August 31, 2007 | 3:03 pm

Entertainment Weekly goes Church Lady

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

That is GetReligion’s assessment in a wrap-up of the entertainment magazine’s “Summer of Scandal!” issue that looks at the 25 biggest blow-ups since 1982:

It’s difficult to find any moral compass in this feature, except the notion that sexual promiscuity (Woody Allen, Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen) matters far less than offensive speech (Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Isaiah Washington). Even offensive speech is subjective. In a brief introduction, Sean Smith discerns that “Don Imus and Isaiah Washington both lost their jobs for saying something stupid. The Dixie Chicks initially lost album sales for saying something smart.” The closest the editors come to explaining this judgment is that The Dixie Chicks dissed President Bush before dissing him was cool.

I find it telling that the decisive criterion for each scandal is its “career impact” rather than how many people the behavior harmed, whether the celebrity expressed any remorse or whether there was any redemptive moment, whether metaphorical or clearly spiritual.

Religion hovers in a few of the top 25 scandals:

No. 25. Madonna angers the Pope! This item focuses more on Madonna’s oft-paraded sexual antics, but the photos do include her “crucified on a cross of glamour” moment. Career impact: Positive.

No. 14. Michael Richards talks like a 1960s Grand Kleagle! Career impact: Minor. Then there’s this tantalizing but vague postscript: “While on a spiritual journey in Cambodia last month, he told the L.A. Times that he has quit stand-up comedy.” (The Times reported: “Richards, 57, and actress Beth Skipp traveled to remote temples before visiting Angkor Wat on a tour sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Nithyananda Foundation. The sect adheres to the teachings of 29-year-old Hindu monk Nithyananda — an avowed ‘enlightened Master and modern mystic’ who’s referred to by his followers as ‘swamiji.’”

No. 11. Tom Cruise “dumps longtime publicist Pat Kingsley in March 2004 and hires fellow-Scientologist sister as her replacement”! This is EW’s only acknowledgment of a Scientology angle to Cruise’s behavior, although the more obvious connections are his criticism of Brooke Shields for taking medication amid postpartum depression and his lecturing NBC’s Matt Lauer about Ritalin. Career impact: Major.

No. 3. Sinéad O’Connor rips a photo of Pope John Paul II to pieces”! Career impact: Major.

No. 2. Mel Gibson, while drunk, makes vile anti-Jewish remarks! Career impact: To be determined.

And here are two bonus scandals that appeared in an online roundup of scandals 26 through 50:

46. Lisa Bonet gets nekkid! “Nineteen-year-old Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet was about to headline her own spinoff, A Different World, when she made her film debut as voodoo priestess Epiphany Proudfoot in Angel Heart, an erotic thriller in which she fogged up the lens with costar Mickey Rourke while (fake) chicken blood poured down on their naked bodies.” Career impact: Major.

30. Anne Heche suffers from divine multiple personality disorder! “On Aug. 19, 2000, a newly Ellen-less Anne Heche knocked on a stranger’s door near Fresno, Calif., and made herself at home. It wasn’t until the following year, when she sat for a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters and published her autobiography, Call Me Crazy, that we got to know why: For years, Heche explained, she had an alter ego named Celestia, who believed she was the reincarnation of God. She and the Big Guy communicated through a secret language (sample: ‘Oh, Quiness, ah ka fota tuna dunna’). That day in Fresno, Celestia was making her way to her spaceship.” Career impact: Minor. Thanks for the laff riot, EW! I’m not sure who’s more difficult to figure out: The celebrities who brought us these moments, or the editors who determined their moral gravity.

August 31, 2007 | 10:04 am

Craig Chronicles: Senator to resign

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This just in: Republican officials say Sen. Larry Craig, the “family-values” scandal of the week, is considering resigning.

* Update: I’ve removed the “?” from the headline. Craig reportedly will resign Saturday.

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August 31, 2007 | 2:34 am

‘Who still talks of the extermination of the Armenians?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In honor of not one, not two, but three op-eds in this week’s Jewish Journal addressing the Armenian Genocide, I’ve decided to resurrect a post from April, pasted below. I also recommend reading a story The Forward published online Wednesday that said, “Turkish, Israeli and American Jewish officials held frantic consultations in the past week in an effort to defuse a diplomatic crisis.”

