* The point of the plagues is to let the world know about God. Why is God important?
– God is the transcendent source of morality. Right and wrong is not just a matter of personal opinion or societal construction but is absolute thanks to its divine source.
– God manipulates nature. We are to dominate nature. We are to dominate our own natures. We can’t excuse ourselves by saying we’re just acting naturally.
– There is an afterlife. Either there is an afterlife or God is evil.
– God means we should have transcendence and holiness in our lives. I sense a dramatic difference in this regard between a secular home and a religious home.
– God gives life meaning. And direction.
– God means we are not just the product of nature and nurture. We have free will.
– With God, we are all brothers and sisters.
– If there is a God, then no man is God. Pharoah is not God. Jesus is not God.
* Rashi says that during the ninth plague — the plague of darkness — the Israelites were given X-ray vision so they could go into Egyptian homes and scout them for treasure. Icky!
* Judaism makes no peace with suffering. By contrast, much of Christianity holds that suffering is Christlike. Jesus suffered and so do we. Buddhism makes peace with suffering. No system has less peace with suffering than Judaism. All other systems seem to explain it away.
* Is the Israeli army necessary? If Jews simply study Torah and observe the commandments, won’t G-d keep them safe?
* Dennis Prager: “I never heard ‘God loves you’ until I heard it from Christians.'”
* If a cell phone goes off in an Orthodox shul on Shabbat, what will be the reaction? The reaction in various types of Orthodox shuls? Would someone be thrown out? If a man showed up to an Orthodox shul with an Asian girlfriend plainly not Jewish, in how many shuls would he be automatically thrown out?
* God won’t take Jews out of Egypt until they do something. God teaches delayed gratification.
* The paschal sacrifice requires a lot of time consuming and public activity, including the swathing of blood on the lintels. The Jews could not fear the Egyptians. Similarly, Judaism today is time consuming and requires public rituals. God doesn’t want the Jews to eat raw meat.
The lamb blood on the lintel will “be a sign for you.” It’s not a sign for God. There are no magical qualities to sheep’s blood. Mezuzot on the door won’t protect you.
* Jews invented collective memory, says Dennis Prager. There’s nothing like it in Christianity. Jews re-enact the Passover every year. When Jews observe the Sabbath, they commemorate the creation of the universe and the Exodus from Egypt. Collective memory is a central mental idea of Judaism.
Jeff emails: “This is terribly incorrect, and why I think you really need to go back to university and get a PhD properly so that you can do the work you are capable of instead of farting away with people even less educated than you (and you looked so alive talking to the therapist as well).
“This issue was actually a critique of Judaism, that it was more like ancient mythology. Heschel wrote “The Sabbath” specifically to refute this argument, claiming that it was time the Jews sacralized, etc. Gosh, I read Eliade when I was at YU…”
* Judaism says that events in this world have significance. Jews are not asked to remember visions and theology but a this-worldly historical event.
* What do you think of Sarah Silverman? “Mommy is one of the chosen people, and Daddy believes that Jesus is magic.”
* Moses and Aaron’s story with Pharoah reminds me of my own journey as a blogger. At first it was, “Who’s Luke Ford?” Then it was, “How can this nothing cause me so much trouble?” Then it was, “Bring me Luke Ford. I need to talk to him.”
This is happened to me several times on different beats.
People treat you carelessly when they think you have no influence. When their perception of your influence changes, they change how they treat you. Become influential enough and suddenly, all doors are open to you. If I got a big enough story, President Obama would speak to me. I remember doing a story about Bill Gates and getting a quick response from his team. My peers who had the same story I did were too afraid to publish anything damaging about the world’s richest man (or close to it).
Moshe gives Pharoah warnings before sending plagues but after getting contempt from Pharoah, Moshe sends plagues without warnings.
When a subject treats me with contempt and refuses to answer my questions (such as rabbis Steven Weil, Avrohom Union), I post my blog posts without warning. When a subject talks to me, I send him an email about what I am working on and I welcome his response prior to publication (many times I do not publish at all because I learn from his response there is no story). Contempt leads to contempt. Respect garners respect.
Some people understand right and wrong but everyone understands power. Pharoah respects power, not morality.
If you are a new kid and you show up at your new school and you’re nice, then a lot of people will probably try to bully you, but if you show up, find the biggest bully in the school, then walk up to the bully and punch him in the nose, everyone will treat you with respect. Once Moshe started punching Pharoah and Egypt in the nose, he got a lot of respect.
The producer of the show “Left, Right and Center”, writes: “Just a note to all of you who’ve been such loyal and engaged conversationalists and combatants on this comments engine: After 15 years of producing this show, your humble producer Sarah Spitz is officially signing off. This was a decision I came to on my own, no one is shoving me out the door…But between us, I’ll tell you in all sincerity, I hate the way politics is played now. I want our elected officials to do the business the people sent them to Washington, to city councils, to state legislatures, to do. That’s not the way they play and I no longer want to be part of the process that perpetuates a broken system. That goes for left, right AND center, I am an equal opportunity disillusionist.”
Is the name Sarah Spitz familiar to you? She’s the one who said she’d do nothing to help Rush Limbaugh if he was writhing on the ground dying.
And she says she “hates the way politics is played now.” Isn’t this a bit rich?
I’ve said a lot of shocking and vulgar things in my life but I have never spoken about refusing to help someone dying. I’ve never spoken about wishing a non-criminal dead, let alone go into such gruesome detail publicly. I would never in a million years speak as Sarah Spitz did about Rush Limbaugh.
And what was more incredible about her remarks was that nobody on Journolist raised an objection to them. I guess these types of remarks are standard among leftist elites such as Ezra Klein.
Sarah says nobody pushed her out the door. I am skeptical of this claim. Who would want to employ such a producer who books guests? What non-leftist guests would want to deal with her?
If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.
But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio (update: Spitz was a producer for NPR affiliate KCRW for the show Left, Right & Center), that isn’t what you’d do at all.
In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.
In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”
Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.
Sarah Spitz corrects an earlier version of this post:
Your headline is wrong. I have not left KCRW. I have handed over my producing duties for Left, Right & Center, that’s all.
And by the way, your comment about “making comments publicly” is also inaccurate. My comments — made rashly in anger, emotionally, in a moment of weakness while taking 24/7 care of my mother, who passed away in September after 9 years of caring for her — were made on a discussion group e-list in private to its members. And I apologized for it.
I have no idea how many people were on the list. The list was private and comments made on it were never intended for publication. Clearly there is no such thing as privacy in the Internet era.
I emailed Sarah:
One heated comment made in what you thought was privacy suddenly becomes the primary way that thousands of us who have otherwise never thought about you see you. We still live in the age of Google.
What is it about Rush Limbaugh that you despise so much? Do you feel the same way about his equivalents on the left such as Frank Rich and Keith Olbermann?
I’ve always thought of Rush as primarily an entertainer, therefore he is either entertaining or not. Either way, no big deal.
I am right-wing but Michael Moore never upsets me because I look at him as an entertainer and judge him on that basis.
Bill: “I’m all right. I’m having a tough time getting another girl for the Rose Parade. I know who I want but I don’t know if I can get a hold of her.”
Luke: “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Bill: “I wanted to be a race car driver. And then I wanted to be a movie star.”
“I was a good looking guy and the girls all liked me and so a lot of people thought I should be in the movies and I started getting ideas like that.”
Luke: “How did you become a modeling agent?”
Bill: “I had that idea in the back of my mind all the time as I was growing up. Then I got into sales work and I was very good at it. I was with Proctor & Gamble and Lehman Brothers. I married a wonderful girl, Mary Egner, who was an artist. She was from a wealthy family in New Jersey. They were number one in Who’s Who in America.
“We went to California together. She to be a great artist and me to be a movie star. We saved our money up and got married and came out here.
“We were married for about three years. She had an unfortunate death in the family. Her mother. It screwed up our marriage because she inherited a fortune and they wanted to keep it away from me. They appeared and ruined our marriage.”
Luke: “How did you start up your modeling agency?”
Bill: “I had already started it. I had the idea that Pasadena was a good place because they had the kind of girls I grew up with back in New York. A real clean-cut outdoorsy look. And I started with three girls.
“When my wife left and went back East and she decided not to come back, I had nothing more to do than to continue where I was and I made a big success of it.”
Luke: “Was there a turning point?”
Bill: “I realized I could be very successful because I had people come to me and want to put up a 100 franchises nationwide with no money out of my pocket. After thinking it all over, I turned them down. But I realized I had something. I was the only teen agency in the country. And the original.
“Look magazine did a beautiful feature on me in its July 3, 1951 issue. It was called, ‘School For Teenage Models’. It looked like an ad and it did a world for me.”
Luke: “How did you discover Cheryl Tiegs?”
Bill: “When I spoke at Alhambra High School on career day. I picked her out of over 200 girls. She was 16. I thought she had a great look. Nobody called me for 30 days and then all of a sudden someone called. It was her mother. It turned out her father was an undertaker. Cheryl had a personality just like one. I made her a famous model.”
Luke: “How long was she with you?”
Bill: “Four-and-a-half years.”
Luke: “And how did you find Linda Gray?”
Bill: “The same way. When I spoke at Notre Dame Catholic over at Santa Monica, I picked her out of about 150 girls. I gave her a card and told her to give it to her mother and if she was interested, to call me.”
Luke: “And Barbie Benton?”
Bill: “Barbie Benton was a pain in the ass. Her real name is Barbara Klein. She was Miss Junior California and was down here on a social visit, and a prominent photographer spotted her and called me and said, ‘We’ve got a girl here who’s a cover girl. Do you want me to bring her over if she is interested?’ I said, ‘Yeah, bring her right over.’
“I worked with her and got her a cover assignment that weekend she was here. Then she went home. She lived in Carmichael, outside of Sacramento. Her father is a prominent doctor. But she was real hot to model for me but I didn’t like her mother. Her mother brought her down for some testing. I did some testing. I made her mother wait in the office, in a hot office, for a couple of hours.
“And the next week, she called. I told the mother right over the phone, ‘I don’t think that I can work with your daughter. I don’t care for you. I know I’ll never get along with you.’ She blew her top.
“Barbie kept hounding me. The next call I got from her, she was at UCLA. She had just been accepted. And that’s how it started. I kept putting her off. One day she said, ‘Mr. Adrian, if you don’t take me as a model, I am going to answer this thing called ‘Playboy After Dark’, a TV show put on by a guy named Hugh Hefner.’ And she said, ‘I’m going to try for it.’
“That day she went over, Hugh Hefner happened to come down and watch what was going down, and he spotted her and that’s how it all happened.”
Luke: “How about Kim Carnes?”
Bill: “Kim Carnes is a San Marino girl. A beautiful small girl. Just a lovely girl in every department. She did well with me even though she was so tiny. She became Junior Miss California through my promotion and she was very grateful for that.
“I remember her asking me to listen to some songs she had. She and this girl were writing songs. She said, ‘Mr. Adrian, I love the modeling but I know I am very limited because I’m small, I want to be a famous songwriter.’ I said, ‘Oh Christ.’
“She said, ‘Will you come up and let me play a couple of tunes for you. I think I’ve got a couple of hits.’ I said, ‘Well, all right.’ I went and listened and they sounded like everything else I heard in rock n’ roll. But I told her they were good.
“And she went from there and she made it. I didn’t help her much get into the song business.”
Luke: “Why do you think you’ve been so successful in the modeling business?”
Bill: “Because I’m honest. Because I’m straight-forward. Because I’m damn good at picking talent. And I know what to do with it. Eileen Ford said I had the best eye for talent in the business.”
Luke: “How do you think you developed that idea?”
Bill: “I was born with that gift. I’ve always had an eye for the girls. The funny part of it is, Luke, that I am not very interested in models. I’m interested in girls on the heavy side. The plump side. That round old fashioned look. But I have a real good eye for talent, for girls who can do things.”
Luke: “Have you ever fallen in love with any of your models?”
Bill: “Yeah, I think I fell in love with one, but I didn’t realize it. I never admitted it. I still don’t. I don’t know if she knew it or not. Nothing ever happened. We were very good friends. I am very good friends with her family.
“There was another one who was determined that I was in love with her. I thought that maybe I was, but she was impossible. She was just so aggressive, so forward. I’m glad I broke that one off.
“She became a famous pianist. That’s what I told her she was really good at. I said, ‘You’re OK as a model but you’re sensational as a pianist.’ She lived next door to the Reagans. When Reagan became president, she was invited to play at the White House. She was on all the big shows. She had her own program. She was terrific. That was Linda Gentile. She changed her last name to ‘Gentille.’
“She said, ‘This business is all run by Jews. They’ll see my name spelled ‘Gentile’ and they’re not going to like me.”
Luke: “How many times have you been married?”
Bill: “Twice. Both times for three years to the same girl. I married her twice out of sympathy.”
Luke: “How did your work in modeling affect your social life with women?”
Bill: “I got very very dominant and very impatient with women in general because I could read them like a book. And I didn’t want anything from them. But I knew how to promote. They’re way ahead of men. I think women are ten times smarter than men. So I just went about my life. I’m very frank with women. I don’t get involved any more. I had lots of romances in my twenties and a few affairs in my thirties and forties but it doesn’t bother me any more. When I see a girl I know I could really go for if I was young again, that’s as far as it goes. I don’t do anything about it. I may tell her that. I’ve said, ‘I wish I was 30 years younger. I’d be a candidate for you.'”
Luke: “Were women you dated intimidated because you worked with models?”
Bill: “Yeah. They all got jealous. One girl is like my daughter. Omega Mitchell. I love her very much, but I love her as a daughter, not as romance. When her mother died, I stepped in and helped her. I’ve got her to a point now where she is very successful. She’s the administrator of a hospital. I got her into nursing when I knew that I was getting older and something might happen.
“When she got older, she became my assistant. Then I gave her the agency but after about three months, she wanted to give it back to me. She said it was too difficult.”
Luke: “What do you love and what do you hate about your work?”
Bill: “What I hate about my work, well, like right now, this decision I’ve got to make about which girl I’m gonna get when I get through with you for that float. I’ve got three girls in mind. I’ve got a good reason to give it to each one of them. I know my favorite, but I can’t get a hold of her. So it is going to the second girl. She’s the best one of all. She’d do more for the agency. The third one is very beautiful but she’s every narrow. She doesn’t know much about what is going on. Whichever one I pick, I’m going to feel bad for the other two. The one I should pick is not one of my favorites. I don’t care much for her, but she’s real social and she’s a big time operator at her high school. She’d do me a lot of good so I’ll probably pick her if I can get her. I don’t know who the hell I can get.”
Luke: “What type of girls become your favorites?”
Bill: “Girls that are understanding, sympathetic, have compassion. Girls that I can talk to like a Dutch Uncle or just like a model agent. Girls who will listen and don’t think that they know everything.”
Luke: “What percentage of the girls you work with are like that?”
Bill: “If they don’t become too successful, I’d say that maybe 40% are like that, but if they hit it big time, they start believing their own publicity, and they start believing that I was just put on earth to discover them and to get them going, but they think that they did it all. That’s 90% of them. Fortunately, the other 10% do remember me. I always have girls coming back. Some of the big ones have remembered me all the way, but most of them have just taken what they could and gone on.”
Luke: “Who were some of the big ones who remembered you?”
Bill: “Linda Gray appreciated everything I did for her. Linda Gentille was very appreciative, but she was over-bearing. I had to get rid of her. She ended up working for Donald Trump. At his hotel, she was it. She could do what she wanted. She was the number one attraction.
