U2-charist
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

That's hip hop for the new age of Christianity: U2-charist replaces the Eucharist.

Rock stars with the messiah complex are nothing new. During my time in Nashville, I watched Garth Brooks transform himself from a humble country singer into his vision of a sacrificial lamb. Dreaming Out Loud, my book about the two years I spent with him and other stars, ends with Garth having himself photographed in the shape of the crucifixion. He sacrificed himself and was reborn as Chris Gaines, a weird, rock singer with a full head of dyed hair. That persona bombed.

Bono doesn't have to perform such a transfiguration: The Church has done it for him! U2's music is suddenly all the rage in churches in a vain attempt to draw in younger worshipers. (Is this a good idea?! Don't U2 fans know how to illegally download their music and don't need to go to church to hear it!) Here's a report:

BEFORE he became the pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI once said that rock music was an 'instrument of the Devil'.

But chances are, he might give Irish supergroup U2 the benefit of the doubt.

That's because traditional churches all over the world are starting to replace hymns with the songs by the rock band in a bid to attract younger worshippers.

Informally dubbed the 'U2-charist', after the rite of eucharist, it is an adapted version of the Holy Communion service where worshippers sing along to U2 hits like Beautiful Day and Mysterious Ways instead of traditional hymns.

The idea for U2-charists was started by Reverend Paige Blair, an Episcopal priest in York Harbor, Maine, in 2005.

Since then, she has advised about 150 churches on U2-charists in 15 states and seven countries, with churches even in New Zealand and Hong Kong embracing U2's songs.

The Church of England is the latest church to join the trend. It will be staging its first U2-charist in the town of Lincoln in May. 'Rock music can be a vehicle of immense spirituality,' Bishop of Grantham Timothy Ellis told Reuters.

This seems like a pretty silly idea to me. After all, don't U2 fans know how to illegally download their music and don't need to go to church to hear it?

Labels: Christianity, Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 8:15 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The Prince of Egypt

Zahi Hawass is everywhere today. In addition to bashing the Seven Wonders online poll, he is heralding the new King Tut exhibit about to open in Philly. The exhibition was controversial when it opened two years ago, largely because of the unprecedented fees and percentage of the gift shop that Egypt kept for itself. In Ft. Lauderdale, the show played at the Museum of Art, who hosted my talk on Tuesday night. Let's just say Mr. Hawass left a strong impression.

Then, on the same day, someone sent me this interview he did promoting the opening of the King Tut show in Philly next month.

Some highlights:

What do you hope people will gain from viewing the exhibition?
When people visit this exhibition, they can understand one important thing: they can know that when people like Egyptians ruled in peace and had a vision of ma'at--justice and truth--they were really able to build an empire. Each artifact can tell us about those great people, and can teach us about the golden age of Egypt, and about the Valley of the Kings. It can tell them how the discovery of King Tut was not the end of archaeology. The tomb of Tutankhamun was in a valley of mystery and secrets; and I believe that it has more secrets to reveal, after KV 63. If people can understand our history, and read it well, it can give us all a good future.

Why is King Tutankhamun so important to ancient Egyptian archaeology and history?
Because his tomb was found largely intact. It captured the hearts of not only archaeologists, but also of the common man. If you try to look at his name before the tomb was found, it was nothing. The discovery opened a new vision into the history of the 18th Dynasty, about the wealth of Egypt, foreign relations, and family relations. It especially made us wonder about the wealth of a tomb of someone who ruled longer that Tut--what would have been buried, for example, in the tomb of Ramesses II?

How is Egypt benefiting from the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" touring exhibition?
This is the first time that Egypt has benefited from such a show. From this exhibition and the other, King Tut II, which will be in the U.S. two years from now, Egypt will receive $100 million. There will be no free meals anymore. Before, Egypt got nothing. Museums always say it is about education, not money. But is not only about education. We need money to build museums, carry out training, do site management, and to save our monuments. No one has helped us, apart from a few countries. King Tut is helping us to restore the monuments of Egypt in a scientific way.

Labels: Biblical Archaeology, Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 8:06 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Colts in the House

Feiler Faster reports from where the media can't go: Inside the Colts' hotel at Super Bowl XLI.

Seen in the lobby:
A sign saying the hotel requests "No Autographs" behind a player signing a football. Later, the player reports to his buddies in the elevator, "The kid thought I was Adam Vinitieri." Me: "I thought you were Vinitieri, too, and my wife says I can't come home without his autograph." He was eating ice cream. Ice cream! So much for thuggery. The Colts are vanilla.

Heard in the elevator:
Me: "Are you guys bummed you're so far from South Beach?" Player: "Nah. It's probably good for us. We have a curfew anyway."

Heard here, before you bet:
The Colts get to practice at the Dolphins' Training Facility; the Bears at University of Miami, closer to trouble, and a much worse facility, I'm told. Advantage Colts.

Heard on ESPN:
The Colts went out to dinner last night and Peyton Manning picked up the tab.

Heard from the room service delivery guy:
Peyton Manning had a party in his room last night.

Who do you believe?!

Labels: sports

Posted by B Feiler at 8:02 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

No Wonder

Nothing stirs up controversy like the seven wonders.

A few months ago I participated in picking the "New Seven Wonders of the World" for "Good Morning America" and USA Today. Six of us were locked in a room for seven hours and not allowed to leave until we had come up with a list, made all the more challenging because the organizers insisted we mix natural and human-made wonders. To see our final list, click here; to read an essay I wrote about one of the seven, click here. Hint: It's holy for half the world's believers. Not surprisingly, few people loved our list.

Now another effort to unveil the "New Seven Wonders" by online vote has come under attack: Not for something off the list, but for something on the list. Zahi Hawass, the prince of Egypt's antiquities, has criticized the effort, the winnders of which will be unveiled on 07/07/07, for making the pyramids compete alongside the other nominees.

The pyramids are "living in the hearts of people around the globe, and don't need a vote to be among the world wonders," said the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, according to the state-run Middle East News Agency.

Egyptian officials refused to meet with the organizer of the "New 7 Wonders of the World" contest, the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, when he visited Egypt earlier this month, said the contest's spokeswoman Tia B. Viering. When Weber tried to hold a press conference near the pyramids, she said, police shut it down.

I met Hawass in a similar-sounding meeting that's described in WALKING THE BIBLE, and certainly anyone who has ever filmed at the pyramids, as we did for WALKING THE BIBLE on PBS (see the image on the upper right hand corner of this page) has had similar encounters.

Labels: Middle East, Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Forrest Gump Meets Peyton Manning
Tuesday, January 30, 2007

I had quite the Forrest Gump moment today. I flew from New York to Ft. Lauderdale to give a few speeches as part of the lead-up the publication WHERE GOD WAS BORN in paperback next Tuesday. As we drove to the hotel, we were met by security on the road, drug-sniffing dogs, and a blocked-off entrance. As I rolled my bag up the driveway, I noticed a large white and blue flag. Then inside the front door, on the floor, like those ads on the floor in Wal-Mart, a giant, ten-foot-tall blue horseshoe. And everywhere on the walls: banners, helmets, pictures, signs. I'm staying at the same hotel as the Colts!

There must be $20,000 worth of decorations in the lobby alone -- giant flags, pictures from Colts teams in the past, every single window has a decal, every one of the ten elevators has half a horseshoe on the left door and half a horseshoe on the right that open and close every time you enter. You hear a lot about Super Bowl hype, but to be inside it is quite extraordