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Today's
Stories
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
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Apri1
1, 2008
Grumblings from
the Noise Machine
Woolly
Mamet
By MICHAEL J. SMITH
With a great deal more self-importance
than St Paul ever showed about his transition, David Mamet recently
announced his conversion to conservatism, in the downmarket
pages of the Village Voice.
After hearing this earthshaking
news, I went and rummaged on my shelves for the copy that a
waggish friend recently gave me of Mamet's little book, The
Wicked Son, which appeared a couple of years ago. It's a
very remarkable piece of work and really should have received
more notice than it did. Actually-existing Jewry hasn't gotten
such a con-brio drubbing since the late Meir Kahane went up into
the bosom of Abraham.
Mamet's starting point is the
good old axiom of radical, innate, ineluctable goyish depravity:
"The world hates the Jews. The world always [has] and will
continue to do so."
This notion of an ineluctable
antipathy between Jews and Gentiles was an important element
in the case for Zionism in its early days. The argument was
grounded then in the theory of race. In more recent years the
notion of "race" has become less respectable, and talk
about unbridgeable racial differences is frowned upon in good
society --especially after that unfortunate Third Reich thing.
So for a good chunk of the twentieth century, the axiom of ineluctable
antipathy got shelved.
But we started to hear about
it again, if memory serves, sometime in the 1980s. At the time
it looked like a waggon-circling response to the rising tide
of intermarriage--a phenomenon which might have suggested, to
the unenlightened imagination, the reverse of antipathy. Since
the racial theorizing that originally sustained the notion was
still unacceptable, and no new explanation for it was suggested,
it hung rather awkwardly in the air, a postulate motivated neither
by immediate evidence nor by a larger theory about human society.
Still, unmotivated and implausible
as it is, the postulate has proven useful. The relentless campaign
to legitimize the state of Israel has lately leaned on it very
heavily--the point being that no matter how comfortable, and
prosperous, and at-home Jews may seem to be in New York, or
Miami, or Los Angeles, nevertheless there beats in every Gentile
breast the heart of a Cossack. And so the homeland away from
home may someday come in handy. Not that you would ever want
to go there unless you had to--but you might have to. These
shgutzim, you never know.
Re-making--yet again--the relentlessly-made
"case for Israel" is part of Mamet's purpose. He's
very keen on Israel, though I don't believe things have quite
gotten so bad for him, what with the Pulitzer Prize and all,
that he's had to go there, or even ever entertained the idea.
Still, he strongly approves, and thinks anybody who doesn't
must hate the Jews:
"The Jewish State has
offered the Arab world peace since 1948; it has received war,
and slaughter, and the rhetoric of annihilation. After fifty-six
years of war this tiny fingernail of a country, the size of
Vermont, continues to exist and to practice democracy in spite
of the proclaimed implacable hatred of an Arab world rich, vast,
and populous."
Of course, we've heard all
this a million times before; reading it in Mamet's energetic
words is altogether too much like reading Alan Dershowitz would
be, if some malicious genie had gifted Alan with a lively prose
style. "The size of Vermont!" Sheer genius. West Bank
settlers in Uzis and Birkenstocks, tending their spotted cattle
and maple-sugaring in the Levantine spring--it's enough to bring
Norman Rockwell back from the dead.
The prose is so entertaining
that one feels pedantic in asking questions like: what does
it mean to say "the Arab world?" Assuming arguendo
that this phrase means something, and that there's someone somewhere
who can speak for "the Arab world", or negotiate on
its behalf -- in what sense, exactly, has anything been offered
to it? "Peace", Mamet says--but peace on what terms?
And what does this gaseous notion of an "Arab world"
have to do with the highly local politics of Mamet's lovable
little Vermont-sized democracy? Would it not be more to the
point to ask what has been offered the unmentionable Palestinians--the
people of whom Golda Meir famously said "there's no such
thing?"
Of course it's unfair to Mamet
to ask such questions of him. He's not a politician, or a historian.
He's a guy in show business.
Like a lot of guys in show
business--Woody Allen and Mel Brooks come to mind -- Mamet is
funnier when he talks about Jews than Gentiles. Consider such
passages as this (Mamet has a bee in his bonnet about the fact
that Jews, for reasons surely not far to seek, tend to favor
gun control):
"[T]his absurd notion
of the effectiveness of surrender is most often in the mouths
of Jews... a hailing sign of membership in the group of right-thinking
urban liberals.
"How odd that these same
middle-aged, intellectual Jews, who asked their parents of the
Shoah, 'Why didn't they fight back?' have adopted, in their
maturity, that same passivity....
"I have never heard this
'keeping a gun is more likely [to injure its owner than an intruder]'
statistic from anyone but a Jew.... The authority, here, of
the statistic and the authority of the burglar are one: They
are that which one is powerless to oppose.... the Irresistible
Other, the liberal, Jewish voice of The New York Times, of National
Public Radio, ... which seeks the illusory solidarity of identification
with the illusory, inert, supposedly moral, wider world--which
is to say (in their view) the non-Jewish world."
Whew! I don't think the guy
will be getting any more Pulies. Attacking the Times--and NPR!
It's like that scene in Dr Strangelove where Bat Guano warns
Lionel Mandrake, "Fella, you're gonna have to answer to
the Coca-Cola Company."
But mad as he is at the Times,
and NPR, Mamet is mostly mad at the Jews. All around him, his
landsmen, being intelligent people, are marrying the girls and
guys they like, without regard to race or religion. And more
and more often, they are declining to buy literal or figurative
Israel bonds. They are coming to be Jews in much the same way
their neighbors are Unitarians or yogis or yachtsmen. That is
to say, their Jewishness belongs to the personal sphere. It is
not a sign of radical demarcation from the world around them.
They have for the most part no interest in being Hebrew-speaking
Amish. And this drives Mamet crazy.
The Jews Mamet depicts in his
book are downright anti-Semites, full of self-hate and slavishly
eager to please Gentiles. But unless Mamet knows a very different
class of Jews from those I know, this is sheer fantasy. Why
is Mamet indulging in it?
If David Mamet were an institution,
it would be easier to understand. Shtetl institutions wouldn't
exist without the shtetl, and so those institutions, and the
people who staff them, have an interest in keeping the shtetl
walls high and strong.
This effect is particularly
noticeable when it comes to the Israel lobby, where in recent
years a strange reversal of purpose has taken place. There was
a time when the Israel lobby existed for the sake of Israel,
but it wouldn't be altogether wrong to say that now, Israel
exists for the sake of the lobby.
The lobby has become uniquely
powerful and successful. It has catapulted its leading figures
into the role of kingmakers -- and king-breakers--in American
politics. But then, increase of appetite will grow by what it
feeds on, as another well-known playwright once observed. It
is in the nature of such power to be a wasting asset; new victories
must be continually won--and therefore, new battles continually
sought.
This is one of the reasons
why the lobby has come to be identified with the most chauvinist
and maximalist elements in the Israeli political spectrum: the
lobby must keep making ever more, and more extravagant, demands,
in order to keep its own wheels turning. Moderate goals offer
little scope for further self-aggrandizement, but totally insane
goals--hey, if you can sell those, then you're a force to be
reckoned with.
As the sociologist Chaim Waxman
has noted, "Many ... organizations now need Israel to legitimate
their existence. Although these organizations may have been
established for the purpose of enhancing and strengthening Israel,
today Israel is vital for their continued viability."
The same holds for the Bloody
Shirt of anti-Semitism; Jonathan Woocher of the Jewish Education
Service of North America writes, "We have seen the emergence
of a whole new industry in America ... monitoring and purporting
to fight anti-Semitism .... It is (sadly) not uncommon to see
organizations jockeying for position to determine who among
them is 'toughest' in fighting anti-Semitism." Even Thomas
Friedman observed, "It's as if these organizations can only
thrive if they have an enemy, someone to fight." (All these
references come from John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's indispensable
book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.)
So if our friend David Mamet
were the executive director of the American Jewish Committee--a
position roughly comparable to Mayor of what's left of the American
shtetl--his anxiety would be understandable. But he's not.
He's a guy in show business. Whence this chip on his shoulder?
Of course Mamet has done very
well in life by mining a certain vein of interesting and vivid
material, dating from times and places when landsman-hood mattered
a lot. But surely that's not his worry. He can't possibly imagine
this vanished, or at any rate fast-vanishing, world of hermetic
tribes and clans has lost its power to fascinate. Just look
at how people followed The Sopranos.
No, let's give Mamet his due.
He's not worried about his livelihood. It's hard to convey the
carpet-chewing emotional intensity of this strange little book,
but Mamet seems really committed, on a deep personal level,
to his topic. It's not, as they say in The Godfather, "just
business."
Are we seeing here an instance
of the deep, perverse love that Americans have for a grievance?
Do other cultures feel so strongly as we do that if you're not
owed an apology--by somebody or other-- you hardly exist? Perhaps
Mamet is not being ultra-Jewish but ultra-American, indulging
in our canting, whiny way of shoving to the head of the line:
me first, I've been more badly treated.
Or maybe it's a harmonic convergence
of some craziness of Mamet's own, untraceable outside of the
psychoanalytic sanctum, and the institutional needs mentioned
earlier. Institutions don't necessarily make people crazy, but
they're very good at finding the people whose craziness suits
their purposes--and providing a bully pulpit for points of view
that, if aired without institutional sanction -- at a cocktail
party, say -- would send any hearers quickly off to circulate.
But strange as Mamet's views
are, and stranger still the wild-eyed rhetoric he couches them
in -- the strangest thing about this book is a dog that doesn't
bark. Mamet is conducting this supposedly en-famille conversation
with his landsmen in public, and at the top of his voice. He's
saying very mean things about us dangerous goyim --in our hearing!
To our very face! How are we expected to react?
Now Gentiles aren't a group--just
a pseudo-category encoding a negation. We're the set of humans
who are not elements of the set of Jews. There's no Gentile
history to celebrate, no Gentile food to cook, no Gentile pride
to bristle, no Gentile lobby to swing into action. But even
so, as individuals, we Gentiles all fall under the shadow of
Mamet's condemnation. We're all supposed to be potential Cossacks.
We're all individually insulted by Mamet's fundamental axiom.
And if you prick me, do I not bleed?
If someone wrote an essay claiming,
say, that Asians were worse drivers than the other peoples of
the earth, wouldn't he expect to get some flak about it--even
though "Asian" is the same kind of empty category
as "Gentile"? And yet Mamet apparently does not expect
us goyim--us hate-filled pogromists-in-waiting--to get riled
at his disobliging expressions. If he were as scared of us as
he claims, wouldn't he be a little less blithe about twisting
our collective tail?
On the contrary: he clearly
expects that we will butt out. Mamet's is a book which is in
some way about us, at least by implication; but even though
the conversation he wants to start is conducted in our hearing,
we're expected to act like furniture.
Surely one must conclude that
this is all... theater. Mamet is striking an attitude, chewing
the scenery, shivering in fear of a specter who is, really,
just a stage effect--some phosphorescent paint, a bit of cheesecloth,
a blacklight to give the whole flimsy construct a creepy, uncanny
glow. In fact Mamet no more expects us to talk back--or saddle
up -- than Hamlet expects Yorick's skull to start cracking jokes.
Does Mamet have a real purpose?
Does he truly want his readers to go to their homes--or their
supposed homeland -- after the show, looking fearfully over
their shoulders? Or does he only want to excite them, give them
a frisson, make them feel they've experienced something unique
and special, let them revel in the victim's role without any
of the actual disagreeable consequences -- and then collect
his meed of applause?
There's something in the frenetic
hamminess of the performance that suggests we're on the right
track with this analysis. But that raises the further question:
Who enjoys reading this stuff? Who's buying tickets to the show?
Presumably the audience is
not those Hellenized Jews, with their Gentile spouses, whom
Mamet excoriates. Or no, maybe that's too simple. People are
complex creatures. A little trip through Mamet's mind might
be a bit like a walk on the wild side. You wouldn't want to
live there--it's like Israel, that way -- but it is sort of
exciting to visit, once in a while.
And then, too, even if you're
pretty Hellenized, you may feel a little funny, a little ambivalent
about it. Is this the way you really want to go? Don't you lose
as well as gain? Those guys in Fiddler On The Roof seem to have
a life that's so rich, so charged with meaning. Seems a shame
to give up all that.
Personally, Gentile though
I am, I feel sympathetic to this ambivalence. It's too bad
that the best word we have for this feeling is "nostalgia."
The feeling deserves to be taken more seriously and given a
more respectful name. It's not just a matter of wishing that
cars still had tailfins.
If you consider the past to
be a package deal, as we reasonably must, then you will probably
agree that we wouldn't want to go back there, even if we could.
Bach and Couperin are wonderful, and it's a damn shame nobody's
writing music like that nowadays, but we wouldn't want to be
ruled by the Hohenzollerns and the Bourbons. [Speak for yourself,
Smith! Back to Franz-Josef, I say! AC]
This is the decision that Mamet's
detested Hellenized Jews, reasonably, have made. Tevye may be
sympathetic, and likable, but few people nowadays want to live
as he did--and truth to tell, few would want to see all that
much of him, either, if he were still around.
If Mamet's audience still want
to keep a foot, or a toe, in Tevye's old world, I'm the last
person to blame them. But increasingly, they're doing so without
a bogus, anachronistic Mametian sense of persecution and embattlement.
Mamet, for whatever quirky
personal reason, needs his fury; it keeps him warm, or something.
And the mighty noise machine of what has come to be called "the
Israel lobby" gives him a context for views that might
otherwise seem little short of lunacy. But when Caliban looks
in the mirror of his fellow-congregants at his shul, he increasingly
sees a face that looks nothing like his own snarling countenance.
And he rages.
Michael J. Smith lives in New York and wages Quixotic
war against the Democratic Party on his blog, stopmebeforeivoteagain.org.
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