Meet CA's new Senator. Grab ‘em by the breast, crotch, whatever. "The Feminine Mystique" at 60. RBG on postage stamps. Is Holocaust education bad for the Jews? New Yorker cover: funny or ageist?
Newsletter # 147
POLITICS
* CA Governor Gavin Newsom named Laphonza Butler to complete Diane Feinstein’s Senate term. Butler (above), president of the DemocraticPAC, Emily’s List, will be the first openly LGBT Senator from CA and the third African-American woman to serve in that chamber —the first two were Carol Moseley Braun and Kamala Harris. Earlier this year, Newsom said if Feinstein retired, he would not pick any of the declared Senate candidates to take her place. Below are those candidates.
* In the March primary, Calilfornia Dems may be hard pressed to choose among the fearless Congress members, Katie Porter, Adam Schiff, and Barbara Lee, running for a full six-year term in what‘s now Butler’s Senate seat. (She, too, could throw her hat in the ring.) Click names above to see why I call each of them fearless.
* In case you missed this surreal event: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) , doyenne of “family values,” self-described “Christian nationalist,” protector of America’s children “from obscene content they should not be exposed to,” was recently caught on surveillance video rubbing her guy friend’s crotch while he groped her breasts. This bizarre public display happened not at a drag show but in the audience at a performance of the family friendly, “Beetlejuice.” (The Congresswoman was also caught vaping and taking a flash photo of the show, which is prohibited). When the pregnant woman behind her asked Boebert to quit vaping, she refused and the randy, rowdy couple was escorted out while she gave the security man her middle finger.
At first, she denied doing anything wrong. After the video surfaced, she admitted to being “loud,” “eccentric,” “animated…. laughing… singing, having a fantastic time.” Finally, in a move she called “difficult and humbling,” she apologized without taking responsibility, attributing her bad behavior to her divorce having been a “challenging personal time for me and my entire family.”
Imagine, if you will, what would have happened to a black or brown couple who carried on in public with such arrogant disdain for social norms. Imagine a Congresswoman of color flatly denying what she’d done then excusing her behavior based on “challenging personal” problems. The Trumpeniks* would have had a field day with that one. [Translation: *Trumpenik is my variation on "trombenik" - Yiddish for a fake, a phony, a blower of one’s own horn.]
*Flagrant examples of conservatives’ hypocrisy abound. I’m only belaboring Boebert’s because it so clearly follows extremists’ political playbook: To get elected, tell the base what they want to hear. (Family values. Censorship. Religious purism.) Do whatever you want to do anyway. (Commit infidelity. Domestic abuse. Multiple divorces. Make your girlfriend have an abortion.) If exposed, deny , minimize or normalize the wrongdoing. (Just having fun. Just locker room talk. Boys will be boys. That was before I found Jesus.) Apologize when absolutely necessary (which is never if you’re the Liar-in-Chief). Blame others. Demonize your critics. Make yourself the victim. Get reelected. Dems have to stop being stupefied by GOP hypocrisy. Our job is to beat them at the ballot box.
MUSIC
* Listen to the astonishing voice of Jonathan Tetelman singing “Tessun Dorma” from Turandot. Then check out Pavarotti’s rendition of the aria and toggle between both versions. Uncanny isn’t it? In this eye-pleasing promotional video “Tenor Tetelman,” who’s also a former DJ and rocker, talks about his parents, being an adoptee, and a new dad who relishes spending time with his baby. The promo is lavish, cool, polished to a sheen and the guy is movie-star handsome. But he talks like a regular NYC kid and when he leapt up on a statue in an Italian piazza and belted out a few opera lyrics for passing tourists, his exuberance won my heart.
BOOKS
*I’m late to the party that’s been cheering Maya Shanbhag Lang’s memoir, What We Carry. (A New York Times Editors’ Choice. A Best Book of 2020 according to Amazon, Parade Magazine, Bookshop.Org, Times of India, PopSugar, Bustle, and more.) But after hearing her speak about it at the Authors Guild’s annual WIT Festival in Lenox, MA, I bought and read the book — in which she gently but bravely unravels the knotty truth about the mother she revered, recalibrating her own strengths and struggles in the process. Now I can’t wait to read her novel, The Sixteenth of June.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
*In her powerful, prophetic Yom Kippur sermon, Rabbi Sharon Brous, spiritual leader of the IKAR community in L.A., boldly confronts the messianic extremism, theocracy, and racism rampant in the Israeli government and among its militant right wing supporters. She also tells American Jews what they can do about it.
