Tea Party organizer vows to burn Pelosi and Perriello in effigy
From CNN web site, November 14th, 2009, Posted at 11:28 AM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The organizer of a "Tea Party" protest in Virginia says he intends to move forward with plans to burn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Perriello in effigy next weekend at a rally to protest Democratic health care legislation.
The event is scheduled for next Saturday in Danville, which borders North Carolina and sits at the southern end of Perriello's congressional district. Perriello, a Democrat, narrowly won his House seat in 2008 and is considered a top target of Congressional Republicans in next year's midterm elections.
When news of the rally surfaced Friday, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen condemned the plans as "shocking and despicable."
But Nigel Coleman, the organizer of the Tea Party, told CNN he doesn't see what all the fuss is about. The attention, he said, should be on the Democratic plans to overhaul the health care system.
"We're not going to actually set Perriello on fire or Mrs. Pelosi on fire," Coleman said. "But we have been trying to months to get our point across just how vehemently we are opposed to this health care legislation. For the House vote to come so close and to know that Mr. Perriello is on the other side, it's a kick in the stomach that a lot of people couldn't take."
Coleman said none of Perriello's potential Republican challengers have been invited to the event, which he expects will draw about 100 people.
"Something shocking and despicable is how they've handled this health care legislation," Coleman said, responding to Van Hollen's statement. "Going behind closed doors, writing a bill that is going to fundamentally change what America is. More people are going to be killed by this health care legislation than this bonfire."
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Vegetarianism
People ask me, now and then, why I turned to vegetarianism (next month it will be eighteen years), and it’s not always asked in an entirely friendly way. There’s an edge, at times, to the question; some people regard vegetarians as being somehow alien. I usually mention, when asked, that my decision did not have to do with health concerns, but that it was because of the animal issue.
I think my favorite response to questions about vegetarianism came from the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. I have read different versions of the story. One of the versions, roughly, is this: Singer was at a dinner, and was asked if he had declined to eat the chicken which was being served “for health reasons.” Yes, he said—for the health of the chicken.
I think my favorite response to questions about vegetarianism came from the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. I have read different versions of the story. One of the versions, roughly, is this: Singer was at a dinner, and was asked if he had declined to eat the chicken which was being served “for health reasons.” Yes, he said—for the health of the chicken.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Recommended Reading
Two remarkable books, both about the Holocaust:
1. The novel The Last of The Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart. It was published in France in 1959, and was brought out in America in 1960.
The edition I read was published by MJF Books of New York, as part of its “Library of the Holocaust.”
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Just-Andre-Schwarz-Bart/dp/1585670162/
2. Holocaust, by the poet Charles Reznikoff. Published in 1975.
From the back cover of the book: Reznikoff’s "source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of the courtroom testimony, a poem that unfolds in the voices [of] the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare in history's own tongue."
http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Charles-Reznikoff/dp/1574232088/ref=ed_oe_p
1. The novel The Last of The Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart. It was published in France in 1959, and was brought out in America in 1960.
The edition I read was published by MJF Books of New York, as part of its “Library of the Holocaust.”
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Just-Andre-Schwarz-Bart/dp/1585670162/
2. Holocaust, by the poet Charles Reznikoff. Published in 1975.
From the back cover of the book: Reznikoff’s "source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of the courtroom testimony, a poem that unfolds in the voices [of] the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare in history's own tongue."
http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Charles-Reznikoff/dp/1574232088/ref=ed_oe_p
Friday, August 14, 2009
An essay by Menachem Rosensaft, in The Forward
Here is an essay, titled "Analogies Have Consequences," by Menachem Z. Rosensaft, from The Jewish Daily Forward (www.forward.com). Rosensaft is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
Analogies Have Consequences
Opinion
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Published August 10, 2009, issue of August 21, 2009.
In 1995, right-wing Israeli demonstrations opposing any political accommodation with the Palestinians featured posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the uniform of a Nazi SS officer. The message was duly received. On November 5, 1995, Yigal Amir, a far-right Israeli law student, assassinated Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally.
Members of Israel’s mainstream right-wing political parties, some of whom had spoken at the demonstrations in question, were quick to distance themselves from Rabin’s murderer. This was not what they had intended, they said. They did not see the posters. They could not be held responsible for the insane behavior of a deranged extremist.
We should keep the Rabin assassination in mind as Rush Limbaugh, arguably the most influential ideologue of today’s American conservative movement, compares the Obama administration’s health care reform initiative to Nazism and the president himself to Hitler.
“Obama’s got a health care logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook” and “Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did,” Limbaugh told the millions who faithfully tune in to his radio show. The president “is sending out his brownshirts to head up opposition to genuine American citizens who want no part of what Barack Obama stands for and is trying to stuff down our throats,” Limbaugh continued, and “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”
Limbaugh is not alone in making the Hitler analogy. Demonstrators disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform have brandished images of President Obama with a Hitler-like mustache and signs with “Obama” written under a swastika. Earlier this year, the president of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County in Maryland wrote on the group’s Web site that “Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common.”
From the outset, the strategy of some Republicans has been to delegitimize Barack Obama by depicting him as somehow dangerous and “un-American.”
First they brayed his middle name, Hussein, and noted that Obama sounds a lot like Osama. Then they called him a Muslim. When that didn’t stick, they accused him of “palling around with terrorists,” and then of being a socialist and a communist, all to no avail.
