{"id":8453,"date":"2009-03-12T19:19:50","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T03:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8453"},"modified":"2009-03-13T07:50:45","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T15:50:45","slug":"nyt-columnist-roger-cohen-live-at-sinai-temple-in-westwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8453","title":{"rendered":"NYT Columnist Roger Cohen Live At Sinai Temple In Westwood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jewishjournal.com\/thegodblog\/item\/roger_cohen_speaks_with_iranian_jews_at_sinai_temple_20090312\/\">The Jewish Journal is streaming this event live<\/a>. The quality of the stream is excellent.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roger_Cohen\">Roger Cohen<\/a> says the Iranian regime is pragmatic. They don&#8217;t plan to do anything nasty. They&#8217;re growing into a responsible power. Don&#8217;t demonize those who demonize the Jewish state.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard Mr. Cohen interviewed on Dennis Prager&#8217;s radio show. He&#8217;s extremely civil and comes across as the most reasonable and open-minded man in the world.<\/p>\n<p>His columns generally strike me as bland restatements of the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>He strikes me as a reporter first and an opinion-monger second.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen&#8217;s response to the furor over his positive portrayal of Iran and its treatment of its Jews shows how lacking the man is in moral perspective: &quot;&quot;I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one &mdash; the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results. It&rsquo;s worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel&rsquo;s race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not. Nor should racist demagoguery &mdash; wherever &mdash; prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it. &quot;<sup id=\"cite_ref-7\" class=\"reference\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roger_Cohen#cite_note-7\" title=\"\"><span>[<\/span>8<span>]<\/span><\/a>&quot;<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Avigdor Lieberman has never called for the destruction and annihilation of any country or group. It is a hateful and odious comparison that could only be made by one who&#8217;s morally blind.<\/p>\n<p>The program at Sinai Temple is superbly moderated by David Wolpe and the stream quality remains excellent.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen is taking many sips of water. He must find the heat he&#8217;s taking is making him thirsty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Jewish Journal is streaming this event live. The quality of the stream is excellent. Roger Cohen says the Iranian regime is pragmatic. They don&#8217;t plan to do anything nasty. They&#8217;re growing into a responsible power. Don&#8217;t demonize those who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8453\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[7390,29761,16687,16677,29787,772,32505,29871],"class_list":["post-8453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sinai-temple","tag-conventional-wisdom","tag-dennis-prager","tag-iranian-regime","tag-jewish-issue","tag-jewish-journal","tag-nyt","tag-roger-cohen","tag-sinai-temple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8454,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453\/revisions\/8454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}