Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

Turning On The Kids Magnet

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

Sen. Reid has filed for cloture on the Dream Act, meaning a vote could come tomorrow (Wednesday). My problems with the proposed law–which would in effect grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens under 30 who can claim they came into the country before they turned 16–are outlined here. Both proponents and opponents are activating switchboard-flooding measures. Askew has a list of allegedly undecided senators. … Here’s a list from Numbers USA. … Here is an estimate of the number of illegal immigrants who’d qualify from Steven Camarota. …

P.S.: Applicants would have to live in the U.S. for five years and eventually graduate from high school or get a GED. But Numbers USA claims that the bill would "be a rolling amnesty drawing more illegal aliens here in the future to apply for amnesty." [E.A.] Is it possible that the bill has no cutoff date–no requirement that applicants have entered the country before such and such a day–meaning that it would function as a formal standing offer to people in other countries who might be thinking of coming here illegally in the future: ‘Sneak across the border before your kids get too old and they will get legalized’?

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‘The Mexican Mafia’ By Tony Rafael

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

New Videos: My Interview With Tony Rafael Interview Part II

Michael Finch’s Introduction, he’s no Janet Levy but he does his best Tony’s Speech I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

I’ve known Wednesday Morning Club director Michael Finch for many years and I can’t believe I’ve never told him how much he reminds me of Jesus.

The resemblance is so striking I want to nail him to a cross.

Tony Rafael addresses the David Horowitz Freedom Center Book Club Tuesday evening at the Luxe on Sunset Blvd.

He’s the author of the 2007 book "The Mexican Mafia." He writes this blog. He leaps buildings in a single bound.

He says that Los Angeles spent $82 million on anti-gang programs which were almost all taken over by the Mexican Mafia and resulted in nobody leaving a gang.

He says the Mexican Mafia controls about 100,000 Latino gangsters in Southern California and that man for man, the Latino gangbangers are more powerful and more organized than their black counterparts.

Maybe we need to have affirmative action for the oppressed black gangster?

According to Publisher’s Weekly:

Rafael’s debut book—a study of the Southern California–based Mexican mafia told mainly from the perspective of veteran Los Angeles deputy district attorney Anthony Manzella—is a revealing but flawed work. Despite occasional national headlines about drive-by shootings that claim innocent lives (including the granddaughter of an LAPD chief), most Americans are probably unfamiliar with the powerful, loosely organized street gangs that make up the Mexican mafia. Rafael does a workmanlike job of tracing the rise of these gangs, despite the occasional factual error (e.g., the RICO statute was used to indict criminal groups besides La Cosa Nostra before the Mexican mafia), but fails to dramatize his overly detailed account of Manzella’s trials. Manzella is an interesting enough figure—a dedicated workaholic throwback who doesn’t use a computer, or even an electric typewriter. But Rafael gives short shrift to the sociology of the rise of the Mexican mafia. Instead, he offers a final quote from Manzella (We know exactly the kind of families that produce criminals. I’d like to go in there and take them out. But we can’t do that’) will leave many with a sour taste that undercuts Rafael’s attempts to make the deputy DA a hero.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Whenever Tony Rafael leaves home, he carries a .45-caliber handgun nestled in a holster just below his armpit. A Cold Steel Recon-1 knife is stashed elsewhere on his person. Concealed weapons permits are hard to come by in Los Angeles County, but Rafael is a special case.
For the past five years, the respected writer and gang expert — who uses only the name he writes under in public because of his dangerous work — has been researching one of the deadliest gangs in America for a nonfiction book he’s writing on the Mexican Mafia, or "La Eme"(the Spanish word for the letter ‘M’), tentatively titled Southern Soldiers. His sources are of the "L.A. Confidential" variety: prison inmates, gang members past and present, homicide detectives, FBI agents and their informants. He has volunteered for the Los Angeles Police Department, conducting long-term surveillance outside gang hangouts, and has dug up the cases of hundreds of gang members from the county court system to document the bloody swath they’ve cut across Los Angeles.
One heart-arresting fact the streetwise investigator recently uncovered is that Mexican Mafia leaders have declared a "green light" on African Americans found in neighborhoods claimed by the powerful prison-based gang. This means that members of Latino street gangs affiliated with the La Eme are under orders to harass, assault, and even murder African-Americans, who Mexican Mafia leaders view as sub-human.
The reason for this, Rafael has found, is that a longstanding prison gang war between the Mexican Mafia and the African-American prison gang, Black Guerilla Family, has led to a deep racial loathing between the gangs that has spilled over into the streets of Los Angeles County.
…"They don’t want blacks in their neighborhoods. They say it makes their neighborhood look bad."
…"[I]n the California prison system the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia have made an alliance to gang up against the Black Guerilla Family. It’s common knowledge in the prison system that if there’s a fight between a Mexican Mafia member and a black inmate, and there aren’t enough Mexican Mafia guys to jump on his side, the Aryans are supposed to jump in on his side. This is an alliance that goes back 20 years. The Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood have a mutual racial hatred for blacks."
"The Mexican Mafia derives inspiration and ethnic pride from the concept of La Raza (Spanish, in this context, for "The Race"), as well as from the Aztec, Aztlan movement. And this goes way back. There was a Mexican Mafia shot caller back in the 1970s named Rudolph Cheyenne Cardena, and before he was killed by rival Mexican gang members in 1978 or 1977, Cardena saw the Mexican Mafia the way George Jackson [a prominent member of the original Black Panther Party who founded the Black Guerilla Family] saw the black prison movement. He wanted to change the Mexican Mafia into a political, socially active movement, and what he used for inspiration was the Aztec culture. He taught himself Nahuatl [the ancient language of the Aztecs], started teaching it to all the other homies. In fact, to this day they still use Nahuatl to send coded messages to one another — these kinds of three level-coded messages. You have to know the code, and then Nahuatl and so on. And one of the symbols of the Mexican Mafia is the Aztec worship [symbol]."

Chaim Amalek says: "The African American is on his way out in this country, and the Mexican is showing him the door."

Fred emails: "Obviously during their prison sentences we need to have them go to racial sensitivity training classes. I’ll call Nancy Pelosi right away."

New Commentary Editor Denies Neo-Nepotism

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

From the New York Times:

Mr. Podhoretz, 46, who is currently vacationing with his family, said that his father found out about the job offer just two weeks ago, only after he had already accepted the post. “I didn’t want him to be involved in any way, shape or form,” the younger Mr. Podhoretz said. He explained that Neal Kozodoy, who has edited the magazine ever since Norman Podhoretz retired in 1995, called during the spring and asked if he was interested in taking over. There was no search process. Mr. Kozodoy declined to comment.
As for charges of favoritism, Mr. Podhoretz said: “It’s silly for me to respond because I don’t accept the premise. I have a professional career that’s dated back 25 years. I’ve started two magazines, worked at three others. I am who I am. I have millions of words that you can read on Nexis.” He has also written three books.
…Still, of the more than 30 people contacted for this article, several who have written for the magazine or have contributed money to the Commentary Fund said they were troubled by the family connection, the lack of an open search process and what they consider to be Mr. Podhoretz’s lack of intellectual credentials for such a highbrow journal, partly because he has written so much about popular culture. A former writer for Commentary said the appointment repudiated one of neoconservatism’s founding principles, a commitment to meritocracy. He, like other respondents, asked not to be identified because of longstanding ties either to the magazine or to the Podhoretz family.
The new appointment puts three generations of Podhoretzes at the magazine, with Norman holding the title of editor at large and his grandson Sam Munson as online editor. Of course, the ancestral streak is not exactly surprising. The Podhoretz, Kagan (Fred, Donald, Robert and Kimberly) and Kristol clans have dominated the movement for 40 years.

