Sephardic Heritage Update 1002
David Shasha
Friends,
It has been a very big week for The Tikvah Fund. I have done Tikvah notes on the current fraught situation in the Israeli government and on the Right Wing Trumpist WUHAN mania, and have paid homage to the great Elliott Abrams, new chairman of the organization.
It is thus appropriate that we begin this week’s newsletter with an attack on American Elites by Tikvah Elite Bari Weiss, the enchanted princess of Zalman Bernstein world. Her articles have become monomaniacal: She only writes against Wokeness and Cancel Culture. And here she once again takes on the educational system of America. And while there has been much wrong with our educational system, mostly because of Defunding Teachers – a leitmotiv of the Right ever since the idiot Reagan, Weiss just goes after the usual Tucker Carlson suspects. It has generated a financial windfall for her, and she is unlikely to give it up! Just ask her friend Bill Maher.
One of her Neo-Con allies is Thomas Chatterton Williams, here praising the vile Thomas Sowell and his bootlicking of the racist White Supremacy. It is yet another example of what the Uncle Tom looks like these days. Just think Clarence Thomas.
Amazingly, Law and Liberty has published a book review praising the previous Pope, the one venerated by those who hate the current Pope, with all his Opus Dei and Hitler Youth mojo. And, of course, his covering up the Priest Pedophilia scandals. For those unfamiliar with the Ratzinger, Kai Bird’s article will introduce you to the sickness of the Fascist Catholic Right. Just think Ross Douthat.
Speaking of Religious Fascism, JNS hack Sean Savage provides an in-depth analysis of White Christian Supremacist John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel and its Second Coming “Kill the Jews” messianism. It is the state of the art in contemporary HASBARAH in the New Convivencia.
Speaking of the New Convivencia, we have two articles by YU macher Rabbi Shalom Carmy. The first article for the Christian website The Biblical Mind tries to explain Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik to the Evangelicals. It is not as hard as you might think, given Soloveitchik’s staunch anti-Maimonideanism and his allegiance to Karl Barth and Kierkegaard. The second article, naturally, is an assessment of Trump and the Orthodox Jewish community. Both articles present the current Orthodox zeitgeist and its connection to the world of Christian Nationalism a la Miller, Bannon, and the Lysol.
It has been some time since the Oprah interview with Meghan and Harry, but it is always worthwhile – not that I have a choice in the matter! – to look back at the situation. HASBARAH macher and all-around reactionary wingnut Melanie Phillips defends the Royal Family, as we would expect. But then we have Salamishah Tillet and Hamilton Nolan, two Progressive voices, reading far too much in the Prince Harry career move. Indeed, many Left Wingers saw the interview as a brave moment in the history of the British Monarchy, when in fact it was largely a branding exercise in a very competitive financial marketplace. Sadly, the Monarchy is not going anywhere, but Harry and Meghan are likely going to make millions off the interview.
In a very important New York Times Interactive article, Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding provide an extremely useful analysis and summation of the current transformation of Popular Music. Though it never really comes to terms with how White Corporate interests have promoted the Poptrash Idiocracy and Hip-Hop ignorance, the article does explain how the mechanics of the music process actually works, and how it has debased our cultural heritage in search of profits.
And that process can be seen clearly in Taylor Swift and her perpetual Tween world. Lindsay Zoladz provides a truly breathtaking “intellectual” analysis of Swift as a major Philosophical Thinker, while Jeff Opperman turns her into the Sierra Club! Indeed, there is much dinero to be made from the Poptrash and media elites want to get in to that vault and take some of it for themselves.
In what is effectively a refutation of all this Poptrash Idiocracy brown-nosing, the intrepid Jason Farago attacks BEEPLE; the corporate nom de guerre of someone called Mike Winkelmann, who is a “Digital Artist” worth an awful lot of money. The article actually has the temerity to make an intellectual argument against the Poptrash and its 1%-er mentality. But, as we have seen with Taylor Swift, such arguments are few and far between these days.
David Shasha
The Miseducation of American Elites
By: Bari Weiss
Encountering Thomas Sowell
By: Thomas Chatterton Williams
Joseph Ratzinger: A Prophet of Our Time
By: Kai Weiss
How CUFI Has Awakened the ‘Sleeping Giant’ of Christian Zionism
By: Sean Savage
Joseph Soloveitchik: An Immigrant Rabbi
By: Rabbi Shalom Carmy
Apres Moi: Religious Jews after Trump
By: Shalom Carmy
Meghan Markle and the Jewish Question
By: Melanie Phillips
Prince Harry Finally Takes On White Privilege: His Own
By: Salamishah Tillet
Meghan and Harry’s Interview Shows the Monarchy Must Go
By: Hamilton Nolan
Why Grammy Award Winners Might Never Sound the Same Again
By: Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding
Taylor Swift and the Wisdom of Youth
By: Lindsay Zoladz
Taylor Swift Is Singing Us Back to Nature
By: Jeff Opperman
Beeple Has Won. Here’s What We Have Lost
By: Jason Farago