“They opened up a place up the street called the Mirage and she left Trump to go up there. Trump was really upset. She was supposed to start a couple of days later.
“She had this manager. I have a suspicion that he was also her boyfriend.
“She went and tried the piano out. She played it for about five minutes and said, I’m not going to play this piano. I don’t like it.
“They said, you better play it. This is a brand new piano. My boss paid $10,000 for it. She said, I don’t care if you paid $100,000, I’m not going to play it.
“He called up his boss and his boss says if she doesn’t play that piano, she doesn’t work there. He told her that and she said, that’s fine, I won’t work for you.
“So, she couldn’t go back to Trump. She was embarrassed. So she opened up a little music school in her own house in Atlantic City.”
Luke: “What do you remember about Marilyn Monroe?”
Bill: “I met her three times.
“The first time I met her, I was trying to get into the business. I picked up this woman (Miss Emmeline Snively) who had this place called Blue Book Models in the older Ambassador Hotel. Miss Snively was very nice and let me go over there. I took a real snobby gorgeous girl from USC with me to get her opinion.
“Miss Snively showed me everything she did. She was just as kind and nice as she could be.
“All of a sudden, she says, ‘Three of my girls are out at the swimming pool. They’re doing a story with the LA Examiner.’ She said, ‘If you want to go out there, I’ll introduce you to them and you can see what you think of them.’
“I turned around to the girl with me and said, ‘They look like three hookers to me.’ And the girl smiled and said, ‘They do to me too.’
“I never thought any more about her.
“About a year later, I was starting to get a little done. I was interviewed on a television show at CBS on the old Vine St. place. I was waiting for my ride up front.
“This girl comes sauntering up the street. She was very cute. I said, I know this sounds corny, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before? And she looked at me and said, ‘You know something? You look familiar too.’
“I said, ‘I swear I met you somewhere. What do you do for a living?’
“She said, ‘I did some modeling for Blue Book Models.’
“I said, ‘Miss Snively.’
“She said, ‘Yes. I met you at the swimming pool.’
“I said, ‘That’s right. Which one are you?’
“She said, ‘I’m Marilyn Monroe. I’m living across the street at the Studio club for $7 a week. A lot of young actresses stay there when they are trying to get started.’
“I said, ‘How are you doing?’ She said, ‘I just got signed at 20th Century Fox. I’m getting $75 a week on a six month contract.’ She said, ‘I’ll never last. I can’t act. I’m no good at it.’
“I said, ‘I hope you have good luck. God bless you.’ She said OK. My ride came and that was that.
“The third time I saw her and the last time was at the San Anita race track. I was doing publicity for the race track with models. And I had a pass to the best box in the place. And I sat there with my late sister and I said, ‘I’m going to put a bet on a horse. I don’t know anything about horses but I’m going to put a bet on one.’ And she said, ‘Put one for me too. Here!’
“She gave me $2. As I went up to the line, I could see this knock-out girl from behind in a short black silk dress. She was a blonde.
“As I got near to the line, she happened to turn around and looked my way and she said, ‘You’re Mr. Adrian.’
“I said, ‘For God’s sakes, you’re that same girl, aren’t you?’
“She said, ‘Yeah, I’m Marilyn Monroe.’
“We got talking. I said, ‘How are you doing?’
“She said, ‘Oh, I’m terrible. I go to acting classes every day. They’ve renewed my contract. I get a $150 a week. But I can’t act. They put me in a little part in a movie, a tiny speaking part. When that thing comes out next week, I’ll be finished. I know I’ll never go anywhere from there.”
“I said, ‘For God’s sakes, that’s wonderful. What is it? I want to go see it.’
“She said, ‘I’m not going to tell you what it is. I don’t want you to see it. I’m going to be terrible in it.’
“I said, ‘Hey, look, Marilyn. Tell me what it is. I want to see it. I have a lot of confidence in you and I have a feeling that you are going to be somebody.’
Luke: “What affect does modeling have on teenagers?”
Bill: “It has a very different affect on different people. Some girls are just so excited about it that they can’t stop and every little thing they do, they just love it. Other girls are excited about it when they get started, but they’ve heard a lot about me and when they come in here, they think they’re going to become famous and I have to get that out of their head to start with. Very few people become famous in modeling or acting or anything.
“I had a girl one day who was just starting out. I had an appointment with a man like you who wanted to look over some of the girls. He was doing a story. She left. I got rid of her because he was there.
“I said to him, ‘Here are some pictures. Here are some of my best girls. Which one do you want to do a story on?’
“He said, ‘I don’t have to look at those pictures. I’ve already picked my girl. The girl that was in the office.’
“I said, ‘For Christ sakes, she’s just starting with me.’
“He said, ‘That’s the one I want.’
“So I got her. And he used her. And what do you think happened? It went to her head completely. She was worthless in a modeling class. The girls couldn’t get along with her. She thought she knew everything.
“The next thing that happened was that I got a call from an agency up on Sunset Bl. The guy said, ‘Hey Adrian, if you don’t get this goddamn girl out of my office, I’m never going to call you again for a model.’
“I said, ‘What’s the matter with her?’
