Decoding The Middle East (9-29-24)

01:00 The Democrats coalition of the fringe has nothing in common but hatred of white men
04:00 Yoram Hazony decodes Biden foreign policy, https://x.com/yhazony/status/1840401343149682972
27:00 Oct. 9, 2023, Mike Benz on Iran’s natural resources
30:00 Dooovid joins
38:00 Dooovid has shifted from non-Zionist to anti-Zionist
1:09:30 Dooovid thinking of getting a joint for Rosh Hashanah
1:14:00 Triggers, https://campushealth.unc.edu/health-topic/understanding-mental-health-triggers/
1:17:00 Euphoric recall, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphoric_recall
1:26:00 What’s the best strategy for American and Israeli interests? https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/27/is-confronting-hezbollah-or-de-escalating-likelier-to-bring-peace/
1:30:00 Howard Kurtz Media Buzz
1:33:00 NYT: Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/world/middleeast/middle-east-war-peace-nasrallah.html
1:47:00 How well can the Democrats control their anti-Israel activists? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-utPIR3vMg
1:52:00 Why Trump might win, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/opinion/trump-maga-sources-support.html
1:55:00 Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157551
1:58:00 Sam Harris on Darryl Cooper, Tucker Carlson, Jocko Willink, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/darryl-cooper-nazi-apologetics-disturbances-in-the-discourse
2:32:00 Charles Murray, Sam Harris and The Bell Curve
2:59:30 Mickey Kaus on Kamala’s annoying head bobs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qothv1YsMRQ
3:07:40 Why Mickey Kaus does not like Kamala Harris
3:09:00 What are Kamala’s most impressive accomplishments?
3:11:50 Kamala Harris was never thoroughly vetted
3:13:10 The best thing going for Kamala Harris is her affair with Willie Brown
3:20:30 Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza were engaged

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Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

Abraham Riesman (a male to female trans) writes in this 2022 book:

There is no art form more intrinsically and blatantly American — in its casual violence, its bombastic braggadocio, its virulent jingoism, its populist defiance of respectability, and its intermittently awe – inspiring beauty — than professional wrestling. This lucrative enterprise is not a legitimate competition, but it is indisputably an expression of creativity. Its practitioners have a time – worn saying: “This ain’t ballet.” But it’s not that far from ballet: a kinetic method of storytelling, one that requires tremendous skill (and physical pain) to perform.
Although a wrestling match is infinitely customizable, the typical setup is as familiar as apple pie. Two wrestlers enter a raised square platform — the ring. Its floor is made of canvas and foam, stretched so tight that it looks like a hard surface but, in reality, left loose enough that it acts as a kind of weak trampoline. At each corner are metal ring posts, with thick elastic cords stretched around them. The wrestlers tussle inside the ring, grabbing each other for semi – choreographed, semi – improvised attacks, flips, and falls (“bumps”) that require cooperation and mutual expertise to execute. If the match isn’t scripted as a draw for one reason or another, one of the wrestlers “wins” by either pressing their opponent’s shoulders to the canvas until a referee counts to three (a “pin”), or by putting their opponent in enough fictional — or at least exaggerated — pain that they give up (a “submission”).
There are, broadly speaking, two roles wrestlers can play in the ring: that of the face and that of the heel . “Face” is short for “babyface”: the innocent, unblemished hero. The etymology of “heel” is more complicated, but one theory holds that the term has its roots in the Hebrew Bible, where Jacob grabbed his brother Esau’s heel during their birth in an attempt to come out first and steal his twin’s birthright.
Traditionally, fans are supposed to root for the face. But in wrestling — as is the case in much of the best fiction — the good guy isn’t necessarily the protagonist. Just as important, and sometimes more so, is the heel, the one who seeks to get ahead through malice, who feeds off the hatred of the crowd, and who often gains the upper hand at the match’s end, breaking the hearts of all who want to see justice done.

* pro wrestling, with all its spectacle, is a lie — but that the lie encodes a deeper truth, discernible to those few who know how to look beyond what’s in front of them. To those fans adept in reading the signs, another narrative emerges, and another beyond that. Suddenly, the pleasure of watching a match has less to do with who wins than with the excitement of decoding it.
Maybe a heel gets caught in a sex scandal, or is accused of beating his girlfriend; no matter, just have him own it as part of his gimmick. The fans may be offended by his continued presence on their screens, but their offense can only make him more successful — and there will always be those who respect him, even like him, for his “honesty” about his vices.
Neokayfabe exists in the tension not just between fantasy and reality, but also between revulsion and attraction, honor and hedonism, irony and earnestness.

