JustASC

I wasn’t going to bother with the whole Obama humor deficit thing, until I began wondering if anyone compared Obama humor to Lieberman humor.

It’s a useful compare and contrast. Like Obama, Leiberman as vice presidential candidate under Gore was breaking ethnic ground — the first in his ethnic group to be considered for so high an office. Like Obama, Lieberman had  a squeaky-clean, even sanctimonious, reputation in 2000.

So why were there more Lieberman jokes? Could it suggest that America is more willing to mock Jews than blacks, and Jews are more accepting of such jokes? The short answer is yes. The long answer is — well, first consider what was funny about Lieberman the First Jewish Vice Presidential Candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

Even by its own weird standards, an essay by Richard V. Allen in the WJS about Obama’s foreign policy experience or lack thereof says…absolutely nothing.

Allen, a foreign policy aide to Nixon and Reagan, runs down the foreign policy credentials of the last seven presidents, from Nixon to George W. Bush, to whom he devotes exactly one sentence:

George W. Bush, of course, had virtually no international experience, yet was able to rally the nation in response to 9/11.

Remember the rally? I still have my t-shirt.

So here’s Allen’s scorecard:

Nixon: “vast international experience in extensive travels as vice president.” Presidential performance: opened China.

Johnson: Very experienced. Performance: “strong proponent of a bipartisan foreign and national security policy”

Ford: “Solid experience.” Performance: no assessment given

Carter: “no significant foreign experience.” Performance: brokered Egypt-Israel peace deal, badly misjudged Soviets, failed to rescue Iranian hostages

Reagan: “voracious reader, researcher and writer” whose preparation prior to 1980 was “methodical” — travelling overseas in 1978.  Performance: no assessment provided.

George H.W. Bush: Very experienced. Performance: no assessment provided.

Bill Clinton: Studied at Oxford, travelled widely, overseas trips as governor. Performance: no assessment provided.

Geroge W. Bush: No experience. Performance: Great rally-er.

John McCain: Very experienced 

Allen concludes:

So, when we hear about Barack Obama’s extensive “experience” in foreign affairs, most of which will be recently acquired in a mere week of travel amid media fanfare, it should be judged in the context of the experience quotients of his predecessor candidates for the presidency.

Judged in what context exactly? Allen doesn’t even bother to tell us how he thinks most of the presidents did in the foreign policy realm, or suggest how their experience or lack thereof matched their performance. Like his decision to punt on W.’s legacy (the “rally” lasted about six months of his seven-and-half years in office, and preceded two wars), the entire article is a worthless and un-serious performance.

If he had a set of cojones and really wanted to rattle Obama supporters, he might write: “If you don’t think foreign policy experience counts, check out he last seven years.” But how would that sit with his colleagues at the Hoover Institution? 

IsraelNN.com reports on a rather one-sided request from a right-wing coalition:

Jewish Groups Challenge Obama: Show Support for United Jerusalem(IsraelNN.com) The Coalition for a United Jerusalem held a news conference in the capital Tuesday night to demand that US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama express unequivocal support for the unification of Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty.

The Coalition, which represents a group of Jewish organizations including the American Israeli Action Coalition, the Council of Young Israel Rabbis in Israel, Emunah Women, the Rabbinical Council of America in Israel, the Worldwide Young Israel Movement and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), called on Obama to reaffirm his positive views for the future of Jerusalem.

Will they be asking McCain for his “reaffirmation” as well? Here’s where he stands on the “unification” issue, according to Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top foreign policy adviser:

“Sen. McCain has said that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, that it is undivided today, that we should move our embassy there,” Scheunemann said. “And if a democratic government of Israel chooses to accept an alteration of that status, he’s certainly not going to second-guess a democratic government of Israel.”

Which sounds like a perfectly sane position, and is basically indistinguishable from Obama’s:

I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. And I have said that before and I will say it again. And I also have said that it is important that we don’t simply slice the city in half, but I’ve also said that that’s a final status issue. That’s an issue that has to be dealt with with the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and it is not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history.

There’s a shift in the anti-Obama camp, from Obama as Jew-hating, Iran-appeasing, Farrakhan apologist, to a sincere friend of Israel who just happens to be wrong on a host of issues. I write about it this week, pointing to recent essays by Yossi Klein Halevi, Nathan Diament, and Hillel Halkin. 

To their credit, each of these writers goes to great pains to distance himself from the worst things said about Obama. Halkin’s testimonial is especially forthright, especially because he seems to fear the most from a Obama presdidency (despite the polite hiccup at the beginning of the following paragraph):

From an Israeli point of view, [an Obama presidency] need not necessarily be a catastrophe. Mr. Obama never was and is not the anti-Israel figure that some right-wing Jewish circles nastily attempted to portray him as during his primary campaign. He will support Israel on many issues just as nearly all American presidents have done before him.