“He said, ‘She’s sitting on my desk using my phone making an appointment with her boyfriend for dinner. She’s impossible to talk to. I don’t want anything to do with her.’
“That was the end of her. I called her father and said, ‘Come and get your daughter. I don’t want to work with her anymore. She’s impossible.’
“He said, ‘Well, it’s because she got that job too easy. It went to her head. She’s only 16. I’m sorry.’
“That’s how it affects some of them.”
Luke: “How about parents? Have they changed in relationship to their daughters?”
Bill: “Yes. In the old days when I got started here and I started getting publicity in Look magazine and people started hearing my name, because they were very suspicious of me when I started, they wondered who that guy was with all the pretty girls, what the hell is he up to?
“They saw this one girl who was doing very well with me… Just a gorgeous girl and I bawled the hell out of her a few times and this girl went home and she came back the next day and she worked hard. Well, the difference is, in those days, when I would bawl them out, they would go home and their parents would say in these rich homes, ‘You show him that you can do that.’ They’d come back and they would show me.
“But today, if something doesn’t go right and they don’t like it, and they go home and tell their mother, their mother will say, ‘Oh darling, forget about that. Remember how you said you were interested in water skiing? Well, let’s look into that. Forget the modeling.’ That’s the difference.”
Luke: “Has the type of look that makes for success changed over the decades?”
Bill: “I started out with the idea of promoting the natural look, the All-American girl. I wasn’t well accepted because the sophisticate was the one they wanted, the tall, thin psuedo-sophisticated girl. My girl was not that type. But today it has gotten to be more and more the type of girl that I promote. The natural look is a hot number now.”
Luke: “Is this different from the very skinny look?”
Bill: “Back in New York, they still have to have that skinny look to model fashion but they are getting a little more accepting of a more natural figure. There are a few agencies that do the plump girl. What they hell do they call that? They have a name for it.”
Luke: “Curvy?”
Bill: “Yeah. But they haven’t been real successful. The skinny girl is still the big thing. I’ve never been into that. I’ve always worked with Juniors, which is a smaller-sized girl and usually clean-cut and outdoor looking. That’s the type of girl I feature.”
Luke: “Why do you think the fashion world likes really skinny girls who almost look like boys?”
Bill: “They have the idea that they show the clothes off better. They’re not selling girls. They’re selling clothes. And they feel that that type of girl highlights the clothes for the buyer.”
Luke: “Would you say that modeling is a healthy career for teenage girls?”
Bill: “A modeling career is a healthy career for any age girl if she uses it right, if she takes advantage of it. If she conducts her life, goes to school, does her homework, has friends, and models on the side, it’s a good thing. I don’t think it is a good thing if they quit school and just go all out for the modeling.
“In the old days with that San Marino bunch, an education was first. A good college was second. And then a good marriage was third. That’s why most of them went to college — to make a good marriage.”
Luke: “How has your business changed?”
Bill: “This recession has kicked me in the ass. I’ve been through a two or three recessions and I never felt anything. But this one has really hit me. And people are so enthusiastic when they come in. I do an interview. If I’m interested, they know it. If I’m not, they know it.
“We part friends. If I think they’re good, I make a little test of them. I don’t charge for it. I provided girls for over 700 Kodak ads in 32 years.
“If I think the girl is good, I find out from that test. I find out about her personality and her attitude. I don’t think that has changed too much except that the parents don’t have the money to send the girl to the modeling school.
“I tell them, if you’re not in a position to pay for this, then forget it. You can live without modeling.
“Too many of them think about it and take my advice.”
Luke: “How important is a modeling school to produce a model?”
Bill: “I have the head teacher here who trains the Tournament of Roses queen and court. That’s very prestigious. They hire her to pick the whole wardrobe.”
“Right now I have about 12 girls in my modeling class. I have about 40 people in my agency.”
Luke: “How often are drugs a problem with your models?”
Bill: “I’ve never known it to be a problem.”
Luke: “What are the good things about growing older?”
Bill: “People start opening doors for you. And smiling when you have a lousy look on your face and you don’t feel very good. What I don’t like about growing older is that many people who are younger, people like you, who do a lot of listening, and many times think ‘That bastard, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’.”
Luke: “How do you like living in Pasadena?”
Bill: “I don’t like living in Pasadena. I never did and I never will. It’s full of snobby people with old money who came out here from the East, set up shop with beautiful homes and did a lot of entertaining… The generations have come down to now where there are a lot of people from other places who live here and making it more of a city but you still have a good percentage of people with a big bump on their shoulder… Some of them don’t even have any money anymore but they still have that attitude.”
“The other thing I don’t like about it is the goddamn Tournament of Roses white suiters. I can’t stand those bastards walking around like they are big-time operators wearing these white suits. They get a big head on their shoulders.”
Luke: “What keeps you working?”
Bill: “It gives me a reason to get up in the morning. Every time I get disgusted with these girls, some little voice calls on the phone like they just did a minute ago and says, ‘Are you Mr. Adrian? I’m interested in modeling.’ And it starts all over again.”
Rabbi Rabbs emails: Perhaps the most extreme case might be that of Michelle Malkin who is an American with Filipino ancestry. Her wiki lists her as a convert to evangelical Christianity, but that didn’t stop her Jew husband from marrying her, and it didn’t stop the Jewish World Review from providing her a column as if she is somehow a spokesperson for Jews.
