The K.F. Stone Weekly

"That and a Buck Fifty . . ."

   

   Most intelligent people understand that time, tide and taxes make for great change; not only in the relative price of say, goods and services, but in the value of idiomatic expressions as well. 

   How's that?

  Well, take the old saw "A penny saved is a penny earned." hIt as lost most if not all of its bite -- especially at a time when the Treasury Department has announced that the next generation of pennies will actually cost more than a cent per coin to produce!  Then too, where at one time a "penny for one's thoughts" was both fitting and proper, today one would likely need to take out a loan in order to find out whas was on another person's mind.

   Or, consider the old expression "That and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee."  Who amongst us can remember how long ago it was that a cuppa' Joe cost five cents?  Today, the idiom would be more like "That and a buck fifty will get you a cup of decaf," and even that's probably on the cheap side. 

   However, the intent or meaning of this rather tongue-in-cheek expression -- regardless of price -- is both clear and consistent: that actions speak far louder than words. 

   But what about when words are the action?  What of their relative worth?

   In the world of philosophy, words which are in and of themselves actions are called "performative utterances."  Obvious examples would be such statements as:

• "You are hereby sentenced to death."
• "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
• "This meeting is now adjourned," and
• "This court is now in session." 

   When British philosopher J.L. Austin first described the concept in his book How to Do Things With Words [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962] he included two additional "performative utterances":

• "I apologize," and
• "I forgive you"

   In other words, according to Austin, in order for a person to apologize, all they had to do was utter precisely two words . . . "I apologize."  Likewise, all that it took for that apology to be accepted were the words "I forgive you," or "I accept your apology."

   It is at this point that Professor Austin and I must go down diverging paths; for one's apology to be both true and acceptable, it must consist of far, far more than mere words.  It must include honesty, contrition, the realization of just how much pain their words or deeds have caused, and an understanding that fundamental change is required.  Otherwise, they are falling into the trap best described by yet another philosopher of language -- the late aphorist Mason Cooley, who once wrote,

                                     I regret.

                                     I apologize.

                                     I blame myself.

                                    I continue as before.

   In the past several days we have seen a couple of stunning examples of "apologies" which not only fall far short of being "performative utterances," but will require far more than a buck fifty for that cup of coffee.  And even then, I fear that it will be a deeply bitter brew . . .

   The first such "apology" comes from British "Bishop" Richard Williamson, the Catholic prelate who not so long ago told a Swedish television interviewer that "historical evidence indicates that there were no Nazi gas chambers," and that a "maximum of 300,000 people died in concentration camps in the Holocaust." The "Bishop," who just the other day was kicked out of Argentina and sent packing back to his native England was seeking to have his excommunication ban lifted by Pope Benedict. Hoping to get back in the good graces of the Holy Father [who denied knowing anything about Williamson's weltanschauung], the renegade priest issued an "apology" which in part stated:

    If I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they [i.e. his words] would give rise, especially to the church, but also to the survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have said them. . . . To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God, I apologize."

    One will note that nowhere does Williamson say he is either contrite or apologetic for holding such ghastly, hateful, ahistorical beliefs; only that he is sorry for having been caught.  Nowhere has he come to grips with the fact that his beliefs fly in the face of the most thoroughly-documented act of inhumanity in the history of humankind.  Nowhere does he state that he now understands that indeed there was a Holocaust, and that indeed millions upon millions of Jews died horrible deaths in Nazi crematoria. His words offer not a scintilla of hope that he is a changed man.

   To forgive him would have about as much reality as his apology.  That and a buck fifty might purchase a cup of coffee . . . a very bitter cup of coffee.

   Then there is the case of multimedia baron Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post recently ran a cartoon showing a dead monkey with bullet holes in its chest and two cops, one with a smoking gun.  The caption reads, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."  The cartoon was meant to connect two events -- the fatal police shooting of a violent "celebrity" chimp that seriously mauled a woman, and the recent passage of the federal stimulus package, which Murdoch sees as being horribly flawed. Almost immediately, a hue and cry went out demanding both an apology and retraction from Post publisher Murdoch and cartoonist Sean Delonas for running what many, many people saw as being a racist jibe at the expense of President Barack Obama.  The Post's initial response was "no apology is due." Murdoch claimed that the cartoon was only meant to "mock a badly written piece of legislation." 

