February 14, 2008 | 9:45 am

Memphis congressional race gets ugly

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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This is why I am so consistently wary of the role of religion in politics. JTA has a short story about Steve Cohen’s opponent refusing to condemn this flier because she hadn’t seen it, as if hearing those words weren’t enough. It would be fair to say “Steve Cohen doesn’t share the beliefs of black Christians” but what I don’t understand is why the language has to be so inflammatory. Oh wait, that’s right. This isn’t about religion, at least in as much as it’s not about racism. It’s about politics.

February 14, 2008 | 9:21 am

TV goons miss the point on religion coverage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That is generally the theme of the GetReligion blog, that “the press ... just doesn’t get religion.” Here’s what David Pulliam was most recently referring to: the growing liberalization of young evangelicals, which you probably noticed sometime in the past few years and not when you saw it on the evening news a few nights ago.

Sometimes television news pieces are just bad. ...

This ABC News piece on asking the question “Are Young Evangelicals Skewing More Liberal?” is case in point. First of all, please don’t ask questions like this in a news article headline. Rhetorical questions are best saved for cocktail party conversations.

The story gets support from what I believe is a September 2007 Pew Research Center survey — a very good source by the way — that found that “40 percent of evangelicals younger than 30 call themselves Republicans,” and that two years ago 55 percent of evangelicals claimed the GOP. In the substance department, that’s about as far as the article takes the reader:

This weekend at a concert and a rally in New York City, a huge gathering of Christian youth came together to decry the coarsening of culture.

“What should be done to stop glamorizing the things that are destroying my friends, your friends — like drugs, alcohol and sex?” cried a young evangelical.

The top three issues these young evangelical Christians said they most want the presidential candidates to address are Internet pornography, media glamorization of sex and drugs, and children orphaned by AIDS. Abortion and gay marriage were not at the top of their list.

Many of those who did rank abortion as their number one issue also said their favorite candidate was Barack Obama.

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February 14, 2008 | 1:12 am

SWM seeks ‘every single other Jew’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Above is a sort of funny Valentine’s video sent to me by a JDate press person. It’s advertising, but it’s from the Jew who brought you Chinese food on Christmas, the viral instaclassic below.

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February 13, 2008 | 4:25 pm

‘The beard is off-limits’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Young Orthodox Jews, especially those who keep a long beard, always seem older than their age, sometimes wiser too. The Concord Monitor last week ran a profile of one of these younger-than-he-seems men, 24-year-old Jason Bedrick (not pictured), who in 2006 became the first Orthodox Jew elected to the New Hampshire State House.

When Jason Bedrick was considering a run for state representative, an incumbent legislator encouraged him to shave his beard. Bedrick refused.

“I said the beard is off-limits, and that’s not the half of it,” Bedrick said.

Bedrick, an Orthodox Jew, said he wouldn’t enter churches. He wouldn’t campaign at the transfer station on Saturdays. And he wouldn’t shake hands with women. His friend said he didn’t know how Bedrick could win.

“To not shake hands with half your constituents, that qualifies me as a disabled politician,” Bedrick said.

When I first started growing a beard—for play not piety—a friend warned me that you can never trust a man with facial hair. I don’t know how Bedrick overcame the odds, but I’d vote for a man who doesn’t own a razor.

Coincidentally, I stumbled across a Website last night for BeardFest 2007, one of the most manly undertakings I’ve seen in a long time. The participants included a few of my high school friends.

(Photo: World Beard and Moustache Championships; Hat tip: GetReligion)

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February 13, 2008 | 3:38 pm

More on ‘Fargo’ in Sitka

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

JTA has a bit more info about the great news that the Coen Brothers adapting Michael Chabon’s “Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” The author is, as he told Sugar Bombs, “over the moon.”

Richly conceived and phenomenally detailed, Chabon’s Sitka is home to just the sort of improbable characters that populate Coen brothers films. It is the Coen brothers, after all, who gave the world The Dude, the hero of their 1998 film “The Big Lebowski,” a blissed-out stoner and bowling devotee who finds himself negotiating the return of a bimbo wife from her supposed kidnappers.

And their love of genre films, particularly screwball comedies and film noir, seems perfectly suited to a novel that contains distinct elements of both.

“The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” was released to critical acclaim in 2007. But among some Jewish writers, the book created a sense of unease, and even barely suppressed outrage, some of which is sure to resurface when the film is released.

Claiming Chabon was sending a clear anti-Zionist message, Ruth Wisse, a noted Yiddish scholar at Harvard University, demolished the novel in a withering essay in Commentary magazine, calling it a “sustained act of provocation,” among other denigrations; Commentary’s editor-in-waiting John Podhoretz and journalist Samuel Freedman offered similar criticisms of the novel. A decidedly less scholarly view was expressed in a New York Post story, headlined “Novelist’s Ugly View of Jews.”

One can only imagine what these critics will have to say once the Coen brothers, with their Jewish fluency and twisted sense of humor, get their hands on Chabon’s prose.

