, and, some say, true of human cultures.”
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.
I’m using the term “Chinese mother” loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that “stressing academic success is not good for children” or that “parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun.” By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be “the best” students, that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” and that if children did not excel at school then there was “a problem” and parents “were not doing their job.” Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at a troop readiness center in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. Within hours of the killings, the world knew that Hasan reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before he began shooting, visited websites associated with Islamist violence, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces his enemy, opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam, and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings that he was going “to do good work for God.” There was ample evidence, in other words, that the Ft. Hood attack was an act of Islamist violence.
Nevertheless, public officials, journalists, and commentators were quick to caution that the public should not “jump to conclusions” about Hasan’s motive. CNN, in particular, became a forum for repeated warnings that the subject should be discussed with particular care.
“The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions,” said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.
“We cannot jump to conclusions,” said CNN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. “We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever.”
“I’m on Pentagon chat room,” said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting. “Right now, there’s messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam.”
The next day, President Obama underscored the rapidly-forming conventional wisdom when he told the country, “I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.” In the days that followed, CNN jouralists and guests repeatedly echoed the president’s remarks.
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” Army Gen. George Casey said on CNN November 8. The next day, political analyst Mark Halperin urged a “transparent” investigation into the shootings “so the American people don’t jump to conclusions.” And when Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the Ft. Hood attack was terrorism, CNN’s John Roberts was quick to intervene. “Now, President Obama has asked people to be very cautious here and to not jump to conclusions,” Roberts said to Hoekstra. “By saying that you believe this is an act of terror, are you jumping to a conclusion?”
As soon as the news broke from Tucson, the New York Times began reporting that the shooting might have been politically motivated by right-wingers such as Sarah Palin.
This was in its news reports (since deleted).
It turns out the shooter was into left-wing conspiracies.
Giffords was elected to Congress in the Democratic sweep in 2006. The first Jewish woman elected to Congress from the state, she made her Jewish identity part of her campaign.
“If you want something done, your best bet is to ask a Jewish woman to do it,” said Giffords, a former state senator, said at the time. “Jewish women — by our tradition and by the way we were raised — have an ability to cut through all the reasons why something should, shouldn’t or can’t be done and pull people together to be successful.”
Giffords, 40, was raised “mixed” by a Christian Scientist mother and Jewish father, but said that after a visit to Israel in 2001, she had decided she was Jewish only. She attended services at a local Reform synagogue.
In one of her last photos, she posed with the new U.S. House of Representatives speaker, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) at her swearing in; her hand is on the “Five Books of Moses.”
And judging from the comments to this post, people are already trying to score political points. Well, they kind of telegraphed this strategy, didn’t they? Remember Bloomberg making a fool of himself by blaming the Times Square bombing on the Tea Party? How about waiting until we actually know something, this time? That’s likely to be soon enough.
MORE STILL: A blogger-email from Speaker Boehner’s office: “I am horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff. An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured, and their families. This is a sad day for our country.”
Give it up guys. Your efforts to politicize this tragedy have been pathetic.
To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Markos’s post, which is about primary challenges. But I do think there’s something wrong with pretending that this sort of language is to blame for nuts. And if you’re going to claim that, well, sauce for the goose. . . .
We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.
Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Update: I see that Sarah Palin has called the shooting “tragic”. OK, a bit of history: right-wingers went wild over anyone who called 9/11 a tragedy, insisting that it wasn’t a tragedy, it was an atrocity.
* Did the vitriol expressed on Torah Talk cause the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords?
* Is the government controlling grammar?
* The Jews sing a song of praise to God and then they complain for four chapters. Knowing that human nature is to forget the good things done for us, the Torah prescribes numerous rituals to remember God’s redemption of the Jews from Egypt.
* When the Jews see the Egyptians pursuing them, they use the bitter kind of humor in which Jews excel. Why didn’t you let us die in Egypt?
* I dig what God says to Moshe in Ex. 14:15: “Why do you cry out to me? Go forth.” Stop standing around praying. Take action. Who needs 20 hours a week of davening?
