Category: Shorts

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The new holocaust denial

The Cinch Review

… is calling people “holocaust-obsessed.” A must-read by Ron Rosenbaum.

It’s so convenient, isn’t it, to deplore those who are said to be “holocaust obsessed.” It allows one to avoid all the troubling implications of the past for the future. It allows Jews to avoid having to be a Debbie Downer at dinner parties when the subject comes up, usually in the context of discussing the kind of threats to the state of Israel that are even more explicit and realizable today than those to the Jews of Europe in the prewar era. It’s so unchic, so indicative of “ethnic panic.” It makes you think of that scene in Annie Hall in which Woody Allen feels like he’s been transformed into a black hat Hasidic at the dinner table of Annie’s Christian family.

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Empire State Building shooting

The Cinch Review

Update 10:45 a.m.: So, although reports continue to be somewhat contradictory, it does appear at this point to have been an isolated shooting, based on a personal motive, unconnected to terrorism. The picture will be clearer after a few hours, but I think it would be pointless for the likes of yours truly to continue updating at this point.

So, signing off, with a prayer for the recovery of those who are being treated for their injuries as a result of this morning’s events.

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Update 10:28 a.m.: Local TV now interviewing people outside kvetching about not being able to get where they’re going.

Two are reported dead, counting the gunman. Eight others reported injured.

Suspect was reportedly fired from his job yesterday, according to local CBS News television. They also report that it was the manager of the business who was shot and killed by the gunman, at about 9 a.m. today.

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Update 10:15 a.m.: NY Post says it was a “dispute between coworkers” which spilled out onto the street.

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Update 10:09 a.m.: Shooter was “disgruntled employee” of a business located at the building, according to a report on NBC New York.

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At least 10 people shot at the Empire State Building in New York City this morning, including reportedly the gunman. In addition to the total lock-down by the NYPD around 34th St. and 5th avenue, the FBI is on the scene. At this stage all the injured are said to have been taken to hospitals.

Based on watching the police activity on TV and laying down of markers, it appears that at least some of the shooting took place right in front of the building on 5th avenue between 33rd and 34th. Some victims reportedly found in the lobby.

The obvious remark is that no one would start shooting at that location unless they were fully prepared to lose their own life in the process. It is one of the iconic sites in Manhattan were there is always a police presence and an expectation of possible terrorism. If anything, at this point, it is surprising the gunman managed to shoot so many people. But at this point what we really know is nothing. Will update this post if it seems justified.

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Family Research Council shooting

The Cinch Review

Excellent blog coverage of the attack today on the Family Research Council in D.C. is at Hot Air.

I noticed a commenter there said: “We need a word for people who hate those who don’t approve of gay marriage.”

It would seem so. Although, in the end, it’s better to do without labels, which tend to become poorly defined after a certain length of time. Better to just spell out what one means. In this case: people who hate those who don’t approve of gay marriage.

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Massacre at Sikh Temple

The Cinch Review

Six innocent people murdered, no rhyme or reason. Just horrific.

It’s now being reported that the dead perpetrator was associated with white supremacists. If this indeed was his ideology, then all the speculation to this point that the Sikhs were attacked because they were mistaken for Muslims will apparently have been groundless. As Sikhs and because of their ethnicity they would have qualified for the hatred of a white supremacist.

It’s a shame that the headlines in many places at this hour describe him first and foremost an an “army vet.” Reports say that he was in the army between 1992 and 1998, at which point he received a “less than honorable discharge.” So he was in the army for 6 years (not in a time of war – during the Clinton administration), he was discharged and he has not been in the army for 14 years. Whatever went wrong inside this monster’s head, there’s no reason to think it had anything to do with the U.S. army.

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O Little Town of Vladimir

The Cinch Review

Russian President Vladimir Putin has confessed himself “at a loss” after finding out, during a two-day visit to the Middle East, that a street in Bethlehem was being renamed in his honor.

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of what’s known as the Palestinian Authority, told Putin today that the mayor of Bethlehem had apparently been seized by inspiration to rename a street in that same town of Bethlehem (the birthplace of Jesus Christ) after the Russian leader, who is well-known these days for having severely contracted whatever democratic freedoms had managed to sprout in post-Soviet Russia. Continue reading “O Little Town of Vladimir”

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Egyptian liberals tell U.S. to butt out with all this democracy stuff

The Cinch Review

It’s an irony wrapped up in … an even bigger irony. A block of liberal political parties in Egypt issued a “strongly worded statement” on Saturday telling the U.S. to stop putting pressure on Egypt’s military to hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi (who is widely believed to have won a majority of the vote). Implicitly, they would prefer that the old-guard Mubarak-era candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, take control. Continue reading “Egyptian liberals tell U.S. to butt out with all this democracy stuff”

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Forced abortion: A tipping point in China?