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Trouble At YULA Boys School

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

Four members of the senior class have been expelled this school year and another ten have left (some for Israel, some for Santa Monica Community College), leaving the class at only 34.

Students say the school’s new principal, Rabbi Heshy Glass, is overly restrictive and has killed the joy.

By contrast, Rabbi Yosef Furman is popular as the head of YULA’s girls school.

YULA is in the ideological middle of Orthodox day schools, with Shalhevet on its left and Yeshiva Gedola and Bais Yaakov on its right.

At Shalhevet, about half the seniors claim not to be virgins while almost everyone at YULA claims virginity (and everyone at Yeshiva Gedola and Bais Yaakov). Almost all unmarried graduates of Yeshiva University also claim virginity.

Unmarried Modern Orthodox Jewish men tend to screw around as much as they can (that’s my impression from my friends) while serious Orthodox Jews don’t do it outside of marriage.

I remember walking home from shul one Friday evening when I ran into a Modern Orthodox friend.

He was headed for dinner at Beth Am (on La Cienega and Olympic Blvd).

"You know what they say about Conservative Jews," he said with a wink. "They do it before marriage!"

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Seen & Heard During Shabbat In Pico-Robertson

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

"If I had known [Shabbos dinner] was so close, I would’ve worn my fuck-me pumps."

I heard that priceless line from a loyal female reader.

I saw a man (about 40) I’ve known since moving to LA. His eyes and smile were glassy. He jerked and twitched.

I wondered what the problem was. This guy is a regular in Pico-Robertson and in the Fairfax-La Brea Orthodox communities.

AND HE’S COKED OUT OF HIS MIND!

I’ve never seen anyone coked out of their mind at a Shabbos dinner.

I’ve never known any regular in the Orthodox community to be a drug addict.

We’ve got to do something about quality control.

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Eliot Stein – Eyewitness To History

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

Cathy Seipp‘s foe Eliot Stein is an internet pioneer, broadcaster, journalist, satirist, educator, visionary, entrepreneur, and courageous person who stands up against the right-winged poisoning of America.

On Friday night, he was also an eyewitness to history.

From his blog, the finest of its kind for giving insight into whatever Eliot is thinking, I can not recommend it highly enough:

THE HOTTEST TICKET IN HOLLYWOOD FRIDAY NIGHT WAS AT THE LIVE BROADCAST OF "Real Time With Bill Maher" at CBS. The weekly nationwide HBO show in which Bill Maher holds a panel discussion usually goes off smoothly and represents the art of "Live Television," something which there is very little of in prime time except for "Saturday Night Live."
On Friday night’s broadcast, about 25 minutes into the show, a man goes crazy in the audience, starts ranting and raving and is taken out by security. Maher starts screaming as to where the (profanity) security is. Maher jumps off the stage into the audience and gets involved in the turmoil. When he returns to the stage and tries to start again, another person starts screaming at him. And another, and another, and another. A clear organized set-up. The protesters are upset with Bill because he doesn’t believe the conspiracy theories that the government was involved in the fall of the towers on 9-11. A wild night indeed. Already being talked about everywhere.
How did I spend Friday night? By TOTAL COINCIDENCE, I decided to come to the live broadcast. I am a baby boomer. I grew up with the wonderful art that was "Live Television."
Whether it was "Bozo’s Circus" on WGN or "What’s My Line" on CBS, this was a phenomenal art. Shows broadcast live. No digital censoring. Whatever happens–happens.
I shared the magical memories of live television with my fellow baby boomer guest on the way there. We talked about how ANYTHING could happen when it was live.
And we happened to pick the one show in which anything like this has ever happened to Bill Maher.
If you watch the rebroadcast, you can clearly see me in the first row, as Bill Maher runs up the aisle into the center of the dispute. I am waving my hands left and right–I had a feeling I would be right in the frame. I even got interviewed by AP as a key eyewitness to the action.