*Before the reparative spirit of the High Holy Days fades, take a listen to the commanding message about the same troubling issues delivered by Central Synagogue’s Rabbi Angela Buchdahl on Rosh Hashana. I agree with her about the urgency of American Jews working together with our Israeli sisters and brothers to repair a relationship that’s now split at the root — as long as we don’t compromise on Israel’s founding democratic principles, including full civil and human rights for Palestinians
*Uplifting: Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace in Hebrew & Arabic), the Israeli village that for 50 years has been cohabited equally by Jewish and Palestinian citizens of the state, remains a beacon of hope and living proof of the possibility for our two peoples to live in harmony and mutual respect.
* Distressing. “I felt as if I were in Iran,” says the author of “Degrading, Abusive and Cruel: What It's Like for a Jewish Woman to Get Divorced in Israel.” The ordeal promises to be even worse if the ultraOrthodox M.K.'s get their way. (Wearing costumes from The Handmaids’ Tale, Israeli women have taken to the streets to protest the misogyny and hegemonic power of Orthodox rabbis and Knesset members.)
WOMEN & GIRLS
*Stock up now on the new Ruth Bader Ginsburg postage stamps. They’re going fast.
*Register for “The Feminine Mystique 60 Years Later,” a panel discussion at the Manhattan JCC on Wed, Oct 11 at 7 PM, featuring Muriel Fox, NOW co-founder & activist; professor Brittney Cooper; journalist Rebecca Traister; writer and TV correspondent, Lynn Sherr; and Lynn Povich, author of The Good Girls Revolt.
*This high energy Nike ad brought big lumps to my throat. Proud lumps.
*Great to see Claudine Gay inaugurated as Harvard University’s 30th president, the first person of color and only the second woman to hold that post in the school’s 383 year history. Though she calls herself “an introvert”, this 4-minute interview with Gay captures her assured voice and capacious vision for the university.
*Two feminist giants died in the last few days: Evelyn Fox Keller, eminient physicist, biologist (and a sister alum of Brandeis University) whom I admired from afar but never knew; and Alice Shalvi, a literature professor at Hebrew University, founder of feminist organizations, mother of six, and a dear friend for nearly 50 years, who devoted her life to advancing Israeli women’s rights, educating Orthodox Jewish girls, and insuring social and economic justice for all people. Jane Eisner’s NYTimes obit beautifully evokes what I call the “wonders in Alice land.”
THE HOLOCAUST
*No matter how much it“triggers” you or troubles your sensibilities, you’ve got to read Dara Horn’s gut-wrenching essay in The Jewish Review of Books on Zalmen Gradowski’s posthumously published book, The Last Consolation Vanished. In searing prose, Horn cries out for Jewish rage about the Holocaust, for vengeance, not just sorrow and shame. She faults Holocaust educators for generalizing from particular Jewish experience to glean a mollifying universal moral message (“Using dead Jews as symbols isn’t helping living ones”); for putting undue emphasis on righteous gentiles; for sanitizing the sadistic savagery of the Nazi enterprise. Her provocation in April’s Atlantic asked, “Is Holocaust Education Making Antisemitism Worse?”
*Scare-eee story: ”What Kind of Person Has a Closet Full of Nazi Memorabilia?” Who’s buying this stuff? And what for?
IS IT FUNNY OR IS IT TRUE?
IS IT FUNNY OR IS IT AGEIST?
*By me, this week’s New Yorker cover is cruel. Roger Rosenblatt’s NYTimes essay, “What They Don’t Tell You About Getting Old,” is funny. Why? Because it’s true.
IS IT FUNNY OR IS IT OFFENSIVE?
* Despite being politically incorrect to the max, George Carlin’s 1990 monologue on the evolution of euphemisms, “Soft Language” is FUNNY. Admit it, folks! Some of those neutered terms are cringeworthy. See also, G.K. Chesterton on fancy language.
IS IT FUNNY OR ARE THEY ONTO SOMETHING?
*There’s a preternatural wisdom in this child’s measured response to her father’s threat to throw out the colored markers with which she has just decorated her face. (Could she have learned the calming lingo from her mother, a therapist who specializes in treating chronic pain, anxiety, and depression?)
* If misogynists don’t take over the country in 2024, this busy, feisty, highly motivated little explorer and millions like her will have a flourishing future.
HAPPY AUTUMN EVERYONE
Letty,
To me -- and I'm 75 -- The New Yorker cover is funny. Voters have been discussing the age of the candidates; exaggeration is one way humor makes a point.
Of course, if it were a caricature of ME with a walker, I might not be so amused.
I couldn’t find the Mickey Katz recording of Trombonik Tanz on YouTube, but Don Byron’s Trombonik Tanz is a very, very good take on Katz’ version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-hZcI-sF00
Barbara Toby Stack