That was conventional politics, albeit of the gutter variety. By comparing President Obama to Hitler, however, Limbaugh is sending his national audience a subliminal but clear message of a wholly different sort. He may just as well be shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, has condemned the Nazi analogies in the health care debate as “outrageous, offensive and inappropriate.” Americans, he believes, “should be able to disagree on the issues without coloring it with Nazi imagery and comparisons to Hitler.”
Foxman is right, of course, but he does not go nearly far enough in his criticism. The problem is not just one of civility in political discourse. The real issue is that Limbaugh, with the tacit acquiescence of his corporate sponsors and the GOP establishment, is calling for sedition and worse.
If Limbaugh in his radio broadcast had made, in the words of the relevant federal statute, “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” he would have been thrown off the air and would be awaiting trial on felony charges. But his likening of Obama to Hitler is the functional equivalent of calling for an act of violence against the president of the United States.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, a plurality of Americans consider Limbaugh to be “the main person who speaks for the Republican Party today.” John McCain sees Limbaugh as “a voice of a significant portion of our conservative movement in America” who “has a lot of people who listen very carefully to him.” Mitt Romney calls Limbaugh “a very powerful voice among conservatives. And I listen to him.” Rudy Giuliani has said that “to the extent that Rush Limbaugh energizes the base of the Republican Party, he’s a very valuable and important voice.” And Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele has anointed Limbaugh “a national conservative leader.”
McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Steele should now either unambiguously repudiate Limbaugh’s ugly rhetoric or be deemed to condone it. To paraphrase the old labor movement song, we are entitled to know which side they are on.
It is time for Republican leaders to take responsibility for Limbaugh’s words before they have dire if not tragic consequences.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
http://forward.com/articles/111855/
Analogies Have Consequences
Opinion
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Published August 10, 2009, issue of August 21, 2009.
In 1995, right-wing Israeli demonstrations opposing any political accommodation with the Palestinians featured posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the uniform of a Nazi SS officer. The message was duly received. On November 5, 1995, Yigal Amir, a far-right Israeli law student, assassinated Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally.
Members of Israel’s mainstream right-wing political parties, some of whom had spoken at the demonstrations in question, were quick to distance themselves from Rabin’s murderer. This was not what they had intended, they said. They did not see the posters. They could not be held responsible for the insane behavior of a deranged extremist.
We should keep the Rabin assassination in mind as Rush Limbaugh, arguably the most influential ideologue of today’s American conservative movement, compares the Obama administration’s health care reform initiative to Nazism and the president himself to Hitler.
“Obama’s got a health care logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook” and “Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did,” Limbaugh told the millions who faithfully tune in to his radio show. The president “is sending out his brownshirts to head up opposition to genuine American citizens who want no part of what Barack Obama stands for and is trying to stuff down our throats,” Limbaugh continued, and “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”
Limbaugh is not alone in making the Hitler analogy. Demonstrators disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform have brandished images of President Obama with a Hitler-like mustache and signs with “Obama” written under a swastika. Earlier this year, the president of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County in Maryland wrote on the group’s Web site that “Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common.”
From the outset, the strategy of some Republicans has been to delegitimize Barack Obama by depicting him as somehow dangerous and “un-American.”
First they brayed his middle name, Hussein, and noted that Obama sounds a lot like Osama. Then they called him a Muslim. When that didn’t stick, they accused him of “palling around with terrorists,” and then of being a socialist and a communist, all to no avail.
That was conventional politics, albeit of the gutter variety. By comparing President Obama to Hitler, however, Limbaugh is sending his national audience a subliminal but clear message of a wholly different sort. He may just as well be shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, has condemned the Nazi analogies in the health care debate as “outrageous, offensive and inappropriate.” Americans, he believes, “should be able to disagree on the issues without coloring it with Nazi imagery and comparisons to Hitler.”
Foxman is right, of course, but he does not go nearly far enough in his criticism. The problem is not just one of civility in political discourse. The real issue is that Limbaugh, with the tacit acquiescence of his corporate sponsors and the GOP establishment, is calling for sedition and worse.
If Limbaugh in his radio broadcast had made, in the words of the relevant federal statute, “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” he would have been thrown off the air and would be awaiting trial on felony charges. But his likening of Obama to Hitler is the functional equivalent of calling for an act of violence against the president of the United States.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, a plurality of Americans consider Limbaugh to be “the main person who speaks for the Republican Party today.” John McCain sees Limbaugh as “a voice of a significant portion of our conservative movement in America” who “has a lot of people who listen very carefully to him.” Mitt Romney calls Limbaugh “a very powerful voice among conservatives. And I listen to him.” Rudy Giuliani has said that “to the extent that Rush Limbaugh energizes the base of the Republican Party, he’s a very valuable and important voice.” And Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele has anointed Limbaugh “a national conservative leader.”
McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Steele should now either unambiguously repudiate Limbaugh’s ugly rhetoric or be deemed to condone it. To paraphrase the old labor movement song, we are entitled to know which side they are on.
It is time for Republican leaders to take responsibility for Limbaugh’s words before they have dire if not tragic consequences.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
http://forward.com/articles/111855/
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Magazine piece
A fascinating, impressively-written story about whales--and about remarkable and mysterious interactions between whales, and humans--appeared in the 7/12/09 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
The piece, "Watching Whales Watching Us," is by contributing writer Charles Siebert, and can be found at this link:
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Recommended Reading
Finished reading, this week, a deeply moving, beautifully written work—the Civil War novel “The Killer Angels,” by Michael Shaara. The novel, awarded the 1975 Pulitzer Prize, concerns the Battle of Gettysburg.
Here's an amazon.com link:
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