Murdoch Mania & the Media

The ripple effect from the hacking and bribing scandals connected to Rupert Murdoch's media empire continues to spread across continents. It has led to public apologies, arrests, resignations, and today even a suicide. More negative and damaging fallout is a mathematical certainty.

But there's a deeper story here. This unfolding, almost epic narrative is about more than the dangers that can occur when one person or corporation becomes too powerful. It is about more than hubris, corruption, and intimidation. It is about the role, and excessive impact and influence, of media--in all of its outlets and forms--in our world.

There is much excitement still about the enormous growth of "social" media, even as the "traditional" forms of media (newspapers, magazines, books) are in a state eclipse. What is so enticing? Information is not knowledge. Yet, like fast food, we can quickly swallow sound-bytes and passively digest data: emotional outpourings from hacked phones, lurid posts on Twitter, and gaffes from politicians are far sexier to most of us than serious debate and discourse on the issues that actually affect our societies.

So turn off your iPad for the day. Ignore Facebook for a few hours. Let the talking heads on CNN and Fox blabber on to themselves about the Casey Anthony trial.

They need you more than you need them.

Slouching Toward Cupertino

As I noted in my last post, we are all living through truly historic times. Whether it is the geo-political situation, the economy both here and abroad, climate change, advances in science and medicine, or any other number of areas, there are some real game-changers emerging. We have not slouched into this new millennium; seismic events have hurled us into and through its walls.

Yet how many of us have spent any serious time thinking about, reflecting on, and assessing these many and varied changes?  It seems that the concurrent rise of technology has turned us into a nation of addicts. After years of resistance, I bought my first smart phone a couple of months ago, an iPhone, and I must confess that I, too, have become addicted to it. But I have also become so dependent on the device that I can see how easy it is to lose one's perspective on the outside world. And how can we change the world if we don't fully understand it? How can we understand it if our eyes are glued to our iPads? Do these new and amazing gadgets make us happier and more fulfilled human beings, or do they make us even more narcissistic than we already are?

What is at risk, I fear, is the total collapse of community itself. Without honest reflection and moral assessment, we will become a nation of self-absorbed individuals, a collective of gadget-dependent cocoons who interact with each other in virtual rather than actual ways.

I, for one, will take a flesh-and-blood embrace over a text or an e-mail any day.

Weiner's Wiener & the Tragicomedy of Our Time

At a time when we are witnesses to revolutions, wars, and the consequences of climate change (i.e., hard news) the media has chosen to pander yet again to our baser desires and has trumped most of the important stories with tales of Anthony Weiner's junk shots.  I'm not sure which is more pathetic--Weiner's lame and juvenile behavior, or our insatiable interest in it.

Martin Luther King was a womanizer.  Gandhi treated his family like crap.  Yet despite their very real personal flaws and imperfections, these men were able to achieve great things.  Does the fact that Rep. Weiner used his Twitter account to send pics of his pecs to female admirers show poor judgment?  You bet, and I feel sorry for his pregnant wife.  He's a schmuck.  But his poor judgment only relates to his personal life.  It has no bearing whatsoever on his legislative skills or accomplishments.  Clinton is another fine example.  He acted like an idiot with Monica Lewinsky, but in my view that had nothing to do with his abilities as President.

I have had enough of our collective voyeurism.  We are living through a momentous period in history, and who knows how things will ultimately unfold.  There could be very dark days ahead--or bright and hopeful ones.  Let's get our heads out of the reality-TV mindset and refocus our attention and energy on what really matters.

Who Needs Foreskin, Anyway?

I just watched some weirdo from the Bay Area debate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on CNN about the issue of circumcision.  Using a very conventional and worn-out approach, Shmuley defended the practice by highlighting its merits from a medical and physiological perspective--it helps to prevent HIV infection, it enhances the sexual experience for both men and women, etc.

While I am on his side, Shmuley is all wrong.

It is precisely in its primitivity, the tribal character of the brit ritual--with its blood, pain, and mystery--that the power (and hence the validity and relevance) of circumcision lies.  The "hygiene" or "medical" argument is not the correct tactic to use against radical, dogmatic secularists who decry the "barbarity" of our millennia-old ritual; rather, a defense of circumcision should rely on what it has always relied on: fidelity to tradition, a link to our ancestors, the spirituality of the experience.

Muslims practice circumcision as well and have for many centuries.  Do we see them retreating like weasels behind the perceived protection (and supposed validation) of modern science?  Do they feel the need to make justifications and apologies for their ancient religious observances?

Hey, fellow tribespeople: Where is our backbone?