* How does God gain glory by drowning the Egyptians? When God punishes the wicket ala the Egyptians, people complain that he is a God of vengeance. When He does not punish, people complain that the wicked prosper.
* Glory in Judaism is rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. Glory in much of America and the Western world is having compassion for the wicked. Giving them therapy and parole.
* Punishing Egypt and freeing the Jews shows the world is governed by a moral order. History and God are on the side of the good. I believe that is true. The Nazis and Soviet communists and Japanese fascists came to a bad end.
* After the drowning, Egypt is no longer mentioned in the Torah. It is Egypt the metaphor, not Egypt the country, that matters to the Torah.
* In the midrash, God reproves the angels for preparing to sing about the drowning of the Egyptians but the Jews are not berated for singing a big song.
* If God took the Jews out of Egypt, why didn’t he take the Jews out of Europe before the Holocaust?
* Miriam is a prophet. If women can be prophets, then surely they can be rabbis. A prophet is a more prestigious role than prophet. A prophet has a divine role. They are ordained by God. Rabbis are not prophets, they’re just teachers. Isn’t this a kal vahomer?
* What does it mean to be free? We aren’t born free, we have to work for it, and freedom is not possible without God and law. You can’t be free unless you can control yourself. Otherwise you’ll be addicted to TV or to fun or to gambling or alcohol or sex.
As slaves, the Jews were not responsible for their own destiny. They didn’t have to feed themselves. Like poor people in the Western world who get welfare and free healthcare. The government keeps expanding school lunch programs. The left wants to take responsibility away from parents and give it to the state. We’ll feed your kids and give them college and abortions.
The greatest desire of the Jews in the wilderness is to be taken care of (Dennis Prager).
* A child is taken care of. To be taken care of is deeper in most people than the desire to be free. The desire for unconditional love is childlike.
* What does Ex. 14: 30 mean? And the Jews trusted in God and in Moses? This seems like a compromise with monotheism. Moshe was never going to get into the promised land. If it means the Jews trusted in God and in Moses, what does that mean for us? If we trust in God, that means what? We can trust God to do what?
* Ex. 15:23 The Baal Shem Tov interprets that it is the people who are bitter, not the water. Bitter people see everything as bitter.
* What does it mean, “none of these diseases if you follow God’s law”? (Ex. 15:26) Does God reward people for keeping the Torah by giving them less disease? Isn’t the Torah system self-rewarding?
According to Joe Scarborough, House minority leader John Boehner is a lazy bar fly, and maybe worse. On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough went off on Boehner, a fellow Republican, leaving many viewers wondering if the Republican congressman suffers from alcoholism.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough said:
“I hear it on the Hill, I’m sure you hear it on the Hill all the time, it’s not reported. But so many Republicans tell me that this is a guy that is not the hardest worker in the world.”
“After five o’clock, six o’clock at night he’s disengaged — at best,” Scarborough continued. “You can see him around town. He does not have, let’s say, the work hours of Newt Gingrich. … Every Republican I talk to says that John Boehner, by five or six at night, you can see him at bars.”
Friday, January 07, 2011 Radio Show
H1: Hopemobiles
Prager H1: High school students in Georgia with a B average get “free” money for college — a Hope Scholarship. They use it to buy themselves a new car… You know that big plastic island of garbage floating in the Pacific the size of Texas? The truth: it’s barely there… Nicholas Sarkozy, the French premier, says that Christians are being ethnically cleansed from Arab Middle East. Why isn’t this a bigger international news story?
Friday, January 07, 2011 Radio Show
H2: Happiness Hour: Have To’s
Prager H2: Life is full of “have to’s.” You have to work to make a living, have to raise your children, have to take out of the garbage. Is this a challenge to happiness or a reason for it or both?
Friday, January 07, 2011 Radio Show
H3: Open Lines
Prager H3: Per usual, callers set the agenda for this hour. Issues raised include: how does the Army treat the parents and families of soldiers killed in action; who brought the suit against the War Memorial Cross in San Diego; what should a wife do about her husband who is jealous of Dennis; what does Dennis think of chiropractors; how should a Christian wife handle her Jewish in-laws.
Aish Ha Torah. Los Angeles. 9100 Pico Blvd. 8 p.m.
It’s a dark and lonely night.
Let’s flash back to a dark and lonely morning almost 13 years ago.
April 13, 1998. I am called in to meet with the rav. He asks me if I made certain cheeky posts on the internet. I confirmed I did. He gives me a choice to clean up my act or to leave the Aish community.
I leave the community.
A few months later, I sneak into a Friday night Aish singles event. An organizer spots me and busts me out.
I haven’t been back since.
Until tonight.
This is the last night of my annual yoga pass. I want to go see the Guru. I’ve only been to 120 classes over the past year. I haven’t truly taken advantage of my pass unlike 2009 when I went to 213 classes.
Still, tonight, a friend has asked me to come to Aish to see Rabbi Kahn speak.
Who’s Rabbi Ari Kahn? According to FB: “Rabbi Kahn is Vice President of Migdal Ohr institutions in Israel, he is also Director of foreign student programs @Bar Ilan University where he is a senior lecturer, in addition he is a senior lecturer in MATAN, and Aish Hatorah Jerusalem.”
Rabbi Kahn’s older brother, Yair Kahn, is a big rabbi in Israel. “Rav Yair Kahn , [YHE ’77] head of the Overseas Students Program, has been a Ram at Yeshivat Har Etzion since 1987. He is currently teaching a third-year Israeli shiur. Rav Kahn has been the coordinator of the Virtual Beit Midrash Gemara Iyun Shiur for several years. Originally from NY, Rav Kahn studied at Chaim Berlin, Yeshiva University, and Yeshivat Har Etzion. Rav Kahn is also the editor of the Shiurei Hagrid series published by Mossad Harav Kook.”
I don’t want to set foot in Aish, but my allegiance to my friend is stronger than my fear of another humiliation.
I leave my hovel at 7:40 p.m. It’s a one-mile walk. I figure I’ll get there a little late, slip in the back door, sit somewhere as inconspicuous as possible and then leave as fast as possible.
No harm, no foul! Can’t get fairer than that!
As I get closer to Aish, my heart beats more rapidly and my fears multiply and take demonic form.
You probably don’t understand how much this shul means to me. It’s the most loving Jewish home I’ve known. People here embraced me when I moved to Los Angeles. They taught me Judaism. They brought me home for Shabbat and holiday meals and then I let them down with my raunchy blogging. And I can’t face them. I feel so ashamed. I can’t believe I’m walking back in here. Why can’t I just leave these good people alone? The unclean need to stay outside the holy community.
My crippling shame comes not from anything I’ve done — although plenty of that makes me feel appropriate levels of shame — but my crippling shame comes from who I am. I fear that at my core, I am just rotten.
As I pass the bank, I see a couple of people entering Aish from the back. As I cross Doheny Blvd to join them, I spot a straight black-hatted rabbi walking towards me. Ohmigod, it appears to be Rabbi Aryeh Markman.
I can never fool Rabbi Markman. He’s got my number. I’m out of luck. I might as well turn around right now and go home like the sniveling coward that I am.
Luke Ford’s bread and butter is Lashon Hara. No self respecting Jewish bet din would admit a goy like him into our midst. One may be able to fool human Rabbis, but HaShem understands one who lives by Lashon Hara, especially when focused about Jewish people, is a Judenhasser and no member of the Tribe of Israel. Yemach shemo v’zezichro.
A ger who converts to Judaism under false pretenses is not a Jew. If a bet din finds a ger not living life as a Jew [eg, committing Lashon Hara as a way of life], Jewish status is revoked [this is the halakcha].
I implore all Jews to contact the various Los Angeles Bet Dins to make aware to the community Luke Ford commits Lashon Hara, to the extent of being antisemitic, and should have his ger status reversed.
A simple look at lukeford.net will confirm what I have reported here. LF YS”V.
My shame at being a coward overwhelms my cowardice and while my spirit has long since left my body, my legs keep moving me towards and inside of Aish HaTorah where I briefly cling to a friend and whisper, “They’re going to throw me out.”
I don’t want to be thrown out. I hate being humiliated. Yeah, I know I humiliate people every day on my blog, but I hate to be humiliated. I hate to be shamed. I hate to be spanked. I hate to be ejected. I hate to be hated. I hate to be thrown away. I hate the way it makes me feel. I hate, oh, how I hate, but me more than you.
You don’t understand how much it means to me to be inside Aish HaTorah. I know you’re going to think I’m suspect, but I’d rather be inside Aish than inside Mila Kunis.
After all, the satisfaction from casual sex evaporates after a few decades.
I had a chance for a good life here (1994-1998). I was surrounded by good people. I had a chance to build something. I had a chance to get my life on the right track. I had the chance to be matched up with a good woman and to marry and to have kids. And now that’s all gone. I was 27-31 years of age when I was at Aish. Now I am 44. I have never married. I can’t hold my head up in the Torah community.
I find the most inconspicuous place to sit and then I bury myself in my Blackberry and pretend to be fascinated by a report on Moktada al-Sadr returning to Iraq. I can’t face my execution like a man. I can’t look people in the face. I can only stare at my Blackberry.
“I bother no one and no one bothers me,” I tell myself.
I sit up front against the wall, frighteningly close to the ark. The rabbi starts speaking. I stare straight ahead. I don’t look back in case someone recognizes me.
People repeatedly interrupt the rabbi with questions and comments.
One man around 50 years of age says Aish has shifted to the right. When he came here ten years ago, Rabbi Moshe Cohen gave his Shabbos morning shiur to men and women sitting together. Now men and women sit separately. Many weddings have separate seating for men and women.
Rabbi Kahn says he does not like separate seating for men and women at weddings. This type of policy makes it difficult for singles to match up. “At every wedding, there should be two or three shiduchim,” says the rabbi.
Afterward, in the private chatter, there’s talk of shiduchim and how many wonderful single women there are while the single men are mostly suspect.
What am I? Chopped liver?
What am I doing at a lecture entitled, “Have the Rabbis Ruined Judaism? What is the nature scope and power of the Rabbis?”
As though I could pass judgment on these matters? As though I could have an opinion? I can barely read Hebrew.
The Jews in the room seem so robust and confident. They’re assertive with their opinions. By contrast, I’m such a timid goy, meek and mild, positively Christlike, like a lamb to the slaughter, like God’s suffering servant…
When I was last at Aish, it was this vibrant outreach organization. Many of the people who came were not observant. Now it has shifted to the right religiously to stave off the angry criticism of people like Rabbi Rabbs.
I have no opinions.
I bother no one and no one bothers me.
Friday. A friend phones. “Do you have any feelings about the class other than your own neuroses?”
Luke: “Yes. The Persian kids in their 20s spoke too much, said too little, interrupted too much. I wish the speaker would’ve announced, ‘I’ll take questions at the end.'”
“There was a deep theological point to the talk — once God takes us as His partner, the result has to be imperfection.”
Friend: “Dude, when Aish HaTorah told you in 1998 that you were persona non grata, that was prior to your Orthodox conversion. You’re a different man now. They can’t hold your past against you because you’ve been reborn into a new life. They can’t remind you of your actions in the past. You should assume that you are now welcome. You should meet with Rabbi Cohen and sort this out. You should do this with any shul you’ve had problems with.
“You’re so silly sometimes. You get caught up in your own little world that you miss the larger picture. You went through a conversion to Orthodox Judaism. They can’t hold your past against you. That’s forbidden by Jewish law. The things they found objectionable, you are no longer doing today. Your blog today is no more objectionable than the JewishJournal.com or hundreds of other newspapers and magazines and blogs and the works of other journalists.”
Thursday night, Rabbi Ari Kahn says: In some minds, there’s such a thing as a good rabbi and a bad rabbi. Who the good guys are and the bad guys are [is often a matter of individual whim].
