- NEWS & COMMENTARY
Nuclear enrichment among Iran’s ‘inalienable rights,’ new president says
Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rohani said he would strive for transparency in his country’s nuclear program but would not stop enriching uranium.
Bill Clinton to Israelis: Share future with a Palestinian state
There is no alternative to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Bill Clinton said at an event to honor Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Murder victim related to temple founder
A Porter Ranch woman, who authorities said was shot and killed early Friday morning when a domestic dispute escalated, was the daughter of a founding member of Temple Ahavat Shalom (TAS) in Northridge, according to a family member of the…
- HOLLYWOOD
The future of Hollywood, according to Steven Spielberg
Can’t imagine shelling out $25 to see “Iron Man” in the theater? Soon you may not have a choice, says Steven Spielberg.
Six reasons why Superman is Jesus in ‘Man of Steel’
Last night I attended a press screening of the latest installment of the Superman franchise, “Man of Steel,” directed by Zack Snyder and produced by "Batman" director Christopher Nolan. An…
Old Spice guy does another Israel commercial
Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa has taken his act to Israel… again. Two months after sporting a suit and tie for a Maccabee beer ad, the actor has gone shirtless…
- LIFE & CULTURE
Barbra Streisand slams Orthodox Jews’ actions against Israeli women
U.S. entertainer Barbra Streisand on Monday took a swipe at Orthodox Jews in Israel who compel women to sit in the back of buses and assault them for following religious…
Cute video of the day: Matisyahu’s kid sings
Nothing says “happy Father’s Day” like your very own kid covering your very own song. In this clip, which Matisyahu posted to YouTube (and we saw on Jewcy), the reggae…
The Continuing Mystery of Bruno Schulz
The great writer and mystifier Bruno Schulz left a plethora of puzzles, myths and hidden chambers in two thin booklets of essays. However, one of his lesser-known and most challenging…
- BLOGS
Genius at Work
By Matt Shapiro I stood there, transfixed. In passing, it's just a cabinet; the placard on the wall shared that it was filled with notecards, written and organized by Stanley…
This week from Israel
Watch out, USA, the Israelis are coming! Last week, more than 1,200 Israeli young adults made their way to North America to serve as Jewish Agency emissaries at day and…
5 Best Foods For Lowering Blood Pressure
1. Low Fat Milk Fight high blood pressure with milk products, which contain calcium, potassium and magnesium. Two to three servings per day is sufficient. Make a milkshake, grab a…
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GOP smart on copyright for 24 hours
They threw Derek Khanna under the bus. On Friday afternoon, the Republican Study Committee – the House caucus that promulgates right-wing orthodoxy – posted on its website a startling policy brief about copyright law.
My Chris Christie hypocrisy
I was against Chris Christie before I was before him. If Obama wins, when all the exit polling gets sorted through, it’s those images of the Democratic president touring the hurricane damage arm-in-arm with the Republican governor that may turn out to have given him his advantage.
What do (suburban) women want?
If you watched any of the debates on CNN, you saw two worms at the bottom of your screen. Well, they looked to me like worms, or maybe caterpillars, scrunching and stretching throughout the 90 minutes.
The end is nigh. Seriously.
In countless cartoons, there’s a guy in a robe and long beard who’s walking around carrying a sign saying The End Is Nigh. The joke is that he’s ridiculous – some loony who takes the Book of Revelation literally. But what if the joke’s on us?
Don't know much about history
The reason that our financial system isn’t going to crash and burn again, the reason that taxpayers won’t have to fork over another trillion dollars of no-strings-attached bailout money, is – well, I forget.
You don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing
If you’re reading this, your vote for president won’t count. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone should vote; I think it should be compulsory, as it is in Australia, with fines for no-shows. Too much patriots’ blood has been spilled to protect our right to vote for America to be soft on civic deadbeats. Voting is the minimum price of admission to democracy.
Political March Madness
Will Hillary be Obama’s running mate, with Biden going to State if they win? Will Romney wrap things up on Super Tuesday, or will there be a brokered Republican convention, with Ron Paul as kingmaker? Will Democrats take back the House but lose the Senate?
Don't be naked
Entertainment executives are fond of saying that no matter what happens with technology, what will always matter most is good storytelling. What they don’t say — but what they’ve begun to wonder — is whether those stories may be on the way to becoming loss leaders and if the content business is quietly being transformed into the data mining business.