Eliot Stein emails me:

I had the story posted on my blog way before AP posted theirs.
And now the revelation–it was my contacting AP that got the whole ball rolling–they got the story from ME. They sat there actually writing the first draft as I dictated it to them. They wanted to be first with it before anybody else.
Including me as the only quote was their Thank You to me.
I never expected to be in every newspaper in America on Saturday from just attending a show on Friday night.

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Finally a Community Alert that actually alerts about something

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

From the Chaptzem blog: "Finally, albeit many months late, the community gets a Community Alert that actually cautions about real danger. The most surprising part is that the Hamodia actually printed it even though it actually says something useful."

Joe says:

You’ll never be as funny as this website, which is so accurate in describing Boro Park that I am in hysterics daily. See the commentary on this story, it could be a short story. The language, particularly of his respondents, is pure Boro Park; its wonderful mix of Yiddish and Hungarian syntax is beyond imitation.

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Goodbye To Hair Dye

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

I’m working on a new book: "Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Torah, Authenticity and Everything Else That Really Matters"

I did this interview with The Calendar Girls:

Q: You decided to go from bottled brunette to natural gray. Why?
A: Two years ago I saw a photograph of myself and I thought, Who am I kidding? I looked fake. My hair dye wasn’t fooling anyone. So after 24 years of coloring my hair every three weeks, I decided to find out my real color and get off the treadmill. When you are dyeing your hair, you’re consciously aware that around your forehead people can see the stain of brown from the dye. And after that, you’re worried about everyone seeing your roots growing out. You’re always kind of obsessed.
It’s not about "letting yourself go." It’s about saying, I’m going to invest my energy and my money in a different way. All those years dyeing my hair added up to $65,000, not adjusted for inflation. If I had invested that money, today I would have $300,000, enough to pay for both my illegitimate daughters to go to yeshiva.
Q: Then it’s a contest between paying for your children’s college and looking sexy?
A: It’s a contest between self-actualization and fear. The two things that scare men the most about getting older is that they’ll lose their sexual attractiveness and their professional opportunities. On the sexual attractiveness piece, I decided that the easiest way I could pseudo-scientifically quantify the connection between the hair color and attractiveness was to do a JDate experiment. I posted some photos of myself first with Photoshopped brown hair and then three months later with my gray hair. I assumed, as most might, that women would be more interested in dating the brown-haired me. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turns out three times as many women were interested in going out with me with my gray hair.

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CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT WILL END IN THE YEAR 2040!

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

From the Luke Ford Fan Blog:

Poor, pathetic, confused, deluded Pariah Boy™. He thinks this is a "fan site."
"No worries, mate" he says to himself as he plots his next betrayal down by the local billabong, with his trusty pet wallaby, Mr Stinkyface™, at his side. "Nobody will take Horrid Boy Watch™ seriously. It’s just a bunch of tasteless jokes about my manboobs and icky sex life banging octogenarian hotties at Garden of Palms Assisted Living & Alzheimer’s Community (now with a certified kosher kitchen!). It won’t prevent me from continuing to befriend unsuspecting innocents, and then, when he or she is most vulnerable, striking with my poison pen…"
(Incidentally, Mr Prager is still pissed at Luke Ford. See paragraph six in this column where The Great Dennis Prager obliquely refers to Horrid Boy™ to illustrate how religion can turn previously kind and gentle souls into bad people.)
…One day, during a brief break from Bible Study, I decided to look at Mr Ford’s vacation photographs. The first thing I noticed was that Horrid Boy™ has really put on a lot of weight. His manboobs are huge and his jellybelly… continues to expand over his waistline.
Wow, Luke Ford has really let himself go, I thought. Maybe he has turned to food to assuage his guilt for being so beastly to Cathy Seipp during her last days.

Fred emails:

This is incredible. Just imagine the amount of time it took to put LukeFordFanBlog together. I wonder what the rest of his life is like.
Any idea as to the readership of LukeFordFanBlog?
I can only assume, Luke, that you have helped this poor soul find meaning in his life that would otherwise be lacking. I think it’s a mitzvah.