The upcoming film is being produced by Scott Rudin, who reportedly bought the rights to the book five years ago, before it was even completed, and the film is not expected before mid-2009. But industry skeptics are rightly wary. The film version of one of Chabon’s earlier novels, the award-winning “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” has been reported to be in the works for years, with direction by another famous Jewish filmmaker, Sydney Pollack.

But regardless of whether the film version of “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” ever sees the light of day, the news alone has been enough to set the blogosphere on fire with overheated speculation.

“This is the greatest fit ever,” one Israel-based blogger heaved. “I can’t picture any other director tackling this book and doing it right. What a great fit. Yiddish Noir!!!”

In an interview last November, Chabon discussed with me the accusations that he was not only an anti-Zionist but an anti-Semite.

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February 13, 2008 | 9:56 am

Muhammad cartoon returns two years later

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Muhammad cartoon controversy is back. Denmark’s leading newspapers today reprinted the most offensive of the 12 cartoons that led to deadly rioting in the Muslim world two years ago. The sketch shows the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, the fuse lit. It was reprinted a day after three men were arrested for allegedly conspiring to murder the man who drew it.

We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend,” said the Copenhagen-based Berlingske Tidende.

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February 13, 2008 | 9:32 am

A godly athlete on sharing his faith

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Religion, he feels, is the main source of his strength, and because he realizes not everybody shares that feeling today, he sometimes refers to “the challenge of being in the minority in the world.” ... “I don’t try to be overbearing in what I believe, but, given a chance, I will express my beliefs.”

If I told you that line was in reference to a star athlete, I wouldn’t imagine you could guess whom. A number of sports stars, and journeymen, come to mind when I think of faith and basketball or baseball or football. And afflicted-minority syndrome is increasingly popular with my fellow American Christians today.

But, surprisingly, I came across those lines last night in John McPhee’s “A Sense of Where You Are,” the profile he wrote more than 40 years ago of basketball great Bill Bradley, a white man of not-so-humble means who was educated at Princeton, the citadel of the American Presbytery. Hardly a typical minority.

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February 13, 2008 | 1:06 am

Zogby must be wrong: evangelicals like Hillary?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This can’t be. It just doesn’t jibe with everything we’ve been told: Hillary Clinton is the Democratic favorite among white evangelicals? They split the Christian vote on Super Tuesday, but this Zogby poll from the primaries shows Clinton is way ahead with evangelicals and points to other religious voting patterns of note.

What we do know is that Hillary is doing better among evangelicals than she is among Protestants in general. And that’s a surprise, especially since most pundits have assumed that Obama, not Clinton, is the evangelical favorite on the Democratic side.

The reality, it seems to me, is that who is supporting Hillary really doesn’t matter. Barack Obama has the momentum, steamrollering last night. And Clinton seemed to be cooked.

Though, yesterday I saw this headline accompanying Clinton’s portrait on the homepage of Slate: “Is She Doomed?” The article offered a surprisingly upbeat analysis for Clinton’s camp:

The best news for Hillary Clinton’s campaign may be that it’s headed over a cliff. In a campaign season where conventional wisdom has been so wrong so often, she can take heart that the current view among the political class is that Obama is marching unstoppably toward the nomination.

Obama has won the last five contests by wide margins and looks on course to win all three primaries on Tuesday. The Clinton campaign predicted this would be a good period for Obama and that they could take this in stride, but their nonchalance crumbled when Clinton replaced her campaign manager this week. (We’re winning; time to fire the quarterback!) Obama is also ahead of Clinton for the first time in a national poll and outperforms Clinton in head-to-head matchups with likely opponent John McCain. Obama has more money, can raise it easily, and still draws those blockbuster crowds. (He should travel with his own overflow room since they are so often required at the venues he uses.)

But all is not lost for those who support Hillary Clinton.

Here’s why, John Dickerson argues: Clinton has secured the key voting blocs, being the front-runner in such a rollercoaster campaign is a recipe for losing, and, if the race comes down to the 796 superdelegates, well, maybe they’ll favor Clinton’s insider credentials. Then again:

In a race where so much that seemed certain has not been, any struggling candidate can find a reason to persevere, especially perhaps a candidate who was once seen as inevitable. Of course the race’s switchbacks have now become such a predictable part of conventional wisdom that it may be time now for the undulations to stop and for momentum to start playing a role again. In that case, Clinton is doomed.

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February 12, 2008 | 12:14 pm

Finkelstein welcomed to LA by Jewish Defense League

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I just got done attending a lecture at Cal State Northridge by Norman Finkelstein, the author of “The Holocaust Industry” who resigned from DePaul University in September after being denied tenure and then last month praised Hezbollah as representing “hope.”

The first of three lectures this week, the topic was “Civility and Academic Freedom.” Not one I am particularly interested in, but, as is usually the case wherever he goes, Finkelstein’s invitation caused a bit of commotion—it serves as the lede for my story on StandWithUs that will run Thursday—and I wanted to see who showed up.