The Cinch Review

Via CNN:

On Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, the case was among the top trending topics Thursday afternoon, attracting almost a million comments.

Most users appear to side with the couple and condemn the officials. “Bring the murderers to justice” was a commonly posted demand.

It is a case of forced abortion—out of the millions that have taken place—which seems to have struck a deep chord with many people in China. The Chinese authorities have actually issued an apology in this case, in which a woman who was seven months pregnant had her baby ripped out of her womb and killed solely on the grounds that she and her husband could not come up with the requisite “fine” in order to legally have the baby.

The story is apparently receiving an unprecedented level of attention in China, and I do not think that its potential resonance should be underestimated.

The Chinese have many reasons to be unhappy with their elitist rulers, but inertia has always outweighed the momentum of change. This particular issue has a visceral power beyond all others.

“I wish this case could be the turning point in China’s family planning policy, to comfort the spirit of this child in heaven,” wrote Zheng Haitao, a financial magazine editor.

He Yafu, an independent demographer, said any hope of change must await the party leadership transition this fall and a new Cabinet next spring. He advocates abolition of the policy and says doing so would have minimal effect on China’s birthrate. A major obstacle is that authorities have come to rely on the fines they can levy, He said.

Ignoring threats warning him not to get involved, lawyer Zhang Kai said he was traveling to Shaanxi to assist the couple.

“I think governments shouldn’t ‘plan’ family planning, it’s the citizen’s right,” Zhang said. “God won’t allow humans to do forced abortions, and he’s unhappy to see it.”

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When I Stop Dreaming

The Cinch Review

So much craziness in the world: sometimes it’s better just to dream.

I love this version by George Jones and Tammy Wynette of the beautiful Louvin Brothers song, “When I Stop Dreaming.”

Via YouTube below.

You may teach all the flowers to bloom in the snow
You may take a pebble and teach it to grow
You may teach all the raindrops to return to the clouds
But you can’t teach my heart to forget


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Steal Away and Pray

The Cinch Review

The great Louvin Brothers delivering sounds both dulcet and edifying, via YouTube.

I know God will hear and answer all my prayer
If I’ll thank Him for my blessings every day
When I’m burdened down with grief
He will give my heart relief
When I steal away to Him and pray

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Facebook meltdown

The Cinch Review

(There seems to be lots of use for the word meltdown these days.) I watched in disbelief the building hoopla last week over the Facebook “initial public offering.” That’s easy to say now, I guess, with the stock seemingly on its way to a long and deep decline, but the reason I didn’t comment in advance is because I felt I’d said it all over a year ago about the decline of MySpace. Some of the words that look so amazingly wise in hindsight are these: Continue reading “Facebook meltdown”

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Misremembering Hitchens

The Cinch Review

James Kirchick (h/t Mick Hartley) writes on all that was left unsaid at a memorial service for Christopher Hitchens in New York last month.

The service began with an opening speech by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who set the tone for the event when he mentioned, in passing, Christopher’s “curious prowar stance before the invasion of Iraq.” We would hear next to nothing about Iraq for the rest of the 90-minute service, a glaring omission considering that the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, second only perhaps to his crusade against religion, was the defining topic of the last decade of Christopher’s life. An impressive array of people performed readings of Christopher’s best work; some of which—Tom Stoppard from a Nation piece on the Prague Spring, Tom Mallon from a Vanity Fair dispatch about North Korea, Christopher Buckley from the memoir Hitch 22—were deeply moving.

But not a single one of the readings was about Iraq, never mind the looming threat of Iran or the hypocrisies of the antiwar movement, topics that consumed Christopher and gradually drove him away from the Nation (which, he concluded, had become “the voice and the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden”) and the left in general. One of his most memorable polemics, the absence of which at the memorial was surely attributable to the fact that it would have offended most of the people in the room, was his evisceration of filmmaker Michael Moore and his Fahrenheit 9/11. This “silly and shady man,” Christopher wrote, had produced a film which represented “a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.”