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Luke Goes Postal

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Luke Ford

I’ve decided to abandon blogging on another site and go out into the world to get a real job.

I don’t make enough money off lukeford.net to live in the style to which I have become accustomed.

I bought a suit for $25 Monday at a Jewish charity store on Pico/La Cienega. I also took my undertaker suit and four dirty shirts in for dry cleaning.

This will be a whole new me. I’m sure the disco look will be great for job interviews.

I’m polishing my resume. Is it terribly immoral to drop Mickey Kaus’s name as a reference without getting his permission?

I haven’t had a real job in a decade (instead making my living as a blogger).

It’s not because my conscience is so delicate I don’t want to take money from immoral advertisers. I’m just tired of fighting my religious friends on this.

My Amalekite friends are dubious about my prospects.

Khunrum emails: "I agree with whoever said you were not gay or young enough to be anyone’s private secretary. Why not take my advice and be a mailman? Don’t laugh. You’ll ace the test and with your poor health they’ll have you sorting mail, not carrying it. It must be a great job. Just look at all the Afro Americans who do it….haaaaa! Great benefits too. You’ll be able to afford a new ride. Maybe even a bigger hovel."

Chaim Amalek writes:

Haven’t you been down this road before? The cynic in me wants to take bets on how long this will last. ON THE OTHER HAND – there’s that old adage, or several, that say pretty much the same thing: If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got.
One definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to achieve a different result.
You live the life of Luke Ford, who, while he gets to go to great parties and appear on 60 Minutes (does the rabbinate bar you from that as well?), lives in a divided garage. It is what it is. Maybe this will light a fire under you and propel you to better things in life.
On the other hand, you could join a torah-centric reform temple, could you not? I have a hard time picturing you giving up the fleshpots of LA for the chance to become a man-secretary. Sorry, but I just don’t think it will take.
If only Luke had been born a Jew, this would not even be an issue in his life.
Luke, ditch the orthodox world (you know you don’t believe) and move over to the reform/reconstructionist side. They have much better parties.
I like this idea of Luke going Postal. I actually took a test to become some sort of post office technician a few years back, mainly for the social experience. Hundreds of men (and a few women) of all backgrounds collected themselves in remotest Queens one early morning (7AM!) to sit for a five hour test. Why? The benefits. And a man of Luke’s age needs to be thinking about the poverty he will otherwise be living in come old age which, I am sorry to remind him, is closer than his twentieth birthday. Do you want to be sixty and living in a hovel? What’s the plan, Luke, what’s the plan?
I know what the plan SHOULD have been. He should have done whatever was necessary and legal to make Holly his wife. That would have solved virtually all of his problems in one swoop: guaranteed housing and sex and food for life. Freedom to while away the days "blogging" and "writing" (same as me). A rich social life. The possibility of becoming a writer who does not have to pay people to publish his books. Respect in shul and the chance to wear the coveted Tallit Gadol. Fatherhood with fertile, fecund and lovely Holly the bearer of your Aryan seed. (Had it been me, I would not have hesitated to woo her.)
If more people just did what Amalek told them to do, there would be more happy people in the world.
I predict this won’t take. Luke will return to the smegma-encrusted fold within six months.
PS to Luke: I have another idea of how you might make money. Offer your services as a ghost writer/blogger for others, especially CEO types. Offer to correct grammar of corporate email. I’m not joking about this. Not many things are worse than a 41 year old straight man trying to make his way in life as a manretary.

Bob writes: "At my post office CFS seems to be a job requirement."

Khunrum emails: ""Instead of everyone in porn hating Luke, it could be the general population of L.A. who are waiting patiently for Luke to ring up their stamp purchases. Besides earning a decent wage with benefits, you could be pissing off many more people."

