Writing in Ha’aretz, Marco Greenberg offers an ode to Jewish life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and drops the following bombshell: “Even the New York Times has recently picked up on the UWS-Jewish connection.”
Greenberg goes on to observe that the “Upper West is perhaps the last spot on earth where people walk rather than drive.” Clearly, he has never been to the Upper East Side.
Just imagine how good this picture would be if I weren’t so religious:
https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=3938 Israel 1956. Rachel, a Jew, rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz where is she working as a teacher. It brings back memories of her experiences in The Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal.
Four struggling actors retreat to a cabin in Big Bear, California in order to write a screenplay that will make them all stars. Problem is: What happens when their story idea
Ashes of Time Redux is inspired by Louis Cha’s novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes. It centers on a man named Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung). Since the woman he loved rejected him, he has lived in the western desert, hiring skilled swordsmen to carry out contract killings.
I got a message this morning from Amy Klein, formerly of the Jewish Journal, that she has an essay on me in the New York Times’ Modern Love section. Here:
“Why don’t we write a story about Luke Ford?” my editor in chief suggested.
But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I didn’t want to meet with him. And I especially didn’t want to give him the opportunity to engage in a meta-interview (my reporting, then his blogging about my reporting).
So the Luke Ford article was shelved until another writer came along and wrote it, a development that displeased Ford.
“I always thought this article would come at the hands of Amy Klein,” he wrote. “I pictured us over lunch and how I would whip out my tape recorder when she started the on-the-record part of our conversation and all the brilliant justifications I’d give her for my abominable behavior. … But then my time came at the hand of 25-year-old Brad Greenberg. Brad’s a good reporter, but he’s no Amy Klein. … The whole thing didn’t run anything like my fantasies.”
Brad was one of the young new additions to the newspaper. Another was Danielle Berrin, a tall, blond Floridian with a passion for this business that reminded me of … me, circa 1995. The minute I laid eyes on her, I knew she would one day replace me.
And my cyberstalker confirmed it. Under the headline, “The Jewish Journal Adds Sex Appeal,” he wrote, “I’ve had my share of fantasies about religion writer Amy Klein (who hasn’t?). … But the times are a changing. The Jewish Journal now boasts Calendar Girls — a pair of hotties (Dikla Kadosh and Danielle Berrin).”
When you are young and pretty, nothing outrages you more than unwanted, persistent attention. You want to be taken seriously. But as you get older, and people start to ignore your looks and actually do begin to take you seriously as a professional, you feel like yesterday’s news.
I suppose, according to Ford, I was still the gold standard to which all young reporters would be held up. But I was like Sophia Loren: classic, yet a thing of the past.
AND so, when I finally left The Jewish Journal after seven years, I didn’t think much about my cyberstalker. I was busy with my career, building a Web site, and cataloging my hundreds of articles, which involved a lot of looking myself up online, which soon landed me back on Ford’s blog.
I scrolled to the more-recent material, searching for the inevitable post about my departure, maybe a copy of the e-mail message I’d sent out to all of my contacts (except him). But there was nothing. I kept returning, day after day, and there was never any mention of my leaving — nothing, in fact, about me at all.
It’s not as if I had taken this whole cyberstalker relationship seriously. What had been disturbing and vaguely threatening early on became background noise as the years passed, just a part of my working life I mostly ignored.
After all, Ford’s posts weren’t really about me, the real Amy Klein, but a version of me he’d conjured up from my writing and public appearances. And I had hoped from the start that I would be a passing fad (albeit, as it turned out, a six-year fad).
Still, why had he dumped me? If someone is going to document and critique your life, shouldn’t he stick it out to the end? Write the final act? Did I not matter anymore?
And then, finally: “Amy Klein, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?”
On he went:
“She left two weeks ago. Normally I have a satellite circling Amy from about 100 miles overhead, but I’ve been distracted of late. … Amy e-mailed everybody in her life, about 100 or so persons, but that list did not include your humble correspondent, oh my brothers.”
He cataloged my departure, my new projects, and the e-mail announcement I had sent. He wondered about my future career, why I hadn’t told him, and what would happen to me.
“I miss you, baby!” he wrote.
Well, Luke, you might never guess it, but I’ll miss you, too.
Luke Ford, Joey Kurtzman discuss this week’s Torah portion "Shoftim." What can you get away with as an Orthodox Jew? How much freedom do you have? Can you eat at McDonalds? No way.
Complete video of my discussion with Joey Kurtzman on this week’s Torah portion Shoftim.
ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 4 — Dennis Prager was on the air last week on the day Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was named to the Republican ticket, and without missing a beat, the conservative radio host pronounced her "an American Margaret Thatcher."
Her speech to the convention, Prager said Thursday during a break in his program, "just reconfirmed my love at first sight." Across the table, Sen. Orrin Hatch was slipping on the headphones to join him and immediately went on offense when he went on the air.
"I’ve really been offended by how the mainstream media have tried to smear her by attacking, in essence, her daughter," the Utah Republican said. "It was pathetic. It was hitting below the belt. It was despicable."
In a long corridor leading into the Xcel Energy Center that is packed with radio broadcasters, a new narrative about the presidential election was emerging rather noisily, at least among those on the right who make their living in front of microphones. Many conservative hosts, who had been downright skeptical of Sen. John McCain and his unorthodox brand of Republicanism, are ecstatic about Palin — all the more so because her nomination helps them strafe their favorite target.
From the titans of talk — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham — to conservative hosts who loom large in their local markets, the cheering for Palin has been nearly unanimous. Ingraham praised her assault on the "entrenched elites." Men on the right who were quick to dismiss charges of sexism against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now accuse Palin’s critics of treating her, as a mother of five, with undisguised contempt.
Matt Guidi writes on youtube: "Luke Ford (the guy narrating the Sarah Palin Video) is a conservative. This isn’t a Liberal attacking Palin, in fact no one is attacking Palin. Luke just thinks is BS when conservatives attack the media for bringing to light the daughter’s pregnancy, and saying the family should be off limits, even though she is the one who brought them to the Media’s attention, and used them to show how good a family person she is. I agree with Luke."
Complete video of my discussion with Joey Kurtzman on this week’s Torah portion Shoftim.
Luke Ford, Joey Kurtzman discuss this week’s Torah portion "Shoftim." Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9. Joey does not find the Torah spiritual. Funding Levites and rabbis. Married to Jesus?