   Finally, after one week and tens of thousands of expressions of outrage and disgust, Murdoch issued an apologia . . . sort of:

   "Last week, we made a mistake.  We ran a cartoon which offended many people.  Today I want to personally apologize.  It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately it was interpreted by many as such. . . .Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.  I can assure you -- without a doubt -- that the only intent of the cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation."

   Again, an apology that is far, far less than an act of self-understanding or contrition.  No one at the Post has been terminated as a result of running this deeply offensive, overtly racist cartoon.  As in the case of Williamson, Murdoch only "apologized" for the negative reactions his readers may have had -- not that which caused their horror and anger in the first place.

   Seems like not a day goes by without some celebrity uttering words of apology in the press.  Whether it be third baseman Alex Rodriguez for using steroids, swimming champ Michael Phelps for toking on a bong, Michael Vick for dog fighting, or Mel Gibson for being a blatant anti-Semite,  everyone is sorry for something.  In the case of athletes or celebrities sometimes the public will accept their apologies and see them as being true, heartfelt and hopefully transformative.  In other cases, no words, no act will do; the individual is consigned to the ash heap of public scorn and derision.  Sometimes it just doesn't make sense.  The same person who can forgive, forget and cheer on a Ray Lewis -- who at one time was indicted for murder and then given a year's probation in exchange for testimony -- will never forgive a Bill Clinton or Gary Condit for their sexual indiscretions.  Yes, to forgive is divine, but only if and when the apology involves contrition, self-awareness and transformation.

   The "apologies" of Richard Williamson and Rupert Murdoch are far, far less than convincing or satisfying.  Their words contain none of the contrition or self-awareness than can lead to transformation.  Not even a buck fifty will buy them that proverbial cuppa' coffee.

   For them, a better adage comes to mind:

                           "Put your money where your mouth is."

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

     

Some Dare Call It Treason

  

  For centuries, idealists and litterateurs have held an almost religious conviction that calamity brings out the best in humanity. It was precisely this conviction -- some might prefer the term "convention" -- which underlay the Three Musketeers' declaration, Un pour tous, tous pour un ("All for One and One for All!")  Sweden adopted the Latin version, Unus pro omnibus, omes pro uno, as its traditional -- albeit unofficial -- motto in the late 1860s. And of course the variant E pluribus unum ("Out of many, one") has been on the Great Seal of the United States for the past 233 years.

   In keeping with this concept, it has been an enduring American belief that in times of crisis or challenge, "We the People" cast aside the trivialities which may divide us, and come together as a nation.  Of course this unity-in-time-of-trouble vision is an ideal, and ideals are meant to guide and shape our actions.  Throughout most of our history, we have managed -- sometimes better, sometimes worse -- to do just that.  It was in the very nature of FDR's New Deal; a political crazy quilt that received quite a bit of bipartisan support -- on Capitol Hill, in the media, and throughout the heartland.   It is instructive to check out Depression-era photos in Look or Life, or perhaps the films of a director like Frank Capra. What do we find?  People filmed or photographed in groups, working together in an attempt to make things better for everyone.  Yes, they are just photographs and films.  Nonetheless, they are reflective of an "All For One and One For All" spirit which actually did exist; a spirit which in 2009, seems as dated, hokey and saccharin as an Andy Hardy film festival.  

   Oh yes, there were folks who accused Roosevelt and his braintrust of trying to attach a collectivist anchor to an already sinking ship of state. And there was a sizeable group of Republicans who voted against New Deal legislation. But not even FDR's most vocal detractors had the audacity to pray aloud for his failure; to do so would have been to pray for the failure of the United States.  And that would have been tantamount to . . . well . . . to an act of treason.

   We all know that President Obama's massive stimulus plan was enacted without the support of a single House Republican, and that only Republicans Snowe, Collins and Specter voted for it in the Senate. What makes this final vote tally so maddening is that it came despite the president's willingness to talk with, listen to -- and take counsel from -- the disloyal opposition.  Despite getting their way on so many issues -- larger tax cuts and fewer direct disbursements; despite getting both House and Senate leadership to agree to the elimination of billions of dollars worth of earmarks; the Republicans still stood arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder in opposition.

   And it gets even worse . . .