From Craigslist: And why does the NYT seem to feature such couples so often, and for the most inane stories….coffee table accidents??!!
And there’s more….
Nicholas Kristof NYTimes writer…his wife is CHINESE….and I saw an NYTimes video he made that talked about how he bought two Cambodian sex slaves all so he could free them. Awe shucks how romantic…the american white boy comes to save the day for the young asian girls!
Matt Gross…another jew boy NYTimes writer with an ASIAN wife….
And this article features a CHINESE woman with an AMERICAN (read: WHITE) boyfriend living in China
How does the NYTImes manage to find so many white male/asian female people from all over the world to write about? Clearly the NYTimes is run by NY Jew boys who often have ASIAN wives, and of course many of their friends and friends of friends are the same….
And why are asian women so fixated on finding a white husband? why do they turn against their own asian men in such droves, and then use every excuse in the book to try and explan their ‘preference’ for white men? why isn’t WHITE fever ever discussed or acknowledged? I suspect that of the men who have ‘yellow fever’ that in fact, they only have it cuz they know the asian WOMEN have a thing for THEM. So if you’re a white guy who can’t get a date, and you know how easy asian women are for white guys, then of COURSE you’re gong to ‘prefer them’, cuz they make it so easy for you. All you gotta do is be white!
President Obama earlier this month signed into law a measure to pay American Indians and black farmers a total of $4.6 billion to cover decades of government mistreatment. Now, a Republican congressman says the GOP-controlled House next year will hold hearings to investigate the settlement, which he says amounts to “reparations.”
Conservative Rep. Steve King of Iowa told local radio station KCIM that the Pigford settlement, which was part of the legislation, “is full of fraud” and “amounts to paying reparations to black farmers in America. We don’t do reparations in America.”
King said he expects Republicans to examine this issue and other issues Democrats may be hesitant to investigate, such as the re-organization of the defunct group ACORN. This isn’t the first time King has criticized the settlement, Talking Points Memo points out.
The Pigford class-action lawsuit (named for Timothy Pigford, a black farmer from North Carolina who was an original plaintiff) alleged that local offices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture practiced widespread discrimination against black farmers when awarding loans and other aid.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last month defended the settlement on CBSNews.com’s “Washington Unplugged”, disputing suggestions that the suit is “full of fraud.” Of the 17,000 or 18,000 cases that were adjudicated in the first Pigford settlement, only three were found to be marginally questionable, Vilsack said.
“It’s a fair indication there were problems that needed to be addressed,” he said. “We’re going to try to turn this page and move onto a more positive chapter in civil rights in the USDA.”
As the USDA adjudicates the new round of cases, it is also examining the way the department currently distributes loans, according to Vilsack. The USDA has hired an outside consultant to review its operation in the 16 states that led to these claims and will implement any necessary changes next year.
Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: “The Answer“)[2] is a hip-hop group from Cape Town, South Africa consisting of three members Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek. The band self-identifies as a mélange of several diverse cultures.[3]
Die Antwoord lead vocalist Ninja (born Watkin Tudor Jones) was a part of the South African hip-hop scene for many years, fronting such acts as The Original Evergreen, MaxNormal.TV and The Constructus Corporation.[4] He is known for adopting different stage personas. In the case of Die Antwoord his persona is Ninja: a vulgar and aggressive character who is very different from his previous incarnations. When asked whether Ninja was a character he said, “Ninja is, how can I say, like Superman is to Clark Kent. The only difference is, I don’t take off this fokken Superman suit.”[5]
Die Antwoord performs music which incorporates many Zef elements and references. Zef is a South African slang term that describes a unique South African style which is modern and trashy and also includes out-of-date, discarded cultural and style elements.[9] Both Ninja and Yolandi have offered definitions of zef. Yolandi was quoted as saying, “It’s associated with people who soup their cars up and rock gold and shit. Zef is, you’re poor but you’re fancy. You’re poor but you’re sexy, you’ve got style.”[10] Their lyrics are performed in both Afrikaans and English.[3][11]
In an interview with Exclaim! magazine, the group revealed they have a five album plan. According to Ninja, “We’ll be dropping films between each of the albums, feature films… We have one we’re working on for next year called The Answer. It’s like the story of how Die Antwoord started. But that’s like, our power, and where our energy is at right now”[12] In another interview with Mother Jones magazine, the group mentioned that they already had most of the musical hooks written for a second album, tentatively titled Tension.[13]
When Cathy Seipp died in March of 2007, much of my world died with her. I dropped out of most writer gatherings, lost most of the connections I had around her, and sent my life in a different direction — towards becoming a teacher of Alexander Technique.
Cathy was my other half. We never discussed this directly but we knew it without spilling it out. That’s why we had so many fights because the connection was so intense and yet, because of circumstance, we could not cross the line from friendship to more. I often thought about taking it across the line but we never did. Never a kiss. Never an awkward conversation.
There was only one time I thought of Cathy in a sexual way — and it was the first time I went to her house. I think it was a Halloween party on a Saturday night and she dressed in some slinky bosomy number and it provoked carnal thoughts in me, even though I knew she was dying.
