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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 22, 2008 / 16 Adar I 5768

A suspect story seals a deal

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If John McCain doesn't send a couple of cases of Budweiser over to the New York Times, he's an ingrate. Bill Keller, this Bud's for you.


Nobody on the right believes the story, printed yesterday in Manhattan's juiciest tabloid, that Mr. McCain carried on with a yummy blond telecommunications lobbyist, and besides, that was eight years ago. Even if he didn't do it, he won't do it again. Besides, the story was in the New York Times, so it doesn't count.


Not only that, the lobbyist is definitely of the female persuasion, and if you're a Republican or even a conservative you have to be grateful for that much in Washington, circa 2008.


Both the senator and the lady lobbyist say there was no romance, no hanky-panky, no lurid trysts, no attempt to trade favors for a favor for a lobbyist's client, and that's probably good enough for nearly everybody else. The senator is, after all, the scourge of K Street, where every defeated pol yearns to land after voters throw him out of office, to collect the big lobbying bucks. He voted against the lady's clients on several occasions.


The New York Times, like the rest of the media, is hardly interested in the morality of anyone's playing around on a mere spouse. The culture long ago rendered philandering harmless fun, and anyone measuring anyone against any standard as ridiculously quaint (except that you wink your eye at a pretty girl at your own risk). The New York Times attempted to employ the scam of the carnival midway to lure the suckers into a story about greed and avarice but offered no evidence of greed and avarice. No letters, no e-mail, no recording of pillow talk. But sex sells with such efficiency, as any tabloid rewrite man could tell you, that even the accusation of something steamy fools the unwary reader. This is not Abe Rosenthal's New York Times.


The story succeeded in driving John McCain into someone's arms, all right, but only into the embrace of the hardest boiled in the ranks of the right. "The story is the 'drive-by media' turning on its favorite maverick and trying to take him out," quoth Rush Limbaugh, who only a week ago would never forgive John McCain for squishy conservatism. "The media picked the Republican candidate, the New York Times endorsed him while they sat on this story and is now, with utter predictably, trying to destroy him," he said yesterday. The Christian Broadcasting Network said the senator should wear the story as "a badge of honor." Mike Huckabee, the forlorn last hope of the die-hards, said he "only knows [the senator] to be a man of integrity ... a good and decent and honorable man."


Barack Obama should send flowers if not booze to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times. The "revelations" about Sen. McCain diverted what had been a growing hubbub if not scandal over Michelle Obama's halfhearted tribute, if you could call it that, to the land of her birth. "For the first time in my life," she said on the eve of the voting in Wisconsin, "I'm really proud of my country." How generous. How sweet. Some people have such a tough life in this dirty, rotten country that only four years in the White House can make it up to them. Where is Teresa Heinz, now that the Democrats need someone to straighten out a prospective first lady with a mouth made for trouble?


Bimbo eruptions, even rumors of a candidate's indulging girls gone wild, have sometimes destroyed campaigns. But usually they don't. Thomas Jefferson survived trash talk about Sally Hemmings. Nan Britton got Warren Harding in trouble only with Mrs. Harding. Gary Hart had more or less successfully dealt with bimbo eruptions until he foolishly invited the newspapers to follow him around, and the Miami Herald did. Bill Clinton made bimbo eruptions an industry; he even had an aide assigned permanently to deal with his ladies with big hair, big bosoms and great expectations, and he was elected twice (though neither time with a majority). But we're a much more serious public now. Yesterday Barack Obama had to stop a speech in Dallas to blow his nose. The glassy-eyed robots in front of him applauded lustily. Is this a great country, or what?

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 Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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