Fair enough. Diament, as I pointed out in a previous post, basically suggests that Obama still has to prove he feels Israel in his kishkes — which in some ways is the hardest thing to convince voters of. Barring his throwing himself in the path of a bulldozer in the streets of Jerusalem, it’s not clear what grand gesture Obama must make to overcome the distrust of those who are already disinclined to like him. Kishkes equals pandering plus time. He can pander, but there’s not much time between now and November.

Klein Halevi and Halkin, by contrast, air their specific gripes and anxieties about Obama policies, especially on Iraq, and worry he won’t be resolute in deploying the military option if it comes down to that, or supporting Israel if it decides to strike first.

In my column, I suggest that this is a positive trend:

Halkin’s claims about the Clinton legacy, like Klein Halevi’s about the dangers of diplomacy, are highly debatable - but that’s the point. You can’t argue with a paranoid e-mail, any more than you can reason with a head cold. But in the new wave of Obama anxiety, at least there is something to debate. And that’s a start.

I keep harping on this — but what I object to is how Israel supporters, almost exclusively on the right, defend their own policies as “pro-Israel,” and everyone else’s as “anti-.” It’s a Bush-ian “you’re either for us or against us” formula that makes every debate on Israel about bona fides and symbolic gestures and minutely parsed language, instead of serious debate over the best policy. To support Oslo and oppose the settlements is not anti-Israel. To add diplomacy to a president’s arsenal is not anti-Israel. It is merely an alternative approach. And maybe it’s a bad approach. And maybe Obama, as Halkin’s article is headlined, presents “Dangers Worse than Clinton’s.” But let’s at least talk about it like adults, and stop the name-calling, the distorting of perfectly reasonable statements, and the specious comparisons. 

Here’s an interesting attempt by a Boston Globe headline writer to localize a national story:

Man convicted in assault on BU professor 

The BU professor in question is Elie Wiesel.

(Hat tip to NJJN’s Josh Putterman.)

The NJJN’s Gil Hoffman reports on Gov. Corzine’s trip in Israel:

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine served as the opening act for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on his visit to Israel this week, reassuring Israelis that Obama would maintain the strong connection between Israel and the United States.

Corzine began a weeklong visit to Israel on Sunday and met with many of the same Israeli leaders Obama was scheduled to meet in his 24-hour visit to Israel on Wednesday, including President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

The long tail of my kishkes meme: Here’s the OU’s Nathan Diament writing at RealClearPolitics.com:

Recent polling indicates that Barack Obama has less support among American Jews than previous Democratic presidential nominees. This is not merely because an unprecedented campaign has been waged by viral emails and incendiary articles falsely portraying Obama as harboring secret biases for the Palestinian cause and taking advice from persons openly hostile to Israel’s interests. It is because Obama is seeking to succeed a pair of American presidents who each remain extremely popular in Israel and among her supporters for one basic reason - Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, each in their own way, conveyed a gut level kinship with the Jewish state. Obama has yet to convey convincingly that he is similarly committed to Israel in his kishkes.

Or as I wrote in February:

Maybe they’ve grown spoiled, but you hear in the pro-Israel, anti-Obama rhetoric the notion that Obama’s spotless Senate voting record on Israel and meat-and-potatoes speeches to AIPAC are not quite enough. “Window dressing,” as someone dismissively described it to me. A certain kind of pro-Israel voter wants to know that candidates feel for Israel in their guts - their kishkes - and not just in their heads.

Loving that juicy Jersey tomato? Thank Israel.

Genesis Seeds Ltd. of Ashalim is reproducing the famed “Ramapo” F-1 Hybrid, once famous throughout New Jersey for its “balance of sweetness and acidity.” Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station distributed Ramapo seeds to 80 farms around the state, which hope to bring the strain to market by August, the Star-Ledger reports.

The state’s tomato growers had stopped growing the breed in favor of heartier strains. But the Rutgers folks found the Israel company, which initially produced four pounds of seed for $8,000, outbidding an American company that demanded a minimum order of 25 pounds of seed for $50,000.

Rider University has announced that Teanecker Ben Dworkin will succeed the late David Rebovich as the Director of the Rider Institute for New Jersey Politics and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science.

A good guy for an important NJ catbird seat.

Should the Jewish world lay off Agriprocessors? I don’t think so:

Agriprocessors certainly deserves it day in court. But something stinks in the state of Iowa, and it’s not too early for kosher consumers to demand higher standards from everyone associated with the industry. At stake is the integrity of kashrut itself - and the credibility of any Jew who quotes the Torah on justice.