Category: The Dish

Anti-Anti-Semitism In Iran?

A pretty staggering event: a major television series in Iran on the Holocaust, which clearly concedes that it did take place and sympathizes with its victims. Who knew? Yourish wonders:

I can’t quite figure out why the mullahs did this, either. If they’re doing it to prove that Iran is not anti-Semitic, they’ve unwittingly done just about the best thing they could possibly have done to make Jews more sympathetic in Israel. And that seems to be how the series is affecting Iranians.

More background:

That’s surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What’s even more surprising is that government media produced the series, and is airing it on state-run television.

Even without Ahmadinejad’s past comments, the series would be a surprise. The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in state media in Iran, school textbooks don’t discuss it and Iranians have little information about it.

Yet the series, titled “Zero Degree Turn,” is clearly sympathetic to the Jews’ plight during World War II. Scenes show men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.

The series could not have aired without being condoned by Iran’s clerical leadership. The state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, who has final say in all matters inside Iran.

[…] The show’s appearance now may reflect an attempt by Iran’s leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.

What does Michael Ledeen think?

The Norman Conquests

Another insight into the epic Mailer-Podhoretz feud, covered recently by the Dish here and here. Money quote:

Part of Podhoretz’s self-proclaimed courage was his breaking with the radicals by the end of the l960s. It was then that Podhoretz stood brave and tall against what he calls the radical "terror." But when he gets down to it, what he means by terror is, for instance, the fact that Norman Mailer – of course a great and good friend – after telling Podhoretz that he would write a favorable review of Making It, for Partisan Review, actually blasted the book. What are we to make of a man whose concept of "terror" is getting a bad write-up in Partisan Review? To Podhoretz, this shift in Mailer’s attitude conclusively demonstrates the radical terror at work. Mailer’s own explanation for his change of mind on rereading the book is brusquely dismissed; not even considered is the even more likely explanation that Mailer was simply being polite to Podhoretz in the first place.

The Democrats and Iraq

An inconvenient truth:

Not only are Democrats afraid of taking certain kinds of political risks to end the war, but they see no prospect of a political upside to ending it. There was a fairly overwhelming belief in Washington in mid-to-late November 2006 that Republicans would start moving to end the war in January. It didn’t happen, but then came the belief that they would start to abandon ship in September 2007, which also didn’t happen. But given that Republicans aren’t doing what everyone expected them to do and reducing their political exposure on Iraq by winding the war down, Democrats are disinclined to go out on a limb to do it for them.

Drum sees the logic of cowardice:

Upsides first. From the antiwar left … a few congressional leaders who led the fight would get big props, but the rest of the Democratic caucus would get bupkis. Intead, we lefties would probably spend most of our time complaining that they were too late, that they only acted under pressure, that they didn’t pull out enough troops, etc. etc. The odds of a genuine political lift are pretty small.

…Now for the downsides.

War supporters, of course, would go ballistic and start blaming every bad event on the planet on the Defeatocrats who pulled the plug on Iraq and betrayed our men and women in uniform. Squishy centrists, most of whom say we ought to withdraw, would probably be apprehensive about voting for someone who actually went ahead did it. Iraq itself would probably get worse if we pulled out, at least in the short term, and there’s an outside chance that it would get way worse. Dems would get all the blame, of course. And finally, Democrats would no longer have the war as an issue to run on in 2008.

But there’s more. Not only are there fewer upsides than downsides, but the upsides are vague and fuzzy while the downsides are sharp and terrifying and potentially career-ending. This is the underlying dynamic that will probably keep us in Iraq essentially forever, no matter who we elect president. It’s all very discouraging.

Capitalism Or Business?

They’re not always the same thing, as Kinsley explains:

Student loans are the clearest example of the common Republican confusion between free-market capitalism and business. Capitalism is an economic system that is held, with some justification, to be the best guarantor of prosperity. Business can be capitalism in action, or it can be something entirely different. There is very little about the student loan program that has anything to do with free-market capitalism. Yet whenever the student loan system comes under criticism, lobbyists, "industry" leaders and supportive politicians haul out the same old cliches, as if they were defending Adam Smith’s famous pin factory itself.

Michael Cannon celebrates a liberal who understands free markets.

The Mind Of Mukasey

Here’s an insight into how he thinks. Money quote:

Like any other act of Congress, the Patriot Act should be scrutinized, criticized and, if necessary, amended. But in order to scrutinize and criticize it, it helps to read what is actually in it. It helps not to conduct the debate in terms that suggest it gives the government the power to investigate us based on what we read, or that people who work for the government actually have the inclination to do such a thing, not to mention the spare time.

He seems like a level-headed rule-of-law conservative to me.
 

The Media Now – And Cruelty

A reader writes:

Your post regarding Britney Spears and the YouTube response touches on the untended (and unintended) sore of this whole YouTube thing – what I call "disproportionate response."

Take the Miss Teen South Carolina episode:  Two years ago, that gaffe was the sort of thing you either a) saw live because you actually watched the Miss Teen USA Pageant, or b) you heard about it at the office or from a friend the next day.  Most likely it was a second-hand anecdote that you’d chuckle over briefly and forget about.  The whole event would have run its course in two days’ time.

Instead, I had it forwarded to me in YouTube form by no fewer than 5 people, and I’d wager I’m in a low percentile in regards to having things forwarded to me.  My initial response was sadness.  The girl obviously became flustered, lost track of her thoughts, and the whole thing snowballed on her the longer she was under the lights.  Perhaps the girl isn’t particularly bright (but how would I know?), and poise certainly wasn’t her strong suit, but she also isn’t a celebrity or public figure in the true sense of the word whose error warranted this much attention.

So instead of her public embarrasment dying a quick, self-contained death, it became unending fodder for columnists, talk radio, and late-night monologues.  The response was disproportionate for the offense.  And this is what this whole YouTube business begets. And frankly, it ain’t good.  I’m sure there are positive applications to be found in some of its corridors, but like most media, it quickly becomes co-opted and corrupted by the more base elements of our society.

I mean, it’s right there in the buzzword, isn’t it?  How often is "viral" ever a good thing?