I was teaching a class this week about abortion. There is a huge argument among rabbis about abortion. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was incredibly strict about abortion. He held that abortion was murder. The only thing that could justify it was if the fetus threatened the mother’s life.
I think my class saw him as one of the bad guys because he restricted individual autonomy.
About 40 years ago, there were these co-joined twins born into an Orthodox family. Reb Moshe permitted the surgical separation of the twins, even though that meant one of them would die.
The chief surgeon of the hospital at the time was C. Everett Koop. He couldn’t decide the ethics of the situation. He relied on the ruling of Reb Moshe.
Yet on plastic surgery, Reb Moshe permitted and Rav Waldenberg forbade (except in extreme cases).
A number of years ago, I did something I don’t like to do. I was on a panel discussion at Tel Aviv University with representatives from Reform, Conservative, secular and Orthodox Judaism. I was the representative of Orthodox Judaism.
All the non-Orthodox talked about Orthodox Judaism being fossilized. I thought I was at a gathering of paleontologists.
I said that 50 years ago, the Conservative movement decided to allow people to drive to shul on Shabbos. Was this a good decision or a bad decision? There are reasons you could allow somebody to break Shabbos to save a soul spiritually.
If I knew that a Jew was going to join a cult or another religion and by getting in the car and driving to them I would have a chance to stop them, I should get in the car and try to stop them. If I asked Rav Elyashiv if I should do this, he’d say drive.
In 1982, Israel was at war in Lebanon. Many Israeli soldiers went weeks without talking to their families. A phone became available on Shabbos. Should they call their parents and break Shabbos?
So they called Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and he answered the phone on Shabbos and said absolutely that all the soldiers should use the phone that Shabbos to call their parents.
Somebody later asked Rabbi Auerbach why he answered that phone call on Shabbos. He said that he knew that if his phone rang on Shabbos, it was an emergency.
So I said on the panel that the Conservative movement allowed people across the board to drive on Shabbos. This meant that Conservative Jews did not feel compelled to live within walking distance of their synagogue. The further you live from your Jewish community, the less likely you are to send your kids to a Jewish school. So this Conservative ruling promoted intermarriage and destroyed Jewish community.
I’m not very good at real life. In 1984 at age 18, I bought some slip-on dress shoes that I thought I could use for work. They turned out to be slippers. I went walking down the street and people asked me why I was wearing slippers.
My sleep doctor wants me to wear sunglasses if I use the computer or watch TV after 10 p.m.
So I go into Walgreens tonight on Pico and Robertson and look at the sunglasses and they all look girly.
I select a pair and take them to the young male clerk and ask him if guys can wear these.
“Well, they have a flower on them,” he said.
I looked more closely at the sunglasses and yes, there was a flower on the side of each glass.
“Either that or it’s an exploding grenade,” he said.
I flushed. I felt such deep shame at my incompetence.
I went back to the rack and selected some glasses without a flower.
Dennis Prager: “What role did Wall Street play in producing the current recession?”
Sowell: “They played the role of suckers who bought mortgages that weren’t worth what they paid for them.
“A system had been set up whereby the government required financial institutions to have their securities rated by three government-designated rating companies. Wall Street didn’t have a lot of choice in this. The rating companies had no way of knowing how risky these things were because these new mortgages were very different from the things these rating agencies (Standard and Poor’s, Moodys, Fitch Ratings) normally rate.
“There are securities that have been around for 100 years. They have 100 years of data on what has happened to these securities in good times and war and everything else. They were good at rating these securities. These new securities were a decade old before they collapsed yet the law required these rating agencies to pretend to know how risky they were when no one knew.”
Dennis: “Why did no one know? They were subprime loans to people who couldn’t afford them.”
Sowell: “That was true in general, but you don’t buy securities in general. You buy particular securities. What Wall Street was doing was bundling thousands of these mortgages together and selling the income stream to others. There was no way Moodys could’ve known how trust-worthy those homeowners were.”