• Fox Business Network reporter Tracy Byrnes "revealed" that Namasté Solar Electric, Inc., the Colorado solar energy company whose president introduced President Obama at this week's signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [the stimulus package's official title] has a "progressive, maybe even socialist internal structure."
• Rush Limbaugh, the self-anointed, self-appointed "leader" of the Republican Party, has repeatedly told his listening audience he "hopes he [Obama] fails."  Moreover, when commenting on President Obama's February 18th speech in Mesa, he claimed the president said: " . . . we all must learn to live within our means and not expect the value of our homes to go up 10, 20 percent over our lifetimes ever again."  Limbaugh told his audience, "This is what I mean by him talking down the economy."  If El Rushbo had taken the time to read a transcript of the president's speech, he would have seen that what he really said was quite different: ". . . we should not assume that housing prices are going to go up 20, 30, 40 percent every year" [emphasis added] and not "over our lifetimes."  Instead, Limbaugh would have his listeners believe that the president should fail, because he is somehow "against" America.
  
• South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint asserted that under the Recovery Act, "[i]f [universities] take any money, you can't have a prayer group in a dorm anymore." This is patently untrue. The bill "prohibits the use of funds for modernization, renovation or repair of facilities . . . used for sectarian religious instruction, religious worship, or a school of divinity. . ."  [emphasis added]
• Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake has repeatedly claimed that the act "could lead to rationed health care," and will lead to "government deciding which procedures you can have and which you can't."  Despite the fact that this is in no wise true, several media outlets have chosen to repeat the representative's charge verbatim.  What the Recovery Act does contain, is a provision that establishes "a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information" in order to create "an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014." 
• Republican governors Jindal, Barbour, Otter, Sanford, Perry and Palin have publicly stated that they may very well not accept any stimulus funds for their states. (Never mind the fact that their legislatures will have the final say.) Not surprisingly, all six have been prominently mentioned as possible presidential aspirants.
  
• On an almost daily basis, national Republicans and their media allies "reveal" yet another venal, nefarious clause, rider or amendment attached to the stimulus package; in most cases, what they have unveiled is simply not true. It has been claimed, by way of example, that the stimulus package includes $30 million "to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse in the San Francisco wetlands," which happens to be in Speaker Pelosi's district. This is patently false; no such provision exists.  Then too, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly claimed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid included a provision directing $8 billion to be spent on a high-speed rail line between Southern California and Las Vegas.  In truth, although the stimulus bill does include $8 billion for high-speed rail lines, it nowhere states where it/they will be built.  Furthermore, it leaves that determination up to the Secretary of Transportation, who happens to be Ray LaHood, a former Republican member of the House.
• Arizona Senator John Kyl has repeatedly claimed that the economic recovery plan is "going to be wasting an awful lot of money, putting permanent programs in place that over a ten-year period are going to cost $3.2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office."  Wrong!  In fact, more than half of the $3.2 trillion figure comes from the cost of permanently extending more than 20 provisions of the bill, which the bill does not do!
• And on and on and on . . .

  These misrepresentations are beginning to sink in.  As I speak before groups, more and more I'm hearing people express severe reservations about the stimulus package, citing many of the erroneous "pork add-ons" as the source of their concern.  The only thing I can suggest by way of encouragement is that they not be so quick to accept "facts" when they are presented by those who have a vested stake in seeing President Barack Obama and the Democrats fail.
 
   Why in the world would anyone in their right mind wish failure?  Is there a delineable strategy beneath the madness that some dare call treason?

   Believe it or not, there does appear to be both a strategy and a purpose.

   It would seem that the Republicans on Capitol Hill -- and many Republican governors -- are banking on failure so that they can eventually say, "See . . . we told you so!"  Under terms of this scenario, they see themselves picking up lots of seats in the 2010 midterm elections, thus putting them in a much better position for taking back the White House in 2012.  But what if there is demonstrable recovery?  What then?  Well, apparently they believe that in the case of success, no one will remember their ever having been in opposition.  In the latter case, this is highly unlikely; in the former, incredibly deceitful and downright unpatriotic.

   With the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and the boys and girls of Fox, one might give a grudging pass; after all, they are, at base, entertainers competing for ratings points.  The more outrageous they are, the better their ratings.  However, even with an understanding of show business and the ratings' game, there can be little or no justification for their blatant lies, misconceptions and dreams of failure.  As even so politically conservative a figure as the Rev. Pat Robertson noted recently in speaking about Limbaugh's hope that the president fail: "That was a terrible thing to say.  I mean, he's the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds.  And if he doesn't, it hurts us all.  Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally."