* Vince is likely the closest thing to a friend that Donald Trump has.

* On the all – too – common occasions when wrestlers die of wrestling – related causes — painkiller overdose, steroid – related organ failure, traumatic brain injury, in – ring snafu, and the like — the wrestling community has a tendency to write the deaths off as the cost of the lifestyle. Amid the grief, there’s a voice in the backs of fans’ and colleagues’ minds, telling them that the deceased knew what they were getting into when they sold their bodies to the Business. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre , the voice says.
But only a true sadist would assert that wrestlers’ dead wives and girlfriends had it coming.

* Informed government regulation of wrestling has never existed in America. There has never been a union for wrestlers. Wrestlers are not staffers; everything is freelance. There is no off – season. There is no employer – provided health insurance. The travel is relentless. In lieu of serious medical care, this physically grueling ecosystem has historically been a free – for – all of drink and drugs to ease the pain and bulk the body — all of it permitted by promoters. And the pay, as one might expect, is terrible in comparison to every other athletic industry of its size.
So, why bother? Here lies one of the grand, tragic ironies of wrestling: much like with ballet, in order to achieve success as a wrestler, you have to want it to a degree that is both inspiring and objectively unhealthy. You have to love it more than you love your own body and mind. Your love has to overcome your instincts for self – preservation, let alone self – interest. That love, once it burns, is hard to snuff out. It’s the love that comes from athletic achievement and the gratitude of the audience, yes, but it’s more than that.
“See, what a lot of people don’t understand is, once you step in that ring, you’re addicted,” is how a former WWF grappler named Princess Victoria (Vickie Otis) once put it. Those words could be comfortably placed in the mouth of any wrestler. There’s a particular chemistry, perhaps even a magic, in acting out a thrill – packed, physically exhausting pantomime of the human experience to thunderous cheers and boos. People talk about wrestling characters as successors to the flamboyant, archetypal gods of ancient myth. Imagine a job that lets you feel like Zeus.

* It was August 10, 1977, and [Terry] Bollea was slated to have his in – ring debut in Fort Myers. He was getting a ride to the venue from two established grapplers then working in Florida, Buddy Colt (Ron Read) and, more importantly, Quebecois import Pat Patterson (Pierre Clermont), who would later go to the WWF and become a key staffer. Patterson was openly gay, and has often been held up as a trailblazer for queer representation in the industry, especially since his 2020 death.
However, he was also an alleged sexual harasser.
“We got you in the car ’cause we’ve been chosen to initiate you tonight,” Patterson allegedly told Bollea.
The younger man was confused.
“Well,” came Patterson’s clarification, “we’ve got about a hundred and fifty miles to go, and before you get to the arena, you have to give one of us a blow job.”
The twenty – three – year – old Bollea protested: he wasn’t gay and had no desire to do anything like that. He hoped for a punch line, but the older Patterson and Colt looked and sounded deadly serious.
“I can’t do this,” Bollea told them. “This is fucked up.”
As is common for sexual harassment victims, he recalled feeling shame and terror: “I just wanted to wrestle, and they took advantage of how serious and focused I was,” he wrote. “They tortured me. It was the longest car ride of my life. On top of worrying about the match, how I’d do, if I’d look like a fool in front of a stadium full of people, they put this fear into me that they wouldn’t let me wrestle at all if I didn’t do this horrible thing.”
The car got to the parking lot. “Okay,” said one of the older men (Bollea didn’t specify which). “Since you didn’t give one of us a blow job before your match, we’re gonna have to tell all the other guys that you failed your initiation. So after your match, in the shower in the locker room, everybody’s gonna grab you and fuck you in the ass.”
Bollea laced up his boots and overcame his dread to execute his twenty – minute match against B. Brian Blair (Brian Leslie Blair), “and instead of basking in the moment of finishing my first match in this arena full of people, I’m only thinking about one thing: Now I’ve gotta go back in the dressing room and fight for my fucking life ,” he wrote. “I was shaking, practically bawling, thinking, I don’t want to be a wrestler anymore .”
As Bollea nervously opened the locker room door, he found all the wrestlers waiting with beers in their hands, shouting their congratulations at him for becoming one of them. It had all been a prank — a “rib,” in the parlance of the Boys, and not even a particularly extreme one, on the scale of how these men can treat each other. After this hazing ritual, “the other wrestlers stopped treating me like some dumb – ass kid. For a moment at least, they treated me like one of their own.”
But the trauma lingers: “I didn’t understand why they would do something like that,” Bollea wrote. “It’s still so weird to think about. Even now, it still upsets me.”