Dennis: “Did you know?”
Sowell: “In general. In 2005, I wrote in the Wall Street Journal that these financial arrangements could collapse like a house of cards. But I wasn’t the only one saying that. But that’s very different from me looking at a particular bundle of mortgages and say how they are worth. The people at Moodys are not loan officers. Think of how much information you have to give a loan officer to get a mortgage. Moodys doesn’t see any of that. All they see is the mortgage.”
Dennis: “The original sin here was the government telling banks that you must give loans to people you don’t want to give loans to.”
Thursday, January 06, 2011 Radio Show
H2: Basic Sowell
Prager H2: Dennis talks to the great Thomas Sowell, scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essential book Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy has now been issued in a 4th edition.
Jan. 6. Dennis Prager: “My wife mentioned how much we enjoyed The King’s Speech to Mormon friends. Could they see it? It has an R-rating.
“There’s no violence. No sex. Just 30 seconds of profanity. It was necessary and funny.
“It’s as modest a film as you can get. There aren’t even any sexual innuendos.”
“The religious should rethink their R-rated ban and take it movie by movie.
“R is for children. I would think twice before taking a ten year old to The King’s Speech.
“Schindler’s List is a searing movie about the Holocaust. Rated R. There are two scenes with female nudity.”
“How could you depict the horror of the Holocaust without an R-rating? The same thing for the Hanoi Hilton.”
“The rating system is for kids. It should not be your guide. There are PG-13 films that are unbelievably raunchy and pointless and vapid.”
“I don’t think there’s an NC-17 movie worth seeing.”
Chaya: “If I have standards in my life about language, every good parent does, and I say that this kind of language is inappropriate and it should never come out of your mouth…”
Dennis: “What about 15 [year old]?”
Chaya: “The same thing holds. If you go to a movie like The King’s Speech, where you are hearing that kind of language, the teenager is getting the message. You are sending the message to your teen that in certain situations it’s OK.”
Dennis: “In certain situations it is OK.”
Chaya: “No. Not in my house.”
Dennis: “Let’s say you are watching a WWII movie in your house about American soldiers fighting the Nazis and a guy is horribly wounded and he yells out an expletive but the movie is about fighting the Nazis and ending the Holocaust and Nazism, but you wouldn’t let your kid go because the soldier yells out an expletive?”
Chaya: “But I’m wondering about the message for my kid?”
Dennis: “The message for your kid is unless you are getting blown up by a grenade while fighting bad guys, don’t curse.”
Chaya: “You know how teenager’s minds work. They’re going to extrapolate from that…”
Dennis: “They’ll extrapolate from that that my parents have common sense.”
Paul: “I wouldn’t go to the movie (The King’s Speech) or let my teenagers go. It’s not necessary to contain profanity or anything graphic to convey a message.”
Dennis: “Let’s take Schindler’s List. I don’t think one in 10,000 people who know about the Holocaust know that most of the Jews murdered were murdered while naked. I don’t know how you convey that idea without nakedness.”
A Catholic youth minister says we have to engage with art. He recommends Fargo.
Dennis: “I hated it. I thought it made light of murder.”
Caller: “My kids hear this language at school. They live in the real world.”
Another caller describes the profound effect Saving Private Ryan had on him at age 13.
Dennis: “Why would an American want to keep their child or themselves from seeing Saving Private Ryan. I think it should be obligatory on every American to see the hell of D-Day.”
Dennis: “It may have been the most violent movie I saw.”
“If you raise your children in a home that tries to convey messages that there is holy and profane, to be able to juxtapose your home with things kids see in a film may be good. They are going to leave your house one day.”
“I want to encourage Hollywood to make ennobling films, even if there is an expletive that is important in the context of the message conveyed.”
Thursday, January 06, 2011 Radio Show
H1: Movie Ratings
Prager H1: Dennis argues that religious adults should not be so rigid as to miss worthwhile R rated movies like “The King’s Speech.” He also makes the case that parents should expose their age appropriate children to important R rated films like “Schindler’s List.”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