   Without question, we are in the midst of a calamity, which ideally should bring out the best in humanity.  For many, it has, it does and it will.

  For others -- both in and out of office -- it brings out that certain something that some dare call treason.

© 2009 Kurt F. Stone
    

      

  

           

Shades of Charles Ray

     

    While watching yesterday's televised grilling of the nation's richest, most powerful bankers, I was reminded of the sorry saga of Charles Ray.

   "Who?" I hear you ask, "is -- or was -- Charles Ray, and what does he have to do with Messrs Kelly [Bank of New York, Mellon], Pandit Citigroup], Blankfein [Goldman Sachs] et al?"

   Well, back in the late 'Teens and early 'Twenties, few stars shown more brightly in the Hollywood firmament than Charles Ray.  Ray (1891-1943) shot to fame playing a series of rubes, hicks and down-home country lads in films with titles like The Conversion of Frosty Blake, The Clodhopper, and The Old Swimmin' Hole. By 1921 he had his own studio on Sunset, a mansion in Beverly Hills and was earning upwards of $10,000 a week. For a couple of years, it seemed like he could do no wrong.  But then, like many a long-forgotten star of that long-gone era, Charlie Ray began taking himself far too seriously, and ultimately lost touch with precisely what made him a star in the first place: he was a real-life, undereducated country hick playing a rube.  When, in 1923, he decided to star in an epic, self-financed costume melodrama -- The Courtship of Miles Standish -- he lost not only his fortune, but his audience to boot. The tens of millions of fans who had flocked to see him as a barefoot, overall-clad Toby Watkins, Billy Bates or Jimmy Duncan, stayed away in droves when he donned a long blond wig to portray Longfellow's John Alden.    

   The story goes that shortly after Charles Ray discovered he had lost virtually everything, he and his wife Clara threw an enormous dinner party at their mansion.  According to one of the attendees, "Here we were, at a dinner party with a butler behind ever chair, and Charlie announces 'Tomorrow, I'm declaring bankruptcy.' I just looked at him and said 'how can you do this if you're going bankrupt tomorrow?'  Who will pay the bills?'  And he said, 'We thought it was the thing to do.'"

   Unlike the 8 bankers sitting in front of Representative Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee, Charlie Ray didn't have an M.B.A. from Harvard or know the difference between a dividend and a derivative.  Heck, he didn't even have a high school diploma.  Perhaps his throwing a lavish banquet on the eve of declaring bankruptcy -- although both boorish and the height of stupidity -- can be understood.  For after all, beneath the bespoke tailoring and hand-cobbled shoes, Charlie was just an uneducated hick from Jacksonville, Illinois.   

   But what about the heads of Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and the rest?  What's their excuse for having gone on a mind-boggling spending spree on the eve of collapse?  A mere ten minutes research reveals that together, the eight earned a staggering $395.84 MILLION in 2008 --  a year in which their financial institutions lost billions upon billions of dollars.  And, to make matters worse, that a goodly percentage of the $165 billion Congress has appropriated for the purpose of shoring up these eight endangered financial institutions, has gone to pay executive bonuses.  Just yesterday, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo reported that despite losing a record $27 billion in fiscal year 2008, Merrill Lynch managed to give 700 of its employees bonuses in excess of $1 million apiece.  The aggregate total of the bonuses amounted to $3.6 billion. In his report, Cuomo noted that Merrill Lynch managed to disburse these bonus payments just before the firm was sold to Bank of America.   

   Cuomo also noted that had the $3.6 billion been evenly disbursed among Merrill's workforce, each person would have received $91,000.  Instead, the four top recipients received $121 million.  At $91,000 per head, the $121 million would have taken care of 1,330 Merrill employees, rather than just four.  This, from a company that lost a reported $27 BILLION in 2008.

   To add excessive insult to even greater injury, plans to pay brokers at the new joint venture between Morgan Stanley and the Smith Barney unit of Citigroup were also uncovered.  James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley was caught admonishing his employees to call these payments "very generous retention awards," not bonuses. When queried, a Morgan Stanley spokesman said that such payments were "necessary" and "will come out of operating revenue, not government bailout funds."  Morgan Stanley has received $10 billion, while Citigroup has received $50 billion in largess.