Opinion: Tim Tebow Is Jewish
“Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” That was the headline last week on a blog posted by New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane.
Opinion: Campaign colonics
What did I miss? For seven days I didn’t have salt, meat or CNN. My mornings began without “Morning Joe” or “Morning Edition”; I saw sunrise on a mountain hike, not with a clicker in my hand.
Marty Kaplan: Newt winked at me
Did you see how Newt Gingrich kept winking during the Dec. 10 Republican debate? I’ll bet you $10,000 I’m the one he was winking at.
Opinion: Warning -- Political ads make you stupid
This is the disclaimer that Britain’s Public Interest Research Centre recently proposed for inclusion on billboards:
Opinion: How Occupy will end
No one knows what difference Occupy Wall Street will turn out to make.
Opinion: Letting animals vote
You look terrific. Have you lost weight? Are you working out? You’ve got this glow about you. I bet you’re in love. Wait -- you were promoted. That’s it, isn’t it? They finally recognized how talented you are. By the way, did you know that the average global surface temperature has gone up one degree over the last three decades? It’s true. Here, have a look at this chart.
Opinion: How did this happen to America?
It was while I was explaining to an Australian student that Rupert Murdoch was the reason America had gone batty that I realized how inadequate my answer to his question was.
What story is the Murdoch story?
Following several days of coaching by lawyers and PR experts, it must have been really rattling for Rupert and James Murdoch when show time arrived to learn that the parliamentary committee questioning them would not permit opening statements.
The “Obama’s brilliant strategy” theory
If you voted for Obama, here’s what you’re not supposed to be thinking:
Marty Kaplan: Pessimism is the last taboo
If you pay attention to the news, the prospects for the future look grim.
If Bachmann and Palin Weren’t Pretty
I wonder how much airtime Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) would get if she didn’t look the way she does. I wonder how much of Sara Palin’s political appeal arises from her physical appeal.
Our friend Pakistan and other mental pretzels
On the same day that Americans are test-driving the idea that Osama bin Laden lived on the outskirts of Pakistan’s West Point, undetected, for six years, Orly Taitz goes to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to prove that President Obama’s long-form birth certificate is a forgery. As they say in conspiracy-land, there are no coincidences.
The naked Nielsens
The metrics are wearing no clothes. How would you react if you found out that the basis of your business model was bogus? That’s the nightmare that the television industry is finally waking up to, and I bet that online media won’t be far behind.
The Naked Nielsens
The TV business is built on advertising. Except for premium cable, the money that networks get for selling audiences’ eyeballs to advertisers is the mother’s milk of the industry. Networks set the price of ads on their shows using demographic information about the age and sex of those shows’ viewers. And the company that pretty much has a monopoly on furnishing those metrics is Nielsen.
Moses, media piracy and the MPAA
If only people understood why they shouldn't do it, then they wouldn't do it.
The more you watch, the worse you feel
As if the triple whammy of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster weren’t enough to enthrall and terrify us, the war in Libya is now providing cable news viewers a fresh hell to follow 24/7.
Letters to the Editor: Gibson Scale, Glenn Beck, Aaron Liberman and Latino-Jewish Coalition
The best reasons that I read The Jewish Journal are because of great Americans like Dennis Prager and David Suissa. It is nauseating to see columns by leftist slimebags like Marty Kaplan and Rachel Roberts (the doctoral student — OMG) (“Muslim Criminals, Jewish Activists,” Feb. 18). Maybe the two of them can get together and hate Israel and America together!
Al Jazeera English vs. The Charlie Sheen Channel
“This is strictly a business decision,” a Comcast source told Rupert Murdoch’s Web site MarketWatch about whether Comcast, the biggest cable operator in the U.S., will offer Al Jazeera English to its 24 million subscribers. Not a decision about whether Al Jazeera English is anti-American, anti-Israeli, a tool of Al Qaeda, a propagandist for Palestinians. Or none of the above. Nope – it’s strictly dollars and cents.
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Streets
The power has gone out in a typical American town. Wait -- it’s not just the electricity. The phones don’t work, either. Portable radios are dead. Cars won’t start.
