Cruz. Limbaugh. Moonrise. Sunset. Orangutan. New dance craze. Old insults. Who are those 74 million?
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN NEWSLETTER #102 FEB 2021
This week's posts need no introductory remarks, just one-word headings, such as,
LOATHSOME
* Clarence Darrow said, "I've never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." That's exactly how I felt reading the obit for Rush Limbaugh. (above, some of the many he slandered.
* Ted Cruz can run but he can't hide. Cartoonists had a field day. Media made mincemeat of him. (above) Parodists went wild. See The Founders' hilarious "Fly Me to Cancun." And the Lincoln Project commercial: "Book your Mexican getaway at 202-224-5922." That's the Senator's D.C. office number. I called. Recording said Ted wants to hear from me. Voicemail was full.
BEAUTY
* Once it's safe to travel, the breathtaking moonrises over Byron Bay lighthouse in New South Wales (above) and shimmering sunsets at Uluru, (below) the enormous rock in the Outback, are 2 great reasons to visit Australia . (I love Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," but not as the sound track for a moonrise.)
HUMOR
* Watch baby orangutan go ape over a magic trick, exhibiting a nuanced sense of humor . Hope you agree that primates capable of wonder and hilarity should not be subject to medical experiments.
* Glorious insults from an era before the English got boiled down to 4-letter words:
-- "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -- Mae West
-- "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -- Winston Churchill
-- "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." -- Moses Hadas
-- "He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr
-- "He has VanGogh's ear for music." Billy Wilder
-- "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -- John Bright
-- "He has never used a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."-- Faulkner on Hemingway
-- "He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends." -- Oscar Wilde
-- George Bernard Shaw to Churchill: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one." Churchill to Shaw: "Cannot attend first night, will attend second, if there is one."
-- Member of Parliament to Benjamin Disraeli: "Sir, you will either either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." Disraeli to M.K.: "That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."
-- "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without an address on it?" -- Mark Twain
-- "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening but this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx
* Leftovers from Valentines Day
People in Brussels airport waiting room with Old Masters on walls see cupids liberated from Rubens' painting.
* Lebanon takes Jimmy Kimmel's brilliant send-up of vaccine commercial seriously.
(above) Marital confession on Valentines Day
MUSIC
* Mandy Patinkin sings "Over The Rainbow" in Yiddish. (Also links to Mandy singing in English.)
DANCE
* Forget the Macarena; ditch the Hokey Pokey, do the Jerusalema. Millions all over the world have downloaded the video and joined the dance craze, including nuns, health care workers, cops, and kids. Here's the scoop on Master KG's remake of the gospel hymn.
POLITICS
* The Nation magazine's incisive columnist Katha Pollitt, ponders how 81 million Americans who voted for decency & democracy are supposed to find common ground with the 74 million who voted for four more years of hatred, vitriol, and lies. Who are those people, really? Not all unemployed miners, factory workers, Proud Boys or QAnons, writes Pollitt. Of the insurrectionists who trashed the Capitol, "Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs...work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants."
* Last word on Trump's 2nd impeachment trial (above). Accountability? Nah. Technicality,.
FILM
* Can't get enough of RBG? Watch RUTH: Justice Ginsburg In Her Own Words premiers on STARZ March 1st and On Demand platforms on March 9th. Trailer here.
* Nomadland --Frances McDormand's face is an eye-magnet in every scene in the quietly powerful, beautifully acted story of a woman who lives off her memories and won't settle down.
* Two "idea" films, both saturated with conversation and disputation, were as riveting as any action film: Hannah Arendt -- about the transgressive 20th century philosopher (below);
and One Night in Miami, in which four African-American titans of the civil rights era, Cassius Clay (Muhammea Ali), Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X, argue over different strategies for black liberation.
WORLD
* Wake up call from China. While we dither from crisis to catastrophe & Congress haggles over funds for infrastructure repair, China has been building state of the art roadways & bridges, (above: 34-mile span) that put us to shame. In 1988, they had no highways, now they have 78,000, adding 6000 more every year, plus public buses high enough to let auto traffic move underneath them. Watch this.
* In 2019, Stephen Colbert visited New Zealand, got driven from the airport by its Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, (above) in her own car, and learned about her country, a model for the world, if you ask me. N.Z. may not have snakes but they do have gun laws. Video ends with her fiancee, Clarke and singer, Lorde.