* Stossel just wanted to prove that wrestling was fake.
As the winter afternoon waned into evening on the 28th, the wrestlers arrived in the familiar MSG locker room. Among them was David Shults, who was putting his boots on when Vince arrived. As Shults later recounted, Vince told him, “Listen, we got a guy out here making a joke out of the business. I want you to go out and interview with him. Blast him. Tear his ass up. Stay in character, Dr. D.” Even if this dialogue never happened, it didn’t really need to — Shults, pro that he was, already knew that kayfabe had to be upheld at all costs. Protect the Business.
So Shults went out to talk with Stossel.
“Why are you called ‘Dr. D’?” Stossel asked Shults from behind the camera, the film crew’s bright lights casting a shadow onto the blank concrete behind Shults’s skull.
“Why not?” Shults replied, his eyes those of a killer. It went downhill from there.
Eventually, Stossel got to his point: “I think this is fake,” he said.
Later, Shults would recall the moment clearly, since it was the one that essentially led to the end of his career.
“Now, I’m thinkin’, Vince wanted me to stay in character ,” Shults would tell a reporter. “Dr. D would slap the hell out of somebody that said that.”
And so, in character, Shults growled, “You think it’s fake?” and slapped Stossel on his left ear so hard that he would successfully win money for hearing damage in a later lawsuit. Stossel dropped to the floor, gripping the side of his head.
“What’s that?” Shults asked. “Is that fake? Huh? What the hell’s wrong with ya?” Stossel rose to his feet. “That’s an open – hand slap, huh?” Shults said. “You think it’s fake, you son of a bitch?” He slapped Stossel on the right ear, knocking him down once again.
Stossel jumped back up, and he and his crew scrambled away down the hall. Shults went to the ring to wrestle.

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Connie: A Memoir

Connie Chung writes in this 2024 book:

* I didn’t start out wanting to be a guy. But in the late 1960s, when I broke into the overwhelmingly male – dominated television news business, all I saw around me was a sea of white men. Bosses, colleagues in the newsroom, competing reporters, and even interview subjects were all the opposite sex. They were tall, wore identical staid suits and ties and wing – tipped shoes, and had deep, stentorian voices. I envied their bravado, their swagger, the way they could walk into a room and command it. When they spoke, it was with confidence and authority. They were entitled to respect because they were men.

[LF: Who else believes that men are entitled to respect because they are men?]

* I was sexually molested by our trusted family doctor, but what made this monster even more reprehensible was that he was the very doctor who had delivered me on August 20, 1946.
I was a cool coed, dating whomever I wanted. I was still a virgin but had advanced to the so – called heavy petting stage, short of intercourse. I assumed I would become sexually active and would need protection from pregnancy, so I went to this doctor for birth control pills, an IUD, or a diaphragm.
…I had never had a gynecological exam before, nor had I seen exam stirrups. It was all new to me, but I followed his instructions. I found it extremely odd to spread my legs and dig my heels into those cold iron stirrups.
Not understanding or knowing what he was doing, I stared at the ceiling. With his right index finger, he massaged my clitoris. Simultaneously he inserted his right middle finger in my vagina. He moved both fingers rhythmically, coaching me verbally in a soft voice, “Just breathe,” he said. He mimicked the sound of soft breathing, “Ah – ah,” and assured me, “You’re doing fine.”
Suddenly, to my shock, for the first time in my life, I had an orgasm. My body jerked several times. Then he leaned over, kissed me, a peck on my lips, and slipped behind the curtain to retreat to his office area.
I did not say a word. I could not even look at him. I quickly dressed and drove home. I may have told one of my sisters. I don’t remember what she said to me. I certainly did not tell my parents, and I did not report him to authorities. It never crossed my mind that reporting him could protect other women.