I've witnessed and participated in brit milah rituals from Brooklyn, New York to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and without fail, they have been some of the most moving spiritual moments in my life--as well as in the lives of the families and communities themselves.  Sure, it's discomforting to watch a baby cry; nevertheless, like the howl of a ram's horn during the Days of Awe, that cry awakens something so deep, so profound, and so transformative in the souls of all those who hear it that its psycho-spiritual power is impossible to deny.  And its practice would be totally myopic and inane to reject. 

Easy, Spartacus: Obama on Israel and Palestine

Let me first state that I agree with most of what President Obama had to say recently about the dire need for a two-state solution.  I concur with the idea that, in the end, some sort of territorial arrangement will have to take place that both ENSURES THE SECURITY of Israel and that also involves LAND SWAPS to make certain that such an objective is realized.  Too many people have failed to highlight this critical element in Obama's speech.  He did NOT advocate a unilateral return of the entire Golan Heights, the Jordan River Valley, or every single inch of the West Bank.

I think that it was a misstep, however, to talk about "pre-1967 borders" in a public and internationally-televised speech from the White House at this volatile and very uncertain moment in the region.  That's the reason behind a lot of the reactionary freaking out that we're seeing right now--as well as Netanyahu's patronizing, professorial rebuke as he sat by the President's side.  Obama, true to his nature and clearly emboldened by the killing of bin Laden, made a big, brash foreign policy statement that was somewhat reckless; Netanyahu, true to his nature, responded with typical arrogance and without any mention of the vital land swap point.  I think that President Obama made up for a good deal of his policy-wonk cockiness in his speech to AIPAC, where he more clearly spelled out his position and also--and necessarily--brought up the total impossibility of negotiating with anybody who considers Hamas (a terrorist organization which strives to destroy Israel) to be a "peace partner."

So now let's all take a deep breath.  Abbas, show some guts and get rid of Hamas once and for all; Bibi, get over yourself and start taking seriously what everyone knows has to happen.

Rodney King was wrong--we CAN'T all get along.  Fine.  So let's get down to the nitty gritty business of talking through territorial issues, ensuring security, and reconfiguring the region into two viable and peaceful nation-states.  Barack and Bibi have puffed their chests long enough.

Second-Hand Noise & Other Postmodern Irritants

One of my recent posts dealt with the issue of boundaries.  I want to pick up on that theme again in light of an experience I had yesterday on the L here in Chicago.

I'd just returned from a series of meetings in lovely Las Vegas, and I was beat.  I caught the Blue Line train at O'Hare Airport and settled into my seat, hoping to have an hour of peace after a long and busy weekend.  Before we 'd arrived at our first stop away from the terminal, I witnessed no fewer than eight people (about 40% of those in my train car) immediately start talking on their cell phones.  And I mean really talking--loudly, emphatically, and unapologetically, as if no one was with them and they were in the privacy of their own homes.

I heard each and every conversation: one young woman was griping about a boyfriend; an older man was having a verbal fight with his wife; a TSA worker was schmoozing with a friend.  And on and on.  I had no choice but to listen to their inanity, in all its minute detail.  I felt like I was trapped in a car filled with a bunch of chain smokers.  Their second-hand "smoke," however, was noise.

Part of me wanted to stand up, grab the cell phones out of everyone's hands, and hurl them out of the door at the next stop.  Part of me wanted to shout aloud, "Turn off your damn phones!  I don't want to hear your conversations and I couldn't care less about what you have to say to your friends and family!"  I restrained myself.

Today, I wonder why.  And I'm mad at myself for keeping silent.  If we have become comfortable enough as a society to say to strangers who are smoking in our face, "Would you mind putting out your cigarette?", then why should we tolerate the noise- and space-pollution of people who don't give a second thought to their surroundings or show sensitivity to the privacy of others?

What would you have done?

Bin Laden: Marked Man or Federal Case?

Suddenly the likes of towering intellectuals such as Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, and even Osama bin Laden's own millionaire son are arguing that, rather than being the object of a targeted killing, bin Laden should have (somehow) been captured and "brought to justice" through a jury trial in the Hague or here in the United States.  Interesting.

These great minds have drawn comparisons with the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War, which helped to educate the world about the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and the machinery of genocide.

The analogy is comical.  Osama bin Laden was never the president, prime minister, nor Fuhrer of a modern nation-state.  He led Al Qaeda, a terrorist movement, through a network of cells, couriers, and social media outlets.  He commanded no army or navy, murdered Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and in the end aimed not to capture lands or repel invaders but to incite hatred, violence, and spread a twisted, cultish form of Messianism.

Had it even been possible, bin Laden deserved a jury trial about as much as Charles Manson deserved a talk show.

I have opposed, and always will oppose, state-sponsored capital punishment (a discussion on this topic at another time).  But the extrajudicial killing of a mass-murderer who was in the very thick of plotting yet more mass murders is not only justified, it is morally obligatory.