* On the subject of guns, check out Gun Free Kitchen Tables, a coalition of 16 Israeli feminist, civil society and human rights organizations, working to disarm public & private space in Israel's hyper-militarized society (above) and the territories under its control. Why is GFKT's effort necessary? Their website says:
--Because statistics show that worldwide, men are the majority of gun holders & gun violence victims except in the home & the family sphere, where women are over-represented among the victims of gun violence.
-- Because studies in Australia, Canada, South Africa and other countries show significant rises in the rates of women’s murders in homes or families where there are firearms.
-- Because a U.S. study found that the risk of a woman’s murder is three to five times higher in a home with a gun, while another study found that the risk of women’s murder is five times higher when men with histories of violence towards intimate partners are also gun holders.
-- Because here in Israel, at least 21 women and 19 men were killed with the firearms of private security companies taken home to the family sphere after duty.
Donate to Gun Free Kitchen Tables via The New Israel Fund. Be sure to specify GFKT as recipient.
EXCERPTS FROM ANONYMOUS PANDEMIC DIARY
A recent study found that women who carry a little extra weight live longer than men who mention it.
We get heavier as we get older because there's lots more information in our heads. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Having plans sounds like a good idea until I have to put on clothes and leave the house. I've reached the point where an errand counts as a work out.
How come people my age can lift 20 pound weights when I can't get my leg through my underwear without losing my balance.
If I can't think of a word, I always say I forgot the English word for it."That way people think I'm bilingual instead of an idiot.
One day you're binging TV & baking bread, the next you're drinking gin for breakfast & missing people you don't even like.
I'm getting tired of being part of a major historical event.
NEXT TIME YOU MAKE A PBJ SANDWICH, CONSIDER THIS
Tweeted by NJ professor. Michael Perino
“At the supermarket today, I found a small, elderly woman standing in front of a high shelf holding BonneMamanUS preserves. She was having trouble finding the flavor she wanted because the jars were set back on the shelf.
She couldn’t read the labels. She could barely reach them. I offered to help.
I handed her the raspberry preserves, she thanked me, paused, then asked, “Do you know why I buy this brand?”
“Because it tastes good?”
“Yes, it tastes good.” She paused again. “I am a Holocaust survivor.”
“During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris. So now I always buy it. And whenever I go to the store, my grandkids remind me, ‘Bubbe, don’t forget to buy the jelly.’”
I told her that that was the best reason I ever heard to buy any company’s product. And then we both smiled behind our masks and went our separate ways.”
*****************************
Others looked into the story and indeed, Biars sur Cere, the town that Andros Company, the makers of Bonne Maman, comes from, hid & saved Jews in WW2..From an article: “You have to understand what it was like then. There were posters on the walls, from the Nazis and from the collaborators, and they said that if you are found to help a Jew, a freemason, a communist, a socialist, or a pervert, you will be shot on sight.” Despite the great danger in which helping them put the villagers in, still they kept the children safe.”
[Truth being the best bulwark against Holocaust denial, I tried to verify this story but a quick fact-check at Snopes and The Times of Israel was not dispositive. I'm buying Bonne Maman anyway.]
SPEAKING OF NAZIS...
* My blood ran cold at the sight of the flyer reportedly circulated last month in a German town.
My Israel friend, Ambassador Colette Avital, who speaks 7 languages, was kind enough to translate it:
"Do we really only have problems with the Corona, or don't we really have problems with the Jews?
Angela Merkel ( CDU) of Polish Jewish origin, connected to B'nai Brith
Jens Spahn ( CDU) a homosexual Jew, attended the Bilderberg Conference "War on Information"
Heiko Maas ( SPD) Jew, a censor & a complete liar, connected to the DG network and Stasi Jewess Kahane
Christian Drosten State virologist, and dealt with the Phanotyp - also Jew
Let it be known – the more Jews in politics and the media, the worse off we are"
* Another discomfiting bulletin from the European front. "Hate mail to French-Jewish lawmaker, Yael Braun-Pivet (above) tells her to 'prepare for the camps.'"
Here's my takeaway: If "Never Again" is to mean anything, Jews and others must recognize the imminent danger of violent right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis, and quit hounding left-wing kids on college campuses who criticize Israel's current government. Rather than call their nonviolent speech antiSemitic, call out facts on the ground in the Occupied Territories that require people of conscience to protest Israeli policies that patently unjust and morally reprehensible.
STAY SAFE. GET VACCINATED. HELP SOMEONE ELSE GET VACCINATED
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