All of the recent verbiage was, of course, inspired by Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman, who two weeks ago fired his Boston director for criticizing the ADL’s refusal to urge the U.S. and Israeli governments to use the “G” word. He then had an about-face, saying the Ottoman actions against the Armenians was “tantamount to genocide,” and finally Foxman rehired the man he had just canned. (No, Foxman did not also offer David Lehrer his old job back.)

“We were comfortable calling what had happened massacres and atrocities, and had implored the Turkish government to come to terms with its past. Its not a reversal so much as more clearly getting involved in the discussion,” ADL western director Amanda Susskind said in a phone interview. “And if we are going to get involved in the discussion, yes we are going to call it genocide. Of course, there will still be American military and political consequences.”

Those supposed consequences are spelled out here and below. The Armenian community has hardly been satisfied, either, by Foxman’s use of “tantamount to,” an equivocation they believe was used to protect Turkish Jews and Israeli security.

“For any Jewish organization to pander to these killers—historical killers—on the idea that Jews are going to be taken care of by the Turks, or that it is going to protect their economic interest, is a great sell-out to the wonderful tradition of the Jews,” Armand Arabian, a retired judge and leader in the L.A.-area Armenian community, the largest in the country, told me. “For those who buy that theory, the Holocaust didn’t happen. The tattoos didn’t mean anything.”

From my April 24 post:

“Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”

Hitler reportedly asked that question of his commanding generals in 1939, as he prepared to rid the world of Jews. Holocaust historians site this quotation when trying to explain Hitler’s rational for how his acts would escape world condemnation. And yet, Jews—who have so much in common with Armenians—have struggled to embrace Armenians as true kindred spirits, diaspora people like Jews, who, though they did not suffer the Holocaust, suffered a holocaust.

Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the beginning of what most historians call the Armenian Genocide. And though most Western countries have recognized the acts as genocide, the United States and Israel have not. The U.S. has not wanted to offend an important military ally, and Israel has been hard pressed to condemn the founding fathers of the best friend in the Muslim world.

But the tide has shifted.

Two years ago, the Daily News’ Lisa Friedman reported that Rep. Mark Lantos, Congress’ only Holocaust survivor, had changed course and now supported a resolution to call the slaugthering of Armenians by Ottomon Turks a genocide. Media outlets have been all over the story this year, the year handicappers predict Congress might finally pass a non-binding resolution calling the atrocities genocide. (The LA Times had a front-page story Saturday and an Opinion cover Sunday.) A January headline in the Turkish Daily News proclaimed, “US Jewish lobby warns Turkish MFA: Even we might not be able to block the Armenian genocide bill if you don’t move.”

Valley Beth Shalom, a Conservative Encino synagogue, has begun pushing for Jewish recognition. I covered an event the synagogue held in January that brought together Armenian and Jewish youth for a screening of the moving “Screamers,” a documentary following the rock band System of a Down’s campaign to have the genocide acknowledged across Europe and the U.S.

“Amnesia of the past foreshadows amnesia of the future. Forget yesterday’s tragedy and the threat to tomorrow is denied. Forget the first genocide of the 20th century—the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915—and the memory and atrocities of the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur turn invisible, and the world response is muted,” Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom wrote in this week’s Jewish Journal.

” ... Every genocide is singular. But a kinship of suffering unites us all. To play the shameless game of “one-downsmanship” is an invidious sport. My blood is not redder than yours, my suffering not more painful than yours. Hatred consumes us all indiscriminately.”

Schulweis, who founded the group Jewish World Watch, which is working against the genocide in Darfur, also will preside over a shabbat dinner for Armenians and Jews at his temple Friday night. He will be joined by His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate, Western Diocese/Armenian Church of North America.

Turkey does not dispute that more than a million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1923, but it attributes the deaths to civil strife and notes that many Turks died then, too; there are even statues to who lost their lives.

“Let’s unearth the truth about what happened in 1915 together,” the Turkish embassy said in a full page ad on the back of the LA Times A section Monday. “We can face the truth about our past; we call upon the Armenians to do the same.”

