
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 23, 2006
/ 1 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767
Late-night thoughts
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.
HAL, the onboard computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
To rephrase Wordsworth slightly, the news is too much with us, and listening and watching we lay waste our powers.
Click your way through the channels in the sleepless hours of the early morning, and soon they all begin to merge into one meaningless blur of voices and visions until, with one final click, the sound and fury signifying nothing ceases.
Ah, respite.
Sane silence.
We are no longer part of Marshall McLuhan's global village, that is, the worldwide mob.
"The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been a mark of high civilization both on the part of individuals and communities." Isaiah Berlin.
The dark night of the soul, according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, that sage of the Jazz Age, always comes at 3 o'clock in the morning. In our time, television makes the dark hour even darker in the brightest way. Just as the Internet, that marvel of our over-informed age, provides us with an infinite wealth of information and an absolute dearth of judgment.
The news seduces us into thinking it is new, when often enough it is but a remake. The roles may be played by different actors, but the plot lines scarcely vary. It's as if Ecclesiastes were the news anchor: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be…." Until you feel you're caught in a house of mirrors forever replaying the past and calling it BREAKING NEWS.
Free speech is as free as ever at Columbia University, where a mob shouted down a presentation by the Minutemen, who propose to stop illegal immigration by patrolling the Mexican border. Or by building a wall as if there were no such things as ladders, tunnels, wire cutters, rust and decay.
Or maybe by deporting 13 million people, and that estimate may be on the low side. (That great sucking sound you'd hear would be the American economy crashing.)
The best response to bad ideas is better ones. Instead, "Shut up," the mob explains. So much for the notion that a university ought to be a place of free inquiry. That idea was pretty much done in by the Spirit of the Sixties, when the ultimate arbiter of intellectual exchange on campus became whoever could shout loudest.
The rowdy scene at Columbia U. inspired a certain nostalagia in some of us. It was like watching the rebirth of a plague, or the return of 40-year locusts right on schedule. It restores one's faith in natural cycles, or at least history's pendulum. Things may not make sense, but at least they make patterns.
Sometimes you can actually see the reel of time unwind. The hands on the clock twirl counter-clockwise. The prices on the gas pump go backward. Who's directing this movie, Salvador Dali?
Fair is fair: Just as there were congressional hearings when gas prices soared and Big Oil was accused of manipulating the market, shouldn't there now be outraged voices demanding to know why gas prices have dropped?
Shouldn't Congress be investigating this dangerous conspiracy?
Remember when the junior senator and ace investigator from Arkansas, Mark Pryor, got the head of the Federal Trade Commission before the Senate Commerce Committee and, along with some of his more suspicious colleagues, started browbeating her?
Back then Sen. Pryor was demanding that the FTC produce proof of some dark and sinister plot to raise gas prices. The lady Deborah Platt Majoras quietly and patiently stood her ground, trying to explain the law of supply and demand. But of course Mark Pryor and his suspicious colleagues weren't interested in the actual data; they had angry constituents to appease and an issue to demagogue.
Now those danged oil companies are clearly involved in another nefarious conspiracy, this time to lower consumer prices. But somehow I don't think there's going to be another investigation.
It's another World Series without the Damn Yankees. The world seems off its axis. I begin to have the strangest sensation. It's surreal, dizzying, entirely new. Maybe I should call a doctor. I begin to feel … a certain sympathy for New York Yankee fans. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|