Mitt Romney’s “South Park” primary
Egypt makes Mitt Romney look good – at least compared to other Republican presidential hopefuls.
My favorite blowhard
I owe Keith Olbermann for enabling me to identify with Bill O’Reilly’s fans.
The vitriol vitriol
“Clarabelle Dopenik.” That’s what one wit on the popular conservative Web site freerepublic.com called Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County, Arizona sheriff who turns 75 this week. Elected continuously since 1980, he is the public face of the investigation into the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 19 others. He is also, according to bloggers on that site, “an incompetent unhinged sonofabitch” and “a jerk” “using this tragedy for baseless, cheap political shots.”
The senators who dissed baby Jesus
What’s the right word for what Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) was doing when he attacked Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for “disrespecting one of the two holiest holidays for Christians” by keeping Congress in session in the week before Christmas? What do you call it when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) blasted Democrats as “sacrilegious” for wanting the Senate to take up an arms control treaty and a spending bill “right before… the most sacred holiday for Christians”?
My declaration of independents
I think I’ve figured out how to get the White House to pay attention.
How dumb do they think (know) we are
I know some scary smart people who never graduated from high school, and I know some real doofuses with graduate degrees, so I understand that the number of years of formal education that someone has racked up is no guarantee of intelligence. But every once in a while, I see some poll numbers that pretty convincingly correlate believing idiotic things with having less education, and not believing idiotic things with having more education.
The Stem Cell Slippery Slope Fallacy
Patriotic Extortion
Liberal Parents, Liberal Children
When it comes to politics, today’s college freshmen resemble their baby boomer parents of 40 years ago in all ways except two. One way makes perfect sense; the other is a puzzle.
The Science of Forty-Four
“We will restore science to its rightful place” — that’s the line I didn’t see coming. Anyone watching the backgrounders leading up to the inaugural knew that the incoming president would call for “a new era of responsibility.”
Begone, bygones! Green is the new blue and white
" . . . It is troubling that some Orthodox rabbis have joined with the Christian right to eliminate same-sex civil marriage. Banning same-sex civil marriage is about as relevant to Orthodox Judaism as banning the sale of shellfish . . . "
Shame on Rabbis for Obama, hooray for Amy Klein, thanks for Marty Kaplan
" . . .The separation of church and state is the foundation for religious freedom in our great country. Shame on you Rabbis for Obama . . ."
That campus anti-Semitism thing, you say it’s your birthday
" . . . Jews are an ethnic group, sharing an ancestry, a heritage, traditions, language, homeland and culture. Not protecting them from anti-Semitism on college campuses means that a national problem may go unaddressed, because colleges and universities need not answer for their conduct . . ."
Eating Bambi, Zell again, Bergson, broken heart
" . . . Isn't it time that every Jewish child take at least one course in Herzl? If he isn't the modern father of the Jewish People, who is? For without Herzl's many contributions, the Holocaust would have excluded any chance of a Jewish state in Israel . . ."
Zell it, Sam; Cool it, Orit; 40 million Frenchmen
" . . . In Fairfax High School, I had a brilliant and wise instructor of advanced placement European History who used to say: 'Do not put all your faith in one man. For surely he will disappoint you.' And he also said: '40 million Frenchmen can be wrong' . . ."
Butt flag fever, Orthodox crawl, what to expect, propaganda
" . . .A single written word can be a very powerful tool in educating and liberating, but it can do quite the opposite as well. . . ."
Kaplan, Eshman, Carlin and Tom
" . . . Yes, there are times when it is a judgment call and a good one to make: Carlin was the exception to the rule. Though he was not Jewish, he was Jewish enough to be included in The Jewish Journal. I enjoyed the article . . ."
Suissa on the edge, gay marriage, ice on Mars
" . . . If the phylogenetic journey from bug to man is but the beginning of the beginning of consciousness, whither goeth evolution and destiny? Personally, I believe there is intelligent life on Earth, and that some of its beings walk among us. . . . "
Kaplan’s Collage
Marty Kaplan is often referred to as a "public intellectual." His current title is dean of the Annenberg School at USC and chairman of the Norman Lear Center. But Kaplan has led many lives -- molecular biologist, comedy writer, White House speechwriter, Disney exec, radio host. As Kaplan recently wrote me in an e-mail when I asked, "Which of those is you ?"
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