Remembering Eric Breindel

Posted on: February 21st, 2007

Rearranging the bookshelves the other day, the Monitor came across a volume published in 1999 titled A Passion for Truth. The book is a collection of columns by the late Eric Breindel, whose death in 1998 at the shockingly young age of 42 deprived the nation of one of its most articulate conservative polemicists.

Remembering The Real King Hussein

Posted on: January 31st, 2007

There was just something so false in the universal acclaim for King Hussein on the occasion of his death eight years ago this week – false because most media accounts failed to offer a full reckoning of the Jordanian monarch’s life, with journalists whitewashing or ignoring its many inconvenient chapters and plentiful examples of ugly rhetoric.

The Schwarzschild Award

Posted on: January 24th, 2007

The winner of the Monitor’s third annual Henry Schwarzschild Award for most offensive comments by a Jew in the public spotlight goes to Michael Lerner, publisher of the far-left Tikkun magazine.

Ranking The Presidents

Posted on: January 10th, 2007

The Dec. 29 front-page essay on Harry Truman by this modest scrivener continues to generate a heartening response – and not just from Jewish Press readers, as the piece was featured on FrontPageMag.com and reprinted by the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in Truman’s home state of Missouri.

Democrats On Bended Knee

Posted on: January 7th, 2007

Funny thing about Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware and newly minted presidential hopeful: The media herd has this habit of portraying him as sharp, cerebral, one of the U.S. Senate’s Deep Thinkers – and yet every time he opens his mouth you hold your breath, wondering whether he’ll say something he’ll instantly regret.

The Media’s 40-Year War Against Israel

Posted on: December 13th, 2006

Hostility to Israel is generally not thought of as a job requirement for American journalists who cover the Middle East, but it might as well be. That this was not always the case simply confirms how drastically the media climate has changed over the past four decades.

Political Bookshelf

Posted on: December 6th, 2006

Reaction some months back to the Monitor’s Summer Reading List (June 23) was gratifying enough to warrant a list of recommended books for intelligent readers during the coming cold-weather months. The previous list concentrated on books about the Middle East; this one focuses on politics, New York and national.

Jews And Cold War Politics: A Rumination

Posted on: November 29th, 2006

For obvious reasons, the disproportionate number of Jews who were either members of the old American Communist Party or otherwise active in left-wing politics during the Cold War has always been a sensitive issue for the Jewish community.

Jimmy Carter’s Jewish Problem

Posted on: November 22nd, 2006

For those with eyes to see, there were hints as far back as the 1976 presidential campaign of the trouble to come. Early that year, Harper’s magazine published “Jimmy Carter’s Pathetic Lies,” a devastating exposé of Carter’s record in Georgia by a then little-known journalist named Steven Brill.

The Return Of Post-Zionism

Posted on: November 8th, 2006

In April 2004, Ilan Pappe, the left-wing Israeli academic and self-described anti-Zionist, told Haaretz that post-Zionism, which appeared dead as a doornail after nearly four years of non-stop Palestinian violence, would rise again.

Puffed Rice

Posted on: November 1st, 2006

The Monitor never quite understood the good feelings Condoleezza Rice managed to inspire among so many conservatives for what seemed like the longest time. The woman never uttered a single word on foreign policy – her alleged area of expertise – that could even remotely be described as original, inspiring, or just plain memorable.

The Problem With Polls

Posted on: October 25th, 2006

If most of the public opinion polls are to be believed, the Republican Party is careening toward a shellacking of historic proportions in next month’s midterm elections. Given the state of the Iraq war, a series of scandals involving Republicans, and the general mood of discontent that seems to have settled over the country, few will be surprised if the polls prove accurate.

Steven Erlanger’s Unhidden Bias

Posted on: October 18th, 2006

New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger is so openly pro-Palestinian in his reporting that he’s beginning to call to mind perhaps his most biased predecessor in that post – the truly execrable Deborah Sontag, whose transparently one-sided dispatches would invariably read as though she wrote them with a PLO flag draped over her word processor.

Bush’s Most Preposterous Critic

Posted on: October 11th, 2006

Graydon Carter tries so hard to get New York’s liberal establishment to take him seriously – no small task for someone who’s gone from skewering the rich and famous as editor of Spy magazine, the relatively short-lived 1980’s media phenomenon, to toadying to Hollywood celebrities and their imperious agents as editor of Vanity Fair, the glossy monthly that downplays its more serious journalism behind covers that feature scantily clad Hollywood ingénues and headlines seemingly lifted from the National Enquirer. (World Exclusive, shouted the October cover, A 22-Page Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes Family Album.)

The View From Henry Siegman’s Knees

Posted on: September 27th, 2006

In this week’s Jewish Press front-page essay, Gilead Ini methodically shreds even the slightest pretense of objectivity maintained by Henry Siegman, formerly of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Jewish Congress and a prolific writer on the Middle East.

Au Revoir, Oriana

Posted on: September 20th, 2006

Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who late in life did a profound about-face – going from leftist supporter of revolutionary movements to resolute defender of the West and vocal opponent of Islamic fundamentalism – died last week in Florence.

A Study In Selective Indignation

Posted on: September 13th, 2006

Political hypocrisy was raised to a new standard in recent weeks by Democrats who successfully pushed ABC to purge a docudrama of certain scenes and dialogue that reflected poorly on the anti-terror efforts, such as they were, of the Clinton administration.

Mike Wallace Loves Arab Dictators

Posted on: August 30th, 2006

Like a pig returning to his vomit, Mike Wallace came out of retirement last month to genuflect in the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad and then to spread the word that the man who’s denied the Holocaust and called for wiping Israel off the map is not really such a bad guy after all.

Hollywood’s Anti-Terror Ad

Posted on: August 23rd, 2006

Unless you know your way around the blogosphere or get your news from publications like the Malaysia Sun, Australia’s Sunday Morning Herald or Germany’s Die Welt, you likely missed the story last week that some 84 Hollywood celebrities – actors, directors and producers – had signed an ad condemning Hizbullah and Hamas that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

Random Notes On An Interrupted War

Posted on: August 16th, 2006

Continued from last week, some random observations of what others have been saying about the warfare in Lebanon, beginning with a series of fiercely anti-Olmert columns by Ari Shavit in Haaretz, Israel’s preeminent left-wing daily.