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MY SAY:

KINDLY DISMOUNT YOUR HIGH HORSES AND STOP VIRTUE SIGNALING

 Please stop abetting the left by declaring that Trump was not your first choice or that you are troubled by his character or that the tweets are annoying you and all the reluctance and virtue signaling. The hour is late.

Only a resounding victory for the re-election of Donald Trump can derail the Democrat determination to create post election challenges and chaos. If he loses abandon all hope. rsk

OUR SAY :PROFESSOR EDWARD ALEXANDER REMEMBERED

Eddie Alexander was an admired and respected and treasured friend. I was always dazzled by his erudition and brilliance and grateful for his unparalleled literary litigation in support of Israel’s historic rights, and against the nation’s hypocritical and venal opponents.  rsk

From Rael Jean Isaac:

“With the passing of Edward Alexander, my husband and I have lost one of our oldest and dearest friends, and the Jewish people have lost an irreplaceable champion.  Forty years ago, Alexander, then a professor of English at the University of Washington specializing in  Victorian literature, shifted his focus to the  Jews.  From then on he used his  erudition and extraordinary literary and polemical talents in service of  the Jewish people and the Jewish state.  He skewered the villains, both without and within the Jewish fold, from political and academic icons like Bishop Tutu and Edward Said to “Jewish” enemies like Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler and Seymour Hersh.  Some of his most devastating critiques were of those Jews who claimed to be “friends of Israel” while undermining her.  Indeed one of his books is entitled “With Friends Like These.” Alexander saw himself on a battlefield as the titles of his books reveal: The Jewish Wars; The Holocaust and the War of Ideas; The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Accusers and Defenders; The Jewish Idea and its Enemies. Nor was he hesitant to take on the enemies of Israel within the Jewish state itself, an intelligentsia  riddled with moral arrogance and self-hatred.  As Alvin Rosenfeld has said, Edward Alexander turned polemical writing into an “effective art form.”

Three years ago, Edward was devastated by the loss of Leah, his wife of  sixty years, and spent much time pouring over her letters and other writing, much of which he had never seen and which brought her closer. Rael Isaac

From  Stephen Rittenberg, M.D.

I met Eddie in the first semester at Columbia College in 1953. I brought with me arrogant biases from my private school, Fieldston and assumed no one from public school could possibly have had the education I possessed. It was a form of liberal arrogance imbibed as part of ethical culture’s training. And then I met Eddie. We hit it off immediately by talking about baseball, the Yankees (my team) and the Dodgers (his). Eddie  was knowledgeable about writers I had barely heard of, and he knew opera and aspects of culture I knew nothing about. He was clearly brilliant. I learned that he had been sports editor of the Tilden high school newspaper and had uncovered a scandal involving Brooklyn high schools stealing players from other districts that made it to the local papers. In recent years we reminisced about the great Brooklyn boys of summer. Eddie and I hit it off and sat together in various classes with Lionel Trilling, Fred Dupee and Mark Van Doren.  We developed a late adolescent friendship that lasted all our lives. When we went off to graduate school we wrote letters almost every day and I learned of Eddie’s beautiful romance with Leah.  More than friendship, and despite the continent that separated us we loved each other. I think ultimately Eddie not only lived up to the Trilling ego ideal, but surpassed it because, unlike Trilling, he drew strength from his Jewish identity. How we will miss his magnificent voice.

MY SAY: PAULINE KAEL ON NIXON IN 1972

In 1972 Nixon won the election in a landslide despite the hatred of the media and academics and general “liberals’ who preferred the Socialist leanings of George McGovern.

The famous witty film critic  Pauline Kael famously commented:

 ‘I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.’”

I know what she meant….I can feel the silent Trump supporters….rsk

A QUESTION FOR DOCTOR FAUCI

Like many of America’s “seniores” and senioras” I take medications. Dr. Fauci is debatedly billed as our top public health czar.

Why does he not warn us about the locus of many of our therapeutics and supplements – prescribed and otherwise?

How many are still manufactured  in China and other ares of limited quality control?

Our lives depend on it…..rsk

MY SAY-WHEN BLACK LIVES MATTERED IN 1965

In 1964 then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan , launched  a major study :The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Begun in 1964 under President Kennedy it was completed the subsequent year under President Johnson and presented by the Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor as a recommendation to implement The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Chapters were:

The Negro American Revolution

The Negro American Family

The Roots of the Problem

The Tangle of Pathology

The Case for National Action

On the “Revolution” Moynihan wrote:

The Negro American revolution is rightly regarded as the most important domestic event of the postwar period in the United States. Nothing like it has occurred since the upheavals of the 1930’s which led to the organization of the great industrial trade unions, and which in turn profoundly altered both the economy and the political scene.

The Negro American revolution holds forth the prospect that the American Republic, which at birth was flawed by the institution of Negro slavery, and which throughout its history has been marred by the unequal treatment of Negro citizens, will at last redeem the full promise of the Declaration of Independence.

“…. the Negro leadership has conducted itself with the strictest propriety, acting always and only as American citizens asserting their rights within the framework of the American political system.”

