A Breath of Fresh Air

Bono breaks into the old grey lady...

Once upon a couple of weeks ago ...

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.
...
There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.

and let's just say, he's not like the usual sorts who have taken up residence there over the declining years...

More please, or do intelligent readers with my demographics not matter much? (Like: "Whose yer daddy?", you know?)

Look, with the editorial ego on parade, you'd really have to swallow hard to make the argument that Brooks/Friedman/Krugman/Dowd/Collins and guest extras are offering up anything nutritious these days. No accountability in their work, just recycled columns about the economy and the Middle East (really -- this whole downturn thing took y'all by surprise?)

Were she a ship, surely some of these squawkers would be treading water by now. So good move to hire the Bono, over another stale law professor, or paper economist, or well-bred do-gooder, or where ever else they dig up those "folk".

Let's hear some honest voices -- from folks who don't cash the paycheck either way, whether they are spot on, or whether they are again repetitively preaching to their choirs. That crew -- they're pretty stale, no? And forgive me for being blunt and rude, but that's not really where America is today -- aging, smug, and confident of all their "correctness." Give me the young gun over the tired hash, any day...

That's one good thing that will come of our economic troubles, I think -- less insurance. Meaning if you produce something good, you get. If you are wary and fearful of rocking the boat, standing up to the crowd so to speak, unwilling to take risks that in the end pay off, you're out.

By rewarding all voices equally, whether they really "get it" or are clueless, you're making a mockery of the market. Not to mention missing out on all the worthy life still going on out here. Because you can't tenure intelligence anymore than you can realistically take the scorecards away from the crowd. Yep, we're watching. And some of us out here ... not only can we read, we can add. Don't bring us all down with you, eh?
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Meanwhile, here's Cohen today on Obama's assemblage of the new Middle East advisor "dream team":

Now, I have nothing against smart, driven, liberal, Jewish (or half-Jewish) males; I’ve looked in the mirror. I know or have talked to all these guys, except Shapiro. They’re knowledgeable, broad-minded and determined. Still, on the diversity front they fall short. On the change-you-can-believe-in front, they also leave something to be desired.

In an adulatory piece in Newsweek, Michael Hirsh wrote: “Ross’s previous experience as the indefatigable point man during the failed Oslo process, as well as the main negotiator with Syria, make him uniquely suited for a major renewal of U.S. policy on nearly every front.”

Really? I wonder about the capacity for “major renewal” of someone who has failed for so long.

I think he gets it.

Change is needed, and not just in the intensity of U.S. diplomatic involvement with Israel-Palestine. Some fundamental questions must be asked.

Does regarding the Middle East almost exclusively through the prism of the war on terror make sense? Does turning a blind eye to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank that frustrate a two-state solution, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza that radicalizes its population, not undermine U.S. interest in bolstering moderate Palestinian sentiment?

Should policy not be directed toward reconciling a Palestinian movement now split between Fatah and Hamas, without which no final-status peace will be possible? Beyond their terrorist wings, in their broad grass-roots political movements, what elements of Hamas and Hezbollah can be coaxed toward the mainstream?

Do we understand the increasingly sophisticated Middle East of Al Jazeera where, as Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, put it to me, “People are not dumb and our credibility is at a historic near-zero?”

We'll see...

Asking these questions does not alter America’s commitment to Israel’s security within its pre-1967 borders, which is and should be unwavering. It does not change the unacceptability of Hamas rockets or the fact the Hamas Charter is vile. But it would signal that the damaging Bush-era consensus that Israel can do no wrong is to be challenged.

I don’t feel encouraged — not by the putative Ross-redux team, nor by the nonbinding resolutions passed last week in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The former offered “unwavering commitment” to Israel. The latter recognized “Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza.” Neither criticized Israel.

It seems that among liberal democracies, it is only in the U.S .Congress that a defense against terror that results in the slaying of hundreds of Palestinian children is not cause for agonized soul-searching. In my view, such Israeli “defense” has crossed the line.

“We are all opposed to terrorism,” Telhami said. “But how does that enlighten you about how to move forward?”

When will our wise men realize that the only way out of this mess is to draft the moderate Palestian majority to our side? And (when we will realize) what Israel is doing now, and all the destructive plans they have pursued under the still-alive Sharon, act against their aims and bring them no closer to tasting true independence?

Truth be told, humans will win this thing. Not unmanned drones, not scholar soldiers with unlimited bullets shooting at anything that moves. Not big blasts that light up the night sky and lay waste to years of effort. People. Humans. Like me and you.

He (Obama) said during the campaign that “an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel” can’t be “the measure of our friendship with Israel.” Those were words. Now, with Gaza blood flowing, come deeds.

Dunno about you or your faith in future President Obama. Me? I'm not holding my breath. In fact, I'm breathing it all in, especially the freshly scented airs -- I mean, that's the way life is supposed to be lived, no?

"I'd rather be ashes than dust. I would rather have my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and perseverant planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist."

~Jack London