* In Timothy Crouse’s book about the adventures of the campaign press, The Boys on the Bus , he observed, “Few TV correspondents ever join the wee – hour poker games or drinking. Connie Chung, the pretty Chinese CBS correspondent, occupied the room next to mine… and she was always back by midnight, reciting a final sixty – second radio spot into her Sony or absorbing one last press release before getting a good night’s sleep.” The next morning, Crouse noted, I would be “bright and alert, sticking a mike into McGovern’s face” with pointed questions, while the print reporters, after spending the night drinking, stood bleary eyed, listening, just in case McGovern should say something newsworthy.
Tim was right. I said to myself, “I will not engage in such debauchery.” At the time, I haughtily thought, “Those reporters are just a bunch of drunkards.”
But when I woke up, I’d discover the New York Times or the Washington Post had broken an important story. Someone from the McGovern campaign had leaked an inside story to a boy on the bus! How did one of those drunks get that story? Then it dawned on me. The reporters were drinking with lubricated McGovern aides who then spilled their guts. How stupid could I be?
So much for staying in my room. No more good girl tucked in bed early. I joined the boys in the bar, just as I had in college. Yes, that made it harder to get up bright and early the next day — but I was not going to miss a scoop.

* As I made my way back to the dining room, I encountered [George] McGovern in a dark, narrow hallway. He stopped me and tried to kiss me. I was shocked. I stepped back. He quickly took the cue and stepped back too. It was not an aggressive act. Just a surprising one.

* I was seated at a black – tie dinner next to former President Jimmy Carter. At one point during the dinner, his leg and knee pressed against my leg under the table. I immediately looked at him. He smiled. Oh dear. This incident happened after President Carter had told Playboy magazine he had “looked at a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in [his] heart many times.” I think I saw that look.

* Next scene: the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where I was exiting through a revolving door. Entering through the revolving door: Warren Beatty. We circled around a few times, laughing at the silliness. Remember Beatty? He was the one who chased every skirt on the 1972 McGovern campaign. I was a dedicated reporter who did not want anything to taint my reputation. I resisted his overtures.
Now I was in La – La Land and Warren was relentless. What the heck. He actually lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in a small room on a top floor, tucked in the eaves. We went out a couple times and he called often. There were times when he rang me at my apartment when Maury and his daughters were visiting me. One day, either Susan or Amy answered my phone. Her eyes bugged out when she whispered to me that Warren Beatty was on the line. She added, “We won’t tell Dad.” How cute is that? From then on, if Warren called and the girls were at my apartment, they would say, “Connie, it’s Walter!” — their code name for him.

* All night, I kept getting glimpses of Ryan O’Neal, who was looking very Love Story – ish. Our eyes met several times during the night, but I never seemed to be able to gracefully weave through the stars to talk to him. Before I knew it, the night was over, and everyone was heading to the door to give hunky wannabe actors our valet tickets so they could run and get our cars. I found myself at the door just in front of Ryan O’Neal. I looked at him and a line from old black – and – white movies emerged from my lips: “Your place or mine?” O’Neal replied, “Up to you.” With a subtle and casual glance back at him, I said, “Follow me.” I hopped in my black Jensen – Healey convertible, gunned my motor, and scooted down the hill — waiting for him down the road. Feel free to use your imagination.
One night a girlfriend of mine and I decided to go to dinner at Musso & Frank, a small, funky restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. We settled into a booth, just the two of us. Not far away, at another booth, were four guys. They asked if we wanted to join them. “Sure.” We nodded, squeezing into their booth.
They seemed nice, smart, fun. I asked the guy I found most appealing what he did for a living. “I play in a band.” At the end of the dinner, he asked me if I wanted to go to his house. “Sure.”
In his cluttered living room, an upright piano took a prominent spot. “Would you play something you perform with your band?” I asked innocently. “Sure.” He launched into “Hotel California.” Gulp.
By this time, Maury, who had gotten an anchor job in San Francisco, had already moved on to the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, where he was a news anchor, reporter, and talk show host. We were still a two – city couple, but the long travel time between LA and Philly slowed our romance. Still, we talked frequently. I called to tweak him: “I went out with an Eagle.” Maury replied, “You mean the Philadelphia Eagles?” How I groaned.
Even though we both knew we did not have an exclusive relationship, Maury felt compelled to remark: “You are star – f*cking!”
I retorted, “YOU can’t even remember the FIRST names of the women you are dating — let alone the LAST names.”

* Jane Pauley’s coanchor, Bryant Gumbel, set the macho tone. Steve Friedman, Today executive producer, was the cocaptain of the male brigade. Before the program started, the guys joked and talked among themselves. Even though I was sitting right next to Bryant, I was invisible. Quietly reviewing my material, I went about my business. Bryant would not talk to me until the red light went on and we were on the air.