   By comparison, Charles and Clara Ray's excesses were little more than pocket change.

   One positive thing that seems to be coming out of these recent revelations is that the public may finally, finally be awakening from it's decades-long love affair with the fabulously wealthy. Perhaps its finally beginning to dawn on us that helping make truly wealthy people even wealthier doesn't in the long run do one heck of a lot for the rest of us. 

   Think about it.  A generation back, most of the families on television -- the Cleavers, Nelsons, Ricardos, Bendixes, Cramdens, Gillises, Sanfords and Stones ["The Donna Reed Show"] -- were lower-middle to middle-class.  Somewhere in the 1980s or early 1990s, they started gaining in wealth; think the Ewings, Carringtons, Cranes, the young men and women  of "Beverly Hills 90210" or "The Pride of Belaire." 

   Then too, in years gone by, those of us who are into sports knew the yardage, free-throw percentages and ERAs of our favorite players, not their salaries. Today, there is little difference between the sports and business sections of the daily news. We have become so blasé that we take it in stride when someone reports -- as an example -- that Minnesota Twins' catcher Joe Mauer is an "underpaid steal" at a mere $6,250,000.00 a season.  A steal?  That's $120,192.30 a week, 52 weeks a year; that's $38,580.25 per game on a 162-game schedule; that's $11,660.50 for every time he came to bat in the 2008 season.  Heck, at $28 million a year, it takes Alex Rodriguez slightly more than 9 games to earn what President Obama will make in the next four years.

   Perhaps all the revelations about what has been transpiring on Wall Street and in the West Wing these past many years will have a salutary effect on we, the folks of Main Street. To wit, that if we are ever going to get our financial house back in order  -- which will be a tall, tall order to say the least -- it will require drastic changes in the ways we live, and in what demands we place on our government, our leaders and of course, ourselves.  We will have to become more and more informed on the ABCs of economy and the market, relying less and less on the half-baked, ill-informed judgments of pundits and entertainers who pass themselves off as professors and economists.  And perhaps most importantly, we will have to revive that most American of all passions: hope.

    I've got to believe that we are a heck of a lot smarter -- not to mention more sensible and sensitive -- than Charles Ray. 

  

   

The Awakening of Sleeping Dogs

   

It is a painfully incontrovertible fact of history that when a country -- or a region -- suffers devastating economic reversals, it can easily serve as a wake-up call for anti-Semites.  It then becomes the "responsibility" of these awakened anti-Semites to proclaim that it was the Jews who conspired to either corner a market, release a germ, or invoke a curse that caused all  hell to break loose.  At such times of crisis, few people ever stop to ask themselves how such a relatively tiny group could be capable of wreaking so much havoc. Then again, this is nothing new; It has been that way throughout most of human history.   Two examples from modern history will suffice:
 

• In Germany, hyperinflation in the 1920s and early '30s not only destroyed the economy; it was a proximate cause of the rise of Nazism.  Hitler and his band blamed virtually every one of Germany's ills on the Jews.
  

• In America, one terrifying response to the Great Depression, was the rise of such anti-Semitic hate groups as Fritz Kuhn's German American Bund, William Dudley Pelley's "Silver Shirts," Art Smith's "Khaki Shirts," and Father Francis Coughlin's "Christian Front."

  Truth to tell, it's not just economic dislocation and uncertainty that arouses Jew haters from their slumber; technology, modernity, changing patterns of style, shifting balances of power and pandemic -- all have spurred that skewed worldview which sees Jews as the single-best answer to those two eternal questions:

• "What in the hell went wrong?" and
  
• "Who in the hell's to blame?"  

   Over the past several months, we have witnessed a horrifying rise in anti-Semitic words, acts and deeds.

   Just last Saturday -- the Jewish Sabbath -- anti-Semitic vandals desecrated a synagogue in Caracas.  In the weeks since Israel launched its retaliatory operation against Hamas in Gaza, Venezuela's  15,000-strong Jewish community has been the target of what the Anti Defamation League terms " . . . hateful rhetoric, intimidation, vandalism of property [and] the repeated target of organized boycotts."  Clearly, these anti-Semitic activities can be easily tied to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who has emboldened and empowered them through his increasingly hateful actions and rhetoric.