I consulted Yahoo Maps for the directions but they seemed too complicated, requiring passage through four freeways. I figured I could find it by feel and ended up going several miles out of my way, calling Cathy on my cell phone, and finally guided in by a flashlight-wielding Harvey Seipp (Cathy’s father) just after 7PM.
I came as an Orthodox Jew, my yarmulke from the Israeli town of Sfat, and my tzitzit (fringes) down to my knees. They’re a big hit.
I see no reason for a Torah Jew to grovel before the goyim and the assimilated Jews, trying to dress and like one of them. I wear my superiority on my fringes.
Cathy (in a mouse outfit), her daughter Cecile (and some of her young friends), and Nancy Rommelman (dressed as a cat) looked particularly stunning. I felt instantly at home while munching on Nancy’s chocolate brownies. I almost asked her to sit on my lap but I figured I should put up a pious front, and besides, she got married and has a 14 year old daughter.
Cathy Seipp writes me:
I was a cat, not a mouse; Nancy was a cavewoman, not a cat; and why do you always say Roman “Gans?” Gross. Sounds like “glans.” Which isn’t that some sort of male organ or something? It’s Roman Genn, and he even has a good website now, rgenn.com. You could also add that he drew “Cecile” a very good picture of Arafat on a balloon which she plans to take to Sunday school…. And you could write that David Finnigan has “The Big Lebowski” on DVD — yes, he owns it!
Luke had on a yarmulke and tzitzit, those long fringey things Orthodox Jewish men wear, which he doesn’t usually wear [LF: outside shirt]. He told everyone he has the longest and most impressive tzitzit south of Pico, but since I’ve never seen a man’s tzitzit up close before, I’ll just have to take his word for it. He was actually on good behavior, not like a few weeks ago when he’d drastically reduced the lithium and, as Emmanuelle put it in her French accent, was “unbear-r-r-r-able,” and I think he made a far better impression on my friend Greg Critser and his wife Antoinette than the last time he met them. But that was years before I myself had met Luke, and people say that he was far less socially acceptable in those days.
I had a long talk with the spirited redhead Jill Stewart (who only got where she is because of her looks and lack of fear in using them, according to her critics). I complained that I can’t write description. She says that’s not true. I describe women well.
Mickey Kaus came in an Al Gore mask that he only took off for a couple of seconds. He stayed in character most of the night. He put his hand on my shoulder and said he’d done some research into me and found out that I was a big hypocrite. Boy, that must’ve taken some digging. That Mickey is a regular LA Times investigative reporter.
Mickey, Jill and others left around 10PM for illustrator Eric Almendrahl’s party in North Hollywood.
Roman Glands, National Review illustrator from Russia, says the Richard Riordan issue of LA Examiner owes him $200.
Cecile eats squid in front of me, taunting me in a teenage manner reminiscent of David Poland.
Luke: “Do you hate yourself as a Jew?”
Cecile takes a crunch. “It’s not so bad. You should try it.”
Luke: “Why don’t you try heroin too? It’s not so bad. Just shoot it into your veins.”
Jill: “You’re giving weird advice tonight.”
Cathy: “Tonight? Why is tonight different from all other nights?”
Many goyim came to the party, some quite smart, like Greg Critser and his lovely wife Antoinette. The champagne glass is based on her.
Some revolutionaires stormed the barricades of Cathy’s house but we drove them away with harsh Jewish invective. They wanted to take Antoinette to the guillotine.
I sit near Rand Sindberg much of the night. I talk to Debbie Gendel’s husband Morgan. I must interview him. He’s not only a pretty face, a wonderful husband, and a lousy Jew, but an accomplished television screenwriter and producer.
Hey Morgan, please don’t back out of that interview offer because of that “lousy Jew” remark. It was meant as satire. I was poking fun of my own tendency towards self-righteousness and judgmentalism. It was a joke about the fleeting nature of religious and moral truth, and an acknowledgment of the universal nature of relativity.
Author David Rensin brings along his 13-year old son, who’s a fervent libertarian, has hair down to almost his waist, and fingernails painted black.
I call Moxie “Molly” after a pretty blonde I met on the Internet. Read her party report.
I drink five glasses of water. I don’t trust the kashrut in this place, except from Nancy, ’cause she’s so pious.
Cecile welcomes me into her room where all the kids are. She introduces me as a big deal. She gives me a tour of the house, including Cathy’s bedroom, which did not appear filled with erotic lingerie, but rather with books.
Harvey Seipp lives downstairs.
His friend David Crawley told me I wasted too much energy… And I was thinking, on what? Blogging? Pursuing women? Rooting for the Dallas Cowboys? No, he said religion. It was bunk.
Dennis Prager came back live to the radio Thursday. He took Tuesday and Wednesday off. He’s working furiously to finish his next book — the case for American values.
Dennis: “How much of my childhoood was unprogrammed. I remember visiting my grandparents for the Sabbath. In the afternoon after synagogue, my grandparents would take a nap. I was left with about three hours with nothing to do… I loved visiting them. I wasn’t a reader then. I was eight, nine years old.
“I sat with the chair that was at the piano. I just took the swivel chair and I would imagine I was a New York city bus driver and the seat was the steering wheel. I’d announce what street we were at. I’d open the door for passengers. There was no TV. There was no electronic entertainment.”