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August 30, 2007 | 4:49 pm

Spin alert: Larry Craig chronicles

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My wife just sent me this message regarding Sen. Larry Craig‘s sexuality spinning:

So, as a PR person, I notice something very specific about what Larry Craig is and is not saying. He has denied that he is gay. However, if he really wanted to convince people, he would come out and say that he has never participated in gay activity, that he had no idea that anything he did in the restroom would have demonstrated “gay” behavior, etc ...

He would be very specifically denying that he knew anything about these signs he exhibited as gay behavior. But instead, he’s just saying he’s not gay.

August 30, 2007 | 3:14 pm

Another neocon working for Giuliani

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Look who Ken Silverstein found on Rudy Giuliani’s presidential candidate roster: Daniel Pipes.

Pipes has been attacked by Muslim organizations as a fear-mongering Islamophobic fascist. But this comment from Pipes in a story I wrote about young American Muslims sympathetic to suicide bombings, in which the president of Long Beach’s MSA told me he thinks Islam justifies the attacks on civilians, seemed pretty measured:

What you have is a low-wage jihad taking place, but people are not paying attention to it. These sentiments are seething, and at any time might erupt.

I noted last month that Giuliani, who has proven incredibly unpopular with evangelical Christians, had enlisted neoconservative Commentary editor-at-large Norman Podhoretz. Here’s what Silverstein, the excellent Harper‘s Washington editor behind that lobbying story from July, had to say about Pipes:

I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers                           unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):                       

                                                     

Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.

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August 30, 2007 | 11:38 am

Pleading guilty means Larry Craig’s guilty

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

More fallout for Sen. Larry Craig, from Talking Points Memo:

Almost as soon as Sen. Larry Craig issued a statement Monday afternoon saying he should not have pleaded guilty in the Minneapolis airport restroom case (his press flack told Roll Call it was all a “he said/he said misunderstanding”), speculation began swirling that Craig may face legal consequences for disavowing his guilty plea. That was only compounded by his public appearance the next day, in which he announced that he had finally retained legal counsel to review the case. The LA Times has a good overview of the possible consequences for Craig of trying to reopen his case—none of them good.

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August 30, 2007 | 10:21 am

His Eminence, President-for-Life Bush

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When I was a student at UCLA, I wrote a story about the former co-director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program who had just been convicted of running one of the largest LSD labs in American history. It turned out, he was hired by the university despite serious previous drug run-ins.
In that article, I quoted Mark Kleiman, then the director of the program and a public policy professor, declining to comment about his former colleague. Nowadays, though, Kleiman has plenty to say on the blog he contributes to, The Reality-Based Community. He’s a bit liberal for my leanings, but always a good read. This one from last week is worth a look:

Boy oh boy, did I ever get this one wrong! No hoax:  Family Security Matters, a front group for Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, really did run a piece by a failed philosopher called Philip Atkinson calling for a genocidal campaign in Iraq followed by the use of the victorious army to establish George W. Bush as President-for-Life with dictatorial powers. (Full text at the jump; has to be read to be believed.) When this first came out, I was pretty sure I smelled a parody,  but it turns out the guy was completely serious. The argument of the piece, to give it an unduly generous label, calls for a diagnosis rather than a refutation. No wonder FSM “disappeared” not only the article (which has even been wiped from the cache) but the author, who has gone from “Contributing Editor” to “unperson” in record time. Winston Smith of the Ministry of Truth would be proud.   Presumably the scrubbing means that some semi-grownup somewhere in Gaffney’s operation noticed that Atkinson had finally parted company with even the neocon substitute for reality.

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August 29, 2007 | 4:31 pm

Was Vick born again? Christians make the call

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You know what I think about Michael Vick’s claim that executing poorly performing pitbulls helped him find Jesus. (A lot of people learned my opinion after Deadspin linked to my cynicism.) But if you’re wondering what other Christians think, check out this poll at ChristianityToday.com.

So far, 61 percent of the 2,250 respondents are “skeptical, but hopeful that this experience will bring him to Jesus.” Thirteen percent say “Great! I’m so happy he’s become a Christian,” and 12 percent aren’t impressed because “‘I found Jesus’ is the new ‘I’m going to rehab’ (that’s for you Britney and Paris). And 9 percent are flat-out “disgusted that he’d try to play the ‘God card.’”