   In response to the conflict in Gaza, Chavez expelled Israel's ambassador to Venezuela with six other diplomats and officially severed relations with the Jewish State.  He then urged his country's Jewish community to formally speak out and condemn Israel's actions, and promoted a conspiracy theory that the Israeli Mossad and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were responsible for poisoning former P.L.O. leader Yassir Arafat.  He also trivialized the Holocaust and compared Israeli military actions in Gaza with Nazi "efforts" to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

   It is interesting to note that during those years when oil was selling far above today's $41.00 a barrel, the blustery Chavez never made these kinds of statements. 

   When economy crashes, anti-Semitism rises.    

   In another episode, Fatima Hajaig, South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, while attending an anti-Israel rally, charged that, "Jewish money controls America and most Western countries."  As of this writing, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe has yet to issue any statement distancing himself and the country he leads from Hajaig's ridiculous, hateful statement.

  Then there is the Vatican, where Pope Benedict XVI just this week reversed his earlier decision to welcome an excommunicated Bishop back into the church.  In an unsigned statement, the Vatican announced formerly defrocked Bishop, Richard Williamson, would be "barred from resuming life as a priest" until he admitted "in an absolutely unequivocal and public way" that he was wrong in insisting that the Nazis did not kill any Jews in gas chambers during World War II.

   The British Williamson, along with three other clerics, had been excommunicated in 1988 after becoming bishops without papal consent.   Williamson and his three colleagues were -- and are -- members of the "Society of St. Pius X" (SSPX), a Catholic sect that rejects most of Nostra Aetate ("In Our Times"), the Second Vatican Council's key document which repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus' death and urged dialog with all major religions.  It should be noted that SSPX also rejects the Second Vatican Council's reform which permitted churches to celebrate mass in languages other than Latin.  Additionally, SSPX also endorses history's most notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

   Frighteningly, just a matter of days before the Vatican overturned Williamson's excommunication, the bishop, speaking on Swedish television, said: "I believe there were no gas chambers," and claimed that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by all reasonable and reliable historians.  When queried as to how someone holding this dangerous, anti-historic, anti-Semitic belief could be welcomed back into the church, a spokesman for the papal press office said "His Holy Father was not aware of any such statement." 

   Seems like the Vatican and the nascent Obama Administration are suffering from a similar problem: they don't do a thorough job of vetting people before going public. 

   On the positive side, once word of Williamson's reinstatement got out, Catholic Europe went absolutely nuts.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused the Vatican of "creating the impression that Holocaust denial might be tolerated." Several German cardinals and bishops called on the Vatican to speak out strongly against Williamson and to apologize to Holocaust survivors.  Although Williamson did apologize for any embarrassment he may have given Pope Benedict, he did not recant the revisionist proclamations he has been making for nearly 20 years.  According to an official Vatican spokesman, "the matter is officially closed."

   The issue of anti-Semitism is, I am sorry to say, never closed.

   We are currently in what may well be but the earliest days of a long, world-wide recession -- perhaps even a depression.  This means that the sleeping dogs of anti-Semitism are likely to awaken in even greater numbers.  It is part of human nature to want to find out precisely who -- or whom -- is responsible for the problems that overwhelm and perplex us.  Historically, it has always been easy to scapegoat the Jews.  (And by the way, it was actually the Jews who invented the concept of the "scapegoat."  Just read the Torah portion for Yom Kippur.)

   During the Holocaust, there was a joke that made its way from Jew to Jew:

   Two men, dressed in tatters, meet on a street in Berlin.  After exchanging pleasantries, one asks the other: "Why in the world are we suffering so many problems?  Why is the entire world so upside down?  Who's to blame?"

   "Oh," says his friend, "that's easy.  It's due to two groups."

   "Which two groups?" the first man asks.

   "Why Jews and bike riders!" exclaims the second.

   "What in the hell do bike riders have to do with all our problems?"

   "I haven't the slightest idea," the first man responds.  "What in the hell do Jews have to do with our problems?"

   And so it goes.  May we all keep our eyes, ears and minds open, and be ready at a moment's notice to combat whatever slanders, actions or conceits in which the enemies of reason may engage.

 

©2009 Kurt F. Stone