Today, some belated observations on news and media, with a bit of klezmer music in the background:
- There’s a new commercial for Netflix running where a “Romance Movie” cast shows up in a persons house as their next Netflix delivery. Everytime I see this commercial, I notice the mezuzah on the door of the lady owning the house. It is a very prominant silver mezuzah, and shows up in at least two shots. Have others noticed this? (BTW, there’s also a mezuzah at Disneyland)
- The most emailed story on the latimes.com website for the last two days is titled “Why God chose the Jews“. It is an opinion piece from last Saturday that posits that “There is one good thing about anti-Semitism: It lets you know who the bad guys are. Right, left, black, white, freak or straight, the minute someone starts rattling on about the evil Jews, you know your train just pulled into Slimeball Station.” The point of the author, Andrew Klavan, is that having an antisemite agree with you is a great indicator that what you are saying is stupid. It is like the dead-canary warning for miners… or as Mr. Klavan puts it:
That’s why I think the system could use more bells and whistles — a loud honking noise perhaps, or even closed captioning for the morally impaired. Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a “myth” or that Israel “must be wiped off the map,” you would hear a loud honk and words would appear in the air below his face: “Hello. I am an evil madman. Please stop negotiating with me now and proceed to cripple my nuclear capability by any means necessary.”
Or how about when Venezuelan leader — and anti-American Iran ally — Hugo Chavez warns that “descendants of those who crucified Christ … have grabbed all the world’s riches for themselves”? Honk. His subtitle: “Hi. I know you lefties are still enamored of the idea of socialism — fine. But personally, I’m a jerk and a friend of tyranny. Oh, and Mr. Belafonte? Go home before you make an ass of yourself.”
I found the piece interesting reading. I’m wondering who is mailing it so much.
Two other items of historical note:
- On this date in history, in 1994, the Northridge earthquake occurred. I remember where I was when it happened (in bed, wondering what the f*** was going on, being surrounded by large crashing and explosions in the distance).
- According to the Los Angeles Times, most of the famous Ambassador Hotel is now just a memory. All that remains is the Coconut Grove (soon to be a high-school auditorium). Portions of the hotel’s pantry, where a gunman mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 1968 as the presidential candidate emerged from an election night victory speech in the nearby Embassy Ballroom (I remember watching this on TV) are in storage, and a panel of experts will decide what to do with it. What’s going up in place of the hotel? LAUSD will be building a new high school, with a Wilshire-facing facade laid out on the same basic footprint as the Mediterranean-styled hotel, and an athletic field replacing the hotel’s front lawn. In addition to a high school, the Ambassador’s 25-acre grounds will house a middle school and, on the south side, an elementary school. In all, 4,200 students will be accommodated when construction ends at the end of this decade.