The crowd of just over 50 contained mostly faculty and students, many of whom were Jewish, but the real attraction was Shelley Rubin, head of the militant Jewish Defense League and widow of the late Irving Rubin, who was arrested for allegedly scheming to bomb an L.A.-area mosque and the office of Arab-American U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa.

Before the lecture began, I asked Finkelstein whether he has come to expect the protests of the Jewish communities in cities he visits.

“I don’t worry,” he said. “People have the right to say what they want to say.”

But when he walked to the lectern, Rubin, who was joined by a young religious man with a video camera and an elderly man with a fanny pack, pounced.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. You should really be ashamed of yourself,” she said. “Don’t call yourself a Jew. You’re a sick puppy.”

CSUN’s vice president and provost, Harry Hellenbrand, then introduced Finkelstein and explained the criticism he had received for inviting a man who has been called “America’s leading anti-Semite, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, the leader of the Hitler Youth and the new David Duke.”

Hellenbrand, a diminutive man wearing frayed khakis and a black blazer with a big white splotch on the lapel, defended his decision to invite Finkelstein, which he told me yesterday was done at the request of faculty who wanted to know about how controversial research could threaten academic employment, and he said that the university is a place for myriad perspectives to be shared.

Finkelstein thanked Hellenbrand for the glowing introduction, at which point Rubin shouted out: “Good one, Harry. The Nazi loves you.”

Other than that outburst, the hissing that followed many of Finkelstein’s remarks and the 30 minutes Rubin spent berating Hellenbrand in the hallway—screaming “I pray you make t’shuvah!”—the event was pretty quiet.

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February 12, 2008 | 12:06 pm

Coen Brothers to adapt Chabon’s “Yiddish Policemen”

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I can’t ask for much more than to have my two favorite screenwriters/directors adapting one of my favorite novels. The Coen Brothers, it was reported today, will be taking Michael Chabon‘s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” to the silver screen.

According to Chabon, the Coen brothers have agreed to at least write the adaptation, once the writer’s strike ends. (They made the deal pre-strike.)

“I am, of course, over the moon about this,” Chabon said. “They are among my favorite living moviemakers. Three or four of their films are on my all-time favorite list. They are geniuses. What’s more, I think they are perfectly suited to this material in every way, from its genre(s) to its tone to its content. I can’t wait to see what they eventually do with it.”

As we already know, the Coen Brothers can do a lot with crime capers set in frozen other worlds.

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February 12, 2008 | 11:06 am

Not faces but an ‘unrecognizable pulp’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I came across this 7-year-old Time article this week while reporting along feature on StandWithUs, which will run Thursday, and, man, does this story make me feel sick to my stomach. Kobi Mandel and Yosef Ishran were but two of the more than 1,000 Israelis—and almost 5,000 Palestinians—killed during the Second Intifada, but they died in such a brutal, carnal manner.

Miro Cohen stayed up all night searching for two missing 14-year-olds. The sheep farmer who doubles as security officer for the small West Bank settlement of Tekoa figured Yossi Ishran and Kobi Mendel had just gotten lost as they hiked through the desert. Then, at 5:30 a.m., his walkie-talkie crackled with terrible news: the boys had been found dead. “Were they shot or stabbed?” Cohen asked. The caller hesitated. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “Come and see, Miro.”

In the thin dawn light, Cohen raced to a nearby cave once home to an old hermit. Inside, the sight was indescribable. A rock the size of a computer rested on Kobi’s smashed skull. Both bodies were covered with stones. Blood smeared the walls, and the dirt floor was muddy with it. When the searchers rolled the rocks away, they didn’t see faces but unrecognizable pulp. “I had only one thought,” Cohen says, standing in the cave two days later. “To get my hands on the killers.”

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February 12, 2008 | 11:02 am

A religious call to stop waterboarding

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A former CIA man blogged Sunday about the awkward juxtaposition last week between the National Prayer Breakfast and the Bush administration’s assertion’s that waterboarding is a permissable form of interrogation that does not qualify as “torture.”

I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:

 

“When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight. We’re all equally precious…In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion…. When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man — and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father.”

Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday’s prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol “the interrogation program run by the CIA…a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,” without conceding that the program has involved torture.

But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney’s remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience yesterday that America is a “decent” country.

After all, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly on Tuesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other “high-value” detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique has since been discontinued.

An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone—except the hired legal hands of the Bush administration.

 

Ray McGovern, who works with the publishing arm of the Church of the Saviour, goes on to compel American religious leaders to speak about the moral failures of permitting torture.

Sometimes it takes a truth-telling outsider to throw light on our moral failures.

South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, erstwhile chaplain to Nelson Madela in prison and longtime outspoken opponent of apartheid, has this to say to those clergy who might be moved to preach more than platitudes:

“We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly or indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.

“All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”

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