* Since NBC had a history of fourteen failed magazine programs, the news division created a documentary unit instead. Happy to be assigned to that staff, I thought I would be creating solid hours of serious journalism, but Executive Producer Paul Greenberg and Senior Producer Sid Feders had other ideas for me.
I wanted to do a documentary about security breaches at the US embassy in the Soviet Union. Greenberg adamantly refused, knocking down the idea despite a well – researched pitch from a female producer and me. Nothing she or I said would convince him.
Instead, Feders suggested doing what I would not call a documentary. It was called Scared Sexless and was about sex and AIDS, a blatant ratings grabber. I vehemently resisted. I tried to fight in a civilized manner, but I could not find a way to buck the system. I lost, and it was a significant loss.
Just as I had known all those years before that the miniskirt special I’d been assigned at Channel 5 was not dignified, serious journalism, I knew this kind of tawdry play for ratings would hurt my career. My inability to extricate myself from the sex blather set in motion a perception that tarnished my reputation for all the years that followed. Much to my dismay, the curse was that it was a ratings hit — garnering the highest ratings for an NBC News documentary documentary in ten years.
Another Sid Feders extravaganza followed, called Life in the Fat Lane , about weight loss. Yet again, I succumbed to the wishes of the men in charge, even though I was embarrassed by this hour of infotainment. Again, the ratings came in just short of the top ten of the week — it ended up eleventh. After each of those hours, I was skewered by media critics, especially the Washington Post ’s Tom Shales, who called me “Connie Funn” and the programs “popumentaries.” The insults were awful to read, yet frankly, I agreed with Shales. I earnestly traveled to do all the interviews, but it was my worst series of programs ever.
Later Shales, in a column about other documentaries by NBC women, called Real Life with Jane Pauley “superficial friffle” and Cutting Edge with Maria Shriver “another exercise in thumb – twiddling anti – journalism from a news division that seems to be steadily losing interest in the news.” Shales went on, “ Cutting Edge was produced by Sid Feders, the man who perpetrated many of the mockumentaries and schlockumentaries that starred Connie Chung.”
That story by Shales highlighted what I already knew. The men in the documentary unit, such as Tom Brokaw, would never touch the schlock and were never put in a position where they had to refuse to do celebrity – tainted superficial subjects. Three women were. We did not wiggle out of it. Why? I don’t think it ruined Jane Pauley and Maria Shriver’s reputations, yet I know it ruined mine. Unfortunately, I did not know how to fight it.

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The President Of Talk Radio

Robert E. Brown writes in 2017:

Remove the content from Limbaugh and what is striking is the anger. Anger is the sex of talk-radio, and sex sells. In the jargon of talk radio, there are monsters—tabloidhot news monsters. The author David Foster Wallace described how the terrorist torture of a captured prisoner functioned as a news monster to stoke rage and crystallize opinion:

“The Nick Berg beheading and its Internet video compose what is known around KFI as a “Monster,” meaning a story that has both high news value and tremendous emotional voltage. As is SOP in political talk radio, the emotions most readily accessed are anger, outrage, indignation, fear, despair, disgust, contempt, and a certain kind of apocalyptic
glee.” (Wallace, 2005)

Before Limbaugh’s paper Big Bang of 1988, a fiery talk-show host named Ray Briem dominated talk radio in Southern California from the latter years of the 1960s through and after the eras of the Vietnam War. Berating counterculture values, especially of war-protesting youth, as anti-American, pro-Communist, immoral, and treasonous, Briem consistently drew the highest ratings of any host in Southern California with 15% of the available audience. (Edwards, 2016)

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The Myth Of Morality

Richard Joyce writes in this 2007 book:

* We have evolved to categorize aspects of the world using moral concepts. Natural selection has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, demands which it does not make.

* Most parties agree that the origins of morality lie in the development of human cooperation. Few will object to the view that the human tendency to help each other in certain circumstances is a trait that has been naturally selected for. In the past few decades we have gained a clear picture of how helping traits can be favored by forces of natural selection – something which, perhaps, seems initially puzzling. The first step is helping behavior among family members. Why should an individual provide aid even for
his or her offspring? The answer is that offspring contain 50 per cent of an individual’s genetic material, and therefore (among certain kinds of creatures) those who look out for their young will enjoy an increased probability of having offspring in subsequent generations over those who do not. This will go for helping tendencies towards siblings as well, and, to a lesser extent, cousins, nephews and nieces, etc. (bearing in mind that several nieces/nephews are worth more, genetically speaking, than a daughter or son).

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