Moynihan underestimated the breakout of violent and seditious groups like Black Muslims, The Student non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)- founded as a pacifist organization, it became radical and Maoist and the Black Panthers a socialist political organization founded by Marxist college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton who publicly proclaimed themselves as Maoists and anti-capitalism, anti-racism and anti-Zionism.

The principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow.

To guarantee equality of results was both Utopian and detrimental.

The rest of the report focuses on the need to shore up the crumbling Negro family.

The emphasis on the family led to false accusations that Moynihan “blamed the victim” with the result that the problems the report addressed never received the serious attention they deserved.

Nonetheless the report along with The Civil Rights Act led to major reparation policies, the best known being affirmative action.

In many respects, the outcome was impressive. There are now many more black college graduates, many more blacks in high level jobs in the media, in the academies, in the professions, in business and in the corridors of power. It would be patronizing to list the number of highly qualified and well-placed Black Americans.

In the greatest act of moral reparation of all, Americans elected a Black president for two terms- something no Jew, or Hispanic-or Asian American has achieved.

Which brings us to Black Lives Matter and the present so called “revolution.”

The George Floyd killing should have elicited fair, and honest, and data-based debate on police tactics. Instead Black Lives Matter has become an occasionally violent movement, taken over by screeching “progressives” (many of them white) who tear down statues, burn our flag, bash and libel our democracy, yell anti-Semitic tropes and achieve nothing-nada- zilch. Instead of leaders of the caliber of Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin and James Farmer we have scammers like Al Sharpton.

Can one honestly name one unjustly treated or drug and crime affected family whose lives have been ameliorated by Black Lives Matter?

The honest answer is no and the fault lies with the void in genuine leadership and the groveling (literally) acquiescence of both politicians and the general public.

The worst example of pandering is the Democrat’s $350 billion reparations measure to address a mythical “systemic racism” at a time when Americans of all races are severely impacted by a pandemic.

MY SAY: THREE CHEERS FOR BARI WEISS!

In one fell scoop, Bari Weiss did more to expose the systemic bias of the New York Times than all the pundits, commentators, critics, authors and poo bahs ( def.a person having much influence or holding many offices at the same time, especially one perceived as pompously self-important) of ostensibly Jewish support organizations….rsk

MY SAY: Cancel culture coming for Broadway’s most famous hits? By Ruth King

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/cancel_culture_coming_for_broadways_most_famous_hits.html

Broadway has been depressingly dark for months, so Disney produced Hamilton on TV for a large and grateful audience. However, the PC monitors, who never rest, criticized the play for portraying principals who were slave owners.

When the lights go on again, will they come for the theater?

Could Driving Miss Daisy ever be performed again? It is a heartwarming tale by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her black chauffeur, Hoke Coleborn. It enjoyed wide praise in various iterations on stage and in a movie, but today it would raise the hackles of political correctness officers.

South Pacific?  No way! “There is nothing like a dame” is male chauvinism writ large. Could it be saved if the original song is performed by a chorus of female soldiers? Or if the lyrics were changed to “there is nothing but a they.”

“Climb every mountain, Ford every stream.” That’s not The Sound of Music for the disabled. Really what were they thinking?

Goodbye to Jerome Kern and Showboat: “Tell me he’s lazy, tell me he’s slow, tell me I’m crazy, (maybe I know). Can’t help lovin’ dat man of mine.”

That is a subliminal racist stereotype. These lyrics are insensitive… although Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand recorded great renditions without getting the vapors.

Guys and Dolls, a masterpiece by Frank Loesser based on Damon Runyon stories, is sexist right in the title.  Are you kidding? Binaries and trans maybe but rhyming is hard. And it’s about the Salvation Army and gamblers… not hip.

MY SAY :RUSSIA, CHINA AND VENEZUELA RECOGNIZE THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF CHAZ!!!!

Three nations gave official recognition to the Democratic autonomous nation of Chaz, in respectful recognition of their “honorable fight against the systemic racism and human rights violations of capitalism.”

Although they will appoint ambassadors, finding anyone willing to go there is an ongoing problem…rsk

MY SAY: NO COPS HUH?

When you call a hospital or physician, the first message is: “If this is an emergency, hang up and call 911.”

Well if Mayor de Blazphemy has his way this is what will happen if you encounter an emergency and dial 911:

Answer: “You have reached this office of social justice in law and order. Press 1 for Spanish, for English stay on the line To report a hate crime press star 3. To report abuse press star 4 For emergencies press star 5.….Next canned music for 15 minutes interspersed with ” Your call is important to us, please hold.”

Finally an answer: “Please state the nature of the emergency” you respond “I need an ambulance” and the voice states: “Press 1 for Spanish and for English stay on the line…..”…..rsk

MY SAY: SUMMER SOLDIERS- SUNSHINE PATRIOTS

Two good columns today on the herd of generals against the President. They merit a quote from Thomas Paine ( b. January 29, 1737, England- died June 8, 1809 in Greenwich Village, N.Y.)

 

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Thomas Paine meant –those who favor a convenient war that is fought quickly and with little or no personal discomfort–would have neither the heart nor fortitude to undergo and withstand what Paine envisioned was about to come.