Christopher never apologized for his support of the war, or expressed the slightest doubt that he had been wrong in backing it, but the memorial service tried to whitewash this episode as if it were akin to an embarrassing crime he had committed.

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George on Jon (Will)

The Cinch Review

George Will writes a column to mark his son Jon’s fortieth birthday: “Jon Will, 40 years and going with Down syndrome.”

When Jonathan Frederick Will was born 40 years ago — on May 4, 1972, his father’s 31st birthday — the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome was about 20 years. That is understandable.

The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital. Nonplussed, they said they thought that is what parents do with newborns. Not doing so was, however, still considered an acceptable choice for parents who might prefer to institutionalize or put up for adoption children thought to have necessarily bleak futures. Whether warehoused or just allowed to languish from lack of stimulation and attention, people with Down syndrome, not given early and continuing interventions, were generally thought to be incapable of living well, and hence usually did not live as long as they could have.

These days people with Down syndrome can live a lot longer and a lot better in the United States—thanks to being treated as human beings—and contribute to society and to humanity in ways that are very special. Ironically, however, as George Will also notes, most who are now conceived are never given the chance to be born. Continue reading “George on Jon (Will)”

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The perfect metaphor for gun control

The Cinch Review

It’s too late for Britons to learn the lesson, but the lesson is there anyway. From the Daily Mail: “Government plans to microchip puppies will not stop dog attacks and could penalise millions of law-abiding owners.”

Ministers insist the plans, which were formally announced yesterday, will make it easier for the police to trace the owners of violent dogs and ensure they can be prosecuted for failing to keep them under control.

But animal campaigners warned that the plans would be impossible to enforce and would do nothing to tackle the problem of irresponsible owners of vicious dogs who will ignore the law.

They say owners of gentle breeds such as poodles and golden retrievers will dutifully pay up to have the chips installed under the skin, while breeders of rottweilers and pit bull terriers will continue to evade the law.


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R.I.P. Levon Helm

The Cinch Review

Levon Helm has died at the age of 71 from throat cancer.

I suppose his final released recording was his contribution to The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, which came out last fall. He and Larry Campbell put music to a lyric of Hank’s titled “You’ll Never Again Be Mine.” Also singing on the track was Levon’s daughter Amy. It’s highly superb. You can listen via YouTube below.

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King Juan Carlos of Spain breaks hip, apologizes

The Cinch Review

Emerging from the hospital in Madrid after being treated for a broken hip, King Juan Carlos addressed reporters and said: “I am very sorry. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.” He also thanked the staff at the hospital for the treatment he received.

Although the King didn’t say precisely what he was very sorry about (his clumsiness, perhaps?), it was widely interpreted as being an apology for going elephant hunting in Botswana while the ordinary people of Spain languish with 23% unemployment and an ever-worsening economic situation. His African hunting trip only became public knowledge due to the fall which resulted in his broken hip. The news of how he was spending his time sparked outrage among those who apparently believe that kings should mope in their castles when socialist policies drive their nations to the brink of economic collapse. Well, thanks to his hip injury, King Juan Carlos now has good reason to mope.

And yes, you read that right: the King of Spain was hunting elephants. He also happens to be the honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund in Spain. And that, in the end, is the ironic detail which made noting this story irresistible.

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Congrats to Jerry Lee Lewis and Bride

The Cinch Review

It’s been revealed that music great Jerry Lee Lewis was married on March 7th last, in a small ceremony in Natchez, Mississippi, to one Judith Ann Coghlan Brown. The groom is 76 years-old; the bride is 61. Traditionalist that he is, Jerry Lee has never given up on the institution of marriage. This is the seventh time he’s tied the knot. The media bottom-feeders are mostly focusing on the reported fact that Ms. Brown was once married to Jerry Lee’s cousin, Rusty. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to derive from that.

I just want to wish good luck and many more to the Killer. The clip below is of Jerry Lee Lewis circa 1983, with a fine performance of “Keep My Motor Runnin’.”



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Change of heart on Israel: Nicky Larkin

The Cinch Review

A young Irish filmmaker named Nicky Larkin went to Israel and the West Bank with the intent of making a film exposing Israel’s unjust treatment of the Palestinians, something which was treated as gospel truth by the bulk of his peers in the Emerald Isle. After seven weeks, and thanks to a mind at least open to being open, he went home with a dramatically different perspective. Continue reading “Change of heart on Israel: Nicky Larkin”