Yanks, Red Sox avoid Kol Nidre conflict

It was quite a bit of news earlier this year when the New York Jets appealed to the NFL on behalf of their Jewish fans to reschedule their Sept. 27 home game. The NFL originally scheduled their game on NBC's Sunday Night Football with an 8pm kickoff, going head-to-head with Kol Nidre services across the East Coast and Midwest. The NFL gave the Jets a break, allowing them to kick off at 1pm EDT. Jewish Jets fans could enjoy the game at Giants Stadium or on tv without missing out on yontif.

The Yankees-Red Sox weekend series finale was originally scheduled for Sept. 27 at 1pm EDT at Yankee Stadium. Major League Baseball and ESPN moved the first pitch back to 8pm EDT to accommodate the national Sunday Night Baseball telecast on ESPN. A U.S. Congressman from New York and the Yankees appealed to Bud Selig, (Jewish) commissioner of baseball. Selig and ESPN allowed the game to be rescheduled to its original start time. It will still be broadcast on ESPN. This last part is rather startling. ESPN insists on broadcast exclusivity for its Sunday Night Baseball telecasts. Other MLB games may proceed at that time, but they may not be on tv. (Teams prefer to be on tv and as a result play Sunday matinées instead.) ESPN is going ahead with its high-interest game in the afternoon, competing with other games, to accommodate Jewish fans. Very impressive.

Cook County's finest vs. my Cobra

I had wanted one for years. After Thanksgiving 2007, I saw one on sale--unbelievably, less than $50. So I splurged and bought my first radar detector.

I don't like leaving it connected in the car because I think it invites theft. I know at least one person who has had her car broken into numerous times, and she doesn't have any accessories like a radar detector or GPS. So I only set it up when I'm taking a long drive. Sunday was one of those times. I took I-294 to I-90 northwest to Randall Road, down to North Avenue in St. Charles--a distance of about 50 miles.

On expressways, tollways and freeways, Americans typically have two choices: exceed the speed limit or get run over. While most speeding tickets are for 9+ mph over the limit, the traffic court judge issues the standard warning at the beginning of her court call: one mile over the limit is still illegal. So if a police car wants to ticket a motorist, he almost always can. I saw on YouTube a boast by a police officer that he can identify a traffic violation by any driver after following him for just four blocks. My point is: I don't use the Cobra specifically so I can break the law without being punished. It really doesn't work that way. If a police officer who is not using radar sees me speeding, he can probably paint me with his gun before I have a chance to slow down. I use it to fight back against cops lying in wait for unsuspecting motorists who are truly following the flow of traffic. The resultant ticket is "arbitrary and capricious"* if everyone is going 75mph. McCormick Boulevard, at Albion: on a grassy knoll. Farther north, at Dempster: behind a park sign. Dempster Street, in Morton Grove: Shoe Carnival parking lot. Yesterday, on I-90 near Sears Centre: behind an old building. This trap was set up in advance with Cook County Sheriff's deputies in at least three separate squad cars, most likely using the Wisconsin Play**: one would hit motorists with his gun and radio to his colleagues, who would chase then down the speeders. Fortunately, thanks to the Cobra having a panic attack, I knew the cops were there. Others were not so fortunate.

Is lying in wait for motorists on a pedestrian-free roadway (I-90) where most drivers are safely driving approximately the same speed (until they realized the police presence, anyway) really a positive way to raise revenue for a government entity?

*The U.S. Supreme Court has deemed such punishment unconstitutional.
**Wisconsin state troopers employ the Wisconsin Play on northbound I-94 between the Illinois state line and Milwaukee, hitting mainly Illinois drivers. Speeding isn't really necessary here as the limit is 65mph.

Rosh Hashanah menu at Di Pescara

Di Pescara is an upscale Italian restaurant in Northbrook Court. It is part of the very popular Lettuce Entertain You chain of Chicago-area restaurants. These restaurants are very popular with Jews. A relative told me last night Di Pescara is offering a Rosh Hashanah menu.

To me, this is deeply offensive. Aside from the shomer yontif concerns of driving to the restaurant and paying for the meals, Di Pescara is a non-kosher restaurant that includes crab legs on the menu. (Are crab legs on the Rosh Hashanah menu? I hope not.) If the restaurant stipulated: new/cleaned equipment dedicated for this menu; all-kosher, dairy-free ingredients with kosher wine; by prepaid reservation only--that would be all right. Not strictly kosher without supervision, but at least following the spirit of traditional Jewish cuisine. But we know that will not be the case. The restaurant will welcome Jewish diners right around candle-lighting Friday night (6:35), for lunch on Saturday and dinner on Saturday night. The restaurant will offer the Rosh Hashanah menu. Round challah too?