Dennis says that the more he studies the issue of delaying of Sunday night’s game between Philadelphia and Minnesota until Tuesday night, the more he is convinced that this is a big deal.
The game was canceled before one flake of snow fell.
An hour before game time, the city had less than six inches of snow on the ground.
Have we all become wimps?
When was the last time the NFL suspended a game for weather?
Dennis tells a caller: “You are 32. You are used to this. I am not.”
“Every call I’ve had from a caller under 40 has agreed with the postponement of Sunday’s game. You are used to being told what is good for you. You have been told your whole life — health uber alles. Safety uber alles. Adventure is risky.”
The news media aren’t safety uber alles on terrorism. But on weather.
We live in an age that values freedom less than equality, safety, health.
“There is nothing that less develops character than getting things for free.”
It was Dec. 14, 1958, and I was a 13-year-old boy living in New York City. I was at Yankee Stadium watching my (then) beloved Giants play the Cleveland Browns. We had to win to force the Browns into a playoff to decide who would be in the National Football League’s championship game. There was less than two minutes to go, it was dark, and, worse yet, there were swirling winds and a driving snowstorm. Pat Summerall, the Giants’ placekicker, lined up 49 yards away. If he didn’t make it, the Giants would be eliminated. Given the conditions, I didn’t think he had a chance. He was a straightaway kicker, and he drove it with everything he had.
Some 52 years later, I can still close my eyes and see the ball soaring through the darkness, the snow and the wind. He made it. The Giants won.
That game remains etched in my memory. It captures the magic of football – a game that is played regardless of weather conditions. The NFL robbed me and thousands of other fans of the chance to make some new magical memories by canceling the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings that was to have been played in Philadelphia Sunday night.
It was inconceivable that the league would call off such a game. In the movie “A League of Their Own,” Tom Hanks, manager of a women’s professional baseball team, utters the famous lines, “Crying? There’s no crying in baseball!” Cancel a football game because of bad weather? There’s no canceling a game for bad weather in football. This is the sport in which Adam Vinatieri kicked a winning field goal through the driving snow in the famous “Tuck” game, in which the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Diego Chargers played an American Football Conference championship game in a minus-64-degree windchill factor, in which Bart Starr dove into the end zone to win the NFL championship against the Dallas Cowboys in near-zero temperatures.
Unbelievably, the game was canceled Sunday morning before one flake of snow had fallen, based on forecasts of a significant snowstorm. An hour before game time, the city had less than six inches on the ground. The western suburbs had less than three inches, and Wilmington, Del., to our South, less than two inches. Canceling a game because of that amount of snow is unthinkable. Vince Lombardi must have been rolling over in his grave. Americans in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota – heck, even fans in Chicago, Boston and Pittsburgh – must have been astounded. Have we all become wimps?
Thursday, December 30, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:00 PM
Here’s a link to Margaret Thatcher’s speech about America and the reasons for its greatness. Great speeches and great ideas don’t date; they only become more relevant. Hillsdale College is famous for its distinguished speaker series. You can receive a transcript of each new speech by signing up for their monthly publication, Imprimis here.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:03 PM
Dennis talks to Nicholas Eberstadt, economist with the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book is The Poverty of the Poverty Rate: Measure and Mismeasure of Material Deprivation in Modern America.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:16 PM
Dennis speaks to Rabbi Joseph Telushkin an American Modern Orthodox Rabbi, lecturer and author. His new book is A Code of Jewish Ethics Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself..
Rabbi Telushkin has a new Facebook page — The Jewish Ethics Project. It’s going to be a forum for people to share their stories and ideas for making ethics and Jewish ethical teachings part of their everyday lives.
If you’re on Facebook, take a look.
Sunday, December 26, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:20 PM
Dennis talks to David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) about the Seattle bus anti-Israel ad debacle. Brog’s latest book which Dennis highly recommends is In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity.
Thursday, December 23, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 2:00 PM
Dennis talks to Bruce Herschensohn, Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. His new book is An American Amnesia: How the US Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:33 PM
Mr. Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who is under investigation by Swedish authorities for certain sexual improprieties, says that he’s not promiscuous; he just likes women. What does he really mean?
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 8:46 PM
Dennis talks to Steve Stewart-Williams, lecturer in evolutionary psychology at Swansea University. Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:37 PM
Columbia physicist, Brian Greene, has some very wise answers about the nature of intelligence. When he gets into his multiple universe theories, he sounds strangely silly, however. The idea of a designer (God) who designs an ordered universe, that’s absurd. But multiple universes where apples go up instead of down when they “fall” from a tree, that makes perfect sense?
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:14 PM
The NYT comes to a surprising conclusion: it doesn’t really make that much difference what college you go to. It’s all about the student — a hard-working, ambitious student does well no matter where they get their higher education.
Khunrum emails: Indian chicks look great. I like them almost as much as I do Asians. BUT they tend to hang with Indian men. I rarely see a white guy with an Indian gal.
Chaim Amalek emails: I know a Jewish guy in finance who graduated from some fancy yeshiva in New Jersey who married a Hindu Honey and has several kids by her. She’s “converting” but, of course, it is not the same as Luke’s conversion.
These Hindu honeys are just another species of the Shiksa Menace.
Only pure Torah Jews like Luke and I are impervious to their charms.
"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)