Bob emails:

Why are you dumping your most consistent stream of income (again)?
I just read the terrible news! Dumping your bird in the hand again.
Forget the man secretary gig. Quite frankly you don’t come off as gay enough. This is the station of a much younger "twink."
Does Jenna Jameson need a personal assistant? Does Asia Carrera need a "manny"? Does Mary Carey need a life coach? Stick with the industry. You could do much worse.

Stephen emails:

If you work as a "clerk" (a benign-sounding title for a job designed for insanity) at the P.O., union seniority rules guarantee that it will take you at least ten years to get off the graveyard shift heaving sacks of mail or punching in zip codes, one-per-second. Also, I hope you like haggard, middle-aged Filipinas and burly mestizo broads. You’ll be meeting hundreds of them. Don’t worry: after a while on the 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift, they’ll start to look good to you. Mainly because by then you’ll have taken up excessive drinking in order to try to sleep during the day. Definitely read Charles Bukowski’s "Post Office" — he was a nightshift mail clerk for years. It’s all true, every word. I was there.

(UPS more better if you can stand physical labor. I worked as a relief driver for a few months. The guy who trained me was hooking up with a couple of receptionists/nurses in Dr’s offices along our route in his off-hours. Bored, lonely women in offices really do fantasize about "the UPS Guy." For some of them, that daily delivery is the highlight of their day.)

I call a friend.

"I’m right behind you," he says. "You don’t mind that you’re going to sell it?"

"I don’t."

"Do they get the camera of death in the purchase?

"There’s a hot demand for your video of karaoke….of Powder running around Sardo’s."

Luke: "Your close to getting out."

"I just don’t think we’re going to get married as long as we’re in this industry."

Friend: "I had that same discussion. It’s twofold. That you and I don’t pull our penises out of our pants and don’t film actual pornography, we might as well have. You have the scarlet letter on you. When you do meet a nice girl, what do they say? ‘How do I tell my mother what you do?’ It’s always a problem.

"I met a girl the other day who I really like. But at the end of the day, I’m the porn guy and it works against me.

"I really enjoyed my last job because it was as far away from porn as I could be and still be in porn. It was a corporate job. But now I’m back in porn and I really feel sh—- about myself. I’m sitting here trying to acquire content from studios, midget porn and guys with big cocks."

Luke: "We’ve given the best years of our lives to this industry. We’ve had it good. We’ve gotten a ton of press."

Friend: "I’ve gotten a helluva lot more pussy than you did."

Luke: "True."

Friend: "But it got old. It took about seven or eight years to get old."

"When you interview these porn stars… I used to sit there and think, ‘Why does Luke care so much and ask these girls these questions about what do your parents think?’ Then I realized. They might have different color hair and they might have big tits or small tits but it’s the same girl over and over again. I watched that video you got of Nadia Brown. That chick is the universal porn chick. Same problems, same manic-depression, same chemical imbalance."

Luke: "Lost her dog, lost her cat, lost her job, getting drunk."

Friend: "We did give the best years of our life. I should’ve made a lot more money. I should be retired now.

"I’m going home to my 20th reunion in two weeks. I’m realizing that I’m middle-aged. I’m going to go through a mid-life crisis in the next year or two. There were guys when I left town who were working as interns at radio stations. They’re still at the same stations, only now they are general managers. I used to think they were dumb for working for free."

"I’m wondering if I came out ahead. You never made any real money. You never made more than $50k in a year. You could’ve made so much money but you lacked the killer instinct to say, ‘You don’t like what’s written about you? Pay me for an ad and I’ll never write about you again.’ But that’s not your character."

Luke: "I’m looking forward to going to work and meeting girls."

Friend: "I’m sitting here in my place listening to the wind rustle around my windows. This is my office and my home. I never get a chance to go out and meet anybody aside from industry events."

"We have this other problem. Now you’re going to put a resume together and go out and look for a job and you’ve got all this s— about you. I’d like to become a sales manager at a radio station but I’m too much of a risk. Sexual harassment cases are running rampant."

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