I realize most Rosh Hashanah celebrants will not be eating a strictly kosher meal. But at least families should have the meal at home, away from the distractions of a non-kosher restaurant where it's just another Friday or Saturday night.

I saw an ad in a Jewish newspaper in 2003 for a Yom Kippur dinner (after sunset, on Kol Nidre/Yom Kippur night) for secular Jews. The ad explained, "Most Jews aren't religious. This dinner is for Jews who don't observe Yom Kippur." I was very curious about the response the advertiser received. Perhaps he didn't know that the percentage of Jews who fast on Yom Kippur is actually higher than the percentage of Jews who believe in G-d. (Hedging their bets.) And just his luck: the Chicago Cubs played the decisive Game 5 of the National League Division Series that night, beating Atlanta to advance to the National League Championship Series. So I suspect most secular Jews were too busy watching the game to attend his dinner.

I thought of that dinner when I heard about Di Pescara. I see a distinction between targeting Jews with non-kosher food; and labeling a restaurant's non-kosher food as a Rosh Hashanah menu. Remember the photo of the ham at the deli labeled "Chanukah special"? Let the Jews make their own holiday food.

District 9 (spoilers)

District 9
Tri-Star (Sony)
Opened Aug. 9
1:53

District 9 is notable for being shot almost entirely on location in Johannesburg, a first for a major motion picture release. My South African friends were surprised and impressed, and one pointed out to me how the Republic was a pariah among the nations for decades due to its apartheid system. All the actors were South African--either Afrikaners or black South Africans. Sharlto Copley stars as Wikus ven der Merwe, a friendly, low-key employee of a large, private company, MNU (Multi-National United) that operates the District 9 slum. Wikus reminded me of William H. Macy's character in Fargo because both have powerful, wealthy fathers-in-law who see their sons-in-law as weak. Wikus' physical transformation reminded me of Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

The eviction procedure that set the plot in motion was a military-style operation, and that's why I found Wikus' poor preparation so troubling. He should have been wearing full body armor and should have left alien contact to the soldiers who accompanied him. The aliens have the strength to project a human 20 feet in the air, and they're just wearing bulletproof vests? Come on. Instead, walking around unprotected and inadvertently spraying the fluid canister is what got him into trouble. He pointed out he didn't know what the canister was except that it was alien; he should have bagged it and tagged it without trying to operate it.

Also, the door-to-door notice could have been accomplished with bilingual leaflets dropped from the air, but I suppose that is beside the point.

The movie didn't make Nigerians look very good, did it? Prostitutes and slum profiteers.

Did the movie suggest that the aliens' planet was dying when they arrived? I missed that part. A slave ship's arrival over Los Angeles in 1988's Alien Nation set the scene for the humanoid aliens in that film living among us. It was unclear whether the District 9 residents would have been permitted to leave District 9 to go home if given the chance.

I'm glad I did not see the trailer until after I saw the film because it really gave away a lot.

Speaking of mass murder....

Communism was responsible for the deaths of over 100 million innocent people in the previous century.

Vladimir Lenin. Josef Stalin. Mao Tse-Tung. Pol Pot. Heroes of Communism. All were mass murderers. The reason Pol Pot's personal death toll was "only" two million was because his small country had only seven million people. His colleagues were more successful.

These men are still celebrated as heroes in left-wing political groups. They meet at conferences on a regular basis (always in Chicago) to bash Israel and extol the virtues of their political system and their deceased leaders, who were surely misunderstood by the democracies that eventually prevailed.

I saw Joel Pollak speak at a political meeting Aug. 13. His focus was health care, but he spoke briefly about Communism. He pointed out that there is a Holocaust Museum in Washington which teaches children and adults too young to remember about the evils of Nazism. There should be a Museum of Communism, he said. I think he's right. Someone needs to remind us of the evils of a murderous political theology that specialized in arresting and murdering those who dared speak out against the dictatorship. For some reason, Jews always suffered under those dictatorships, too, and modern Communist groups continue to be terribly antisemitic. (Ask them why. They'll insist they're just anti-Israel. Right.) In a triumph of this century's moral relativism, Communism doesn't receive the widespread criticism, disdain and vitriol it deserves.

Remember who the Nazis were

Comparisons of Israelis or the President of the United States to the most horrific genocidal maniacs in human history are insulting to the memory of the victims of Nazi terror.


Posted on Wed, Aug. 19, 2009
We need a history lesson about Nazis

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
I hope this column makes you sick.

See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over healthcare reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, ``Hitler took over the car companies, then healthcare and then he killed the Jews.''

Said Joseph: ``I almost swerved my vehicle off the road when I heard that.''

But the caller is hardly unique. Google ``Obama + Nazis'' and you get almost seven million hits. Nor is the phenomenon new. Substitute President Bush's name and you get nearly 2.8 million.

An invasion of sorts

Even granting that many of those hits are benign, it seems obvious the Nazis have invaded American political rhetoric in a big way. As in Rush Limbaugh declaring healthcare reform ``a Hitler-like policy,'' swastikas popping up at protest rallies, a poster depicting Obama with Hitler's moustache and a pamphlet that says: ``Act Now To Stop Obama's Nazi Health Plan!

It's important to remember that the Nazis are passing out of living memory; U.S. soldiers of that era are said to be dying at the rate of 1,200 a day. Which makes it too easy, I think, for a nation of notorious historical illiteracy to remake the Nazis as some kind of all-purpose boogeymen for slandering political enemies and scoring cheap rhetorical points.

So I thought it would be good to make you sick, i.e., to spend a few minutes reminding some and teaching others what you invoke when you invoke the Nazi regime.

For the record, then: It was Nazis who shoved sand down a boy's throat until he died, who tossed candies to Jewish children as they sank to their deaths in a sand pit, who threw babies from a hospital window and competed to see how many of those ``little Jews'' could be caught on a bayonet, who injected a cement-like fluid into women's uteruses to see what would happen, who stomped a pregnant woman to death, who once snatched a woman's baby from her arms and, in the words of an eyewitness, ``tore him as one would tear a rag.''

Ideology over reason

That's who the Nazis were, ladies and gentlemen -- those obscenities plus six million more. They were the triumph of ideology over reason and even over humanity, the demonization of racial, religious and political difference, the objectification of the vulnerable other. And the authors of a mass murder that staggers imagination, still.

You would think, then, that where they are invoked to draw a parallel or make a point, it would be done with a respect for the incalculable evil the Nazis represent. You would think people would tread carefully, not because of the potential insult to a given politician (they are big boys and girls) but because to do otherwise profanes the profound and renders trivial that which ought to be held sacred by anyone who regards himself as a truly human being.

But in modern America, unfortunately, rhetoric often starts over the top and goes up from there. So fine, George W. Bush is ``a smirking chimp.'' Fine, Barack Obama is ``a Chicago thug.'' We have a Constitution, after all, and it says we can say whatever we want. It doesn't say it has to be intelligent.

Historical amnesia

And yes, you are even protected if you liken Obama or Bush to Hitler. Yet every time I hear that, it makes me cringe for what it says about our collective propensity for historical amnesia and our retarded capacity for reverence. Once upon a lifetime ago, six million people with DNA, names and faces just like you and I, were butchered with gleeful sadism and mechanistic dispatch. Six million people.

You and I may no longer respect one another, but is it asking too much that we still respect them?


© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

How anti-war is the anti-war movement?

I was listening to the Michael Medved Show last week when I heard Jonathan Leaf talk about his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties. He made an interesting point: the anti-war movement wasn't really anti-war. It was anti-America-winning-a-war. I thought of that while thinking of Chicago ANSWER, the local arm of the national left-wing extremist group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. ANSWER was very successful in organizing marches against the war in Iraq during the Bush Administration. The Chicago chapter is now jumping into the parking meter debate. How does the city's parking meter lease connect to an anti-war movement? It doesn't. I believe Chicago ANSWER is using the very unpopular parking meter lease--an easy issue to latch onto--in order to publicize its more extreme views. For example:

--ANSWER continues to blame Israel for Gaza's problems despite the fact Israel has not controlled Gaza since 2005 and has not had a presence in Gaza at all except for a brief period in 2008. This incursion was intended to stop the rocket barrage from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot.

--anti-war ANSWER opposes any U.S. intervention in the Darfur conflict, preferring to allow the Sudanese government to continue its massacre of innocent black Africans by Arabs. Sounds pretty racist to me.

--ANSWER supports the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe--a dying nation with worthless currency and a corrupt government in desperate need of reform. But ANSWER supports the dictatorship.

Let's be perfectly clear. ANSWER is not absolutely opposed to war. If Syria invaded Israel, ANSWER would gleefully support Syria's actions against "Western imperialism." If Cuba brutally suppressed a revolt, ANSWER would celebrate another victory for the Revolution. ANSWER's opposition to war depends on which side is winning.