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August 29, 2007 | 3:04 pm

Three Palestinian kids killed by Israeli attack

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In my story last week about Israeli life along the Gaza border, I wrote about how the government had been criticized for its tepid response to rocket attacks from Palestinian militants. Instead of a full military operation, which would no doubt cause even more civilian casualties, IDF had been instructed to target Kassam launchers and militant leaders. This, sadly, is what they call “collateral damage.”

Three Palestinian children were killed on Wednesday afternoon in a blast in the northern Gaza Strip, when an Israel Defense Forces tank fired on a Qassam rocket launcher.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry said 10-year-old Mahmoud Ghazal and his 12-year-old cousin Yehiya Ghazal were killed immediately. Their 10-year-old cousin Sara Ghazal was critically injured, and died later from her wounds.

The IDF said it fired on the Qassam launcher after it detected unidentified figures next to it.

A relative of the children, Wasfi Ghazal, said he heard the sound of an explosion and then children screaming. He held both Israel and the militant rocket squads responsible.

“We are victims of the occupation and victims of the misbehavior of some of the fighters who are randomly choosing our area to target Israel,” he told The Associated Press.

The IDF expressed sorrow for the deaths of the children, but blamed militant groups.

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August 29, 2007 | 10:07 am

Televangelist loses broadcast after slamming Islam

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Wow. I missed this yesterday, but the DMN religion blog caught it. The pope has nothing on the incendiary statements of (former tel)-evangelist Bill Keller:

A station in St. Petersburg has pulled the plug on Bill Keller, who said in a May 2 broadcast that Islam is a “1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell” and that the Prophet Muhammad was a “murdering pedophile.” He also called the Quran a “book of fables and a book of lies.”

Here’s the story by Sherri Day of the St. Pete Times.

Keller says he was canned because of pressure from the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The TV station says, no, the decision was just a programming one, whatever that means.

Day writes: “This is not the first time Keller, 49, has upset religious groups. Since he began his Live Prayer Internet ministry in 1999, he has skewered Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists, calling them false religions and cults. He also speaks against abortion, calls Oprah a ‘new age witch’ for embracing diverse religions and says megachurch pastor Joel Osteen is a ‘gutless wonder.’ “

 

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August 28, 2007 | 10:40 pm

‘You are both’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Self-flattery is very unbecoming. That’s why I quote others saying nice things about me. (Don’t worry. It doesn’t happen often.) The comments on my Q&A with The Forward have slowed to a trickle, but Carolyn wrote today that I am “a man more articulate than most.” My wife might balk, but I like Carolyn’s final point, on which many more people disagree:

It’s unfortunate that people seem to think of religion the same way as a sports team. “Well, are you Jewish OR are you a Christian?” If you’ve studied the origin of Christianity, you know that it comes from Judaism and is very closely related. Some of us are Judeo-Christians, and today’s organized religions don’t seem to understand what that means. To Brad Greenberg I say that I’m proud of you for declaring who you are and being willing to put up with the replies that it brings you and, as a man more articulate than most, to explain that yes, you are both.

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August 28, 2007 | 5:21 pm

Larry Craig’s sexuality a ‘holy grail’ in Idaho

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Bible Belt Blogger has a personal account of being a cub reporter covering the Idaho senator at the center of today’s GOP sex scandal:

Rumors had been around for years that [Larry] Craig was gay. And some Idaho journalists were eager to find out if the rumors were true—and print them.

Because Craig had voted against “gay rights’ legislation, some reporters considered his sexual orientation to be fair game. I felt like Sen. Craig’s sex life should be off-limits—as long as he obeyed the law.

As I recall, during the 1996 campaign I was instructed to ask Sen. Craig about the rumors that he was gay. I asked as discretely as possible—during a lengthy interview when there weren’t plenty of people eavesdropping. I think I apologized for having to broach the subject. He denied the allegations. I felt sleazy even raising the topic.

That was the end of the matter for me, but other reporters continued digging—off and on for over a decade. It was like the Holy Grail of Idaho journalism—to figure out Larry Craig’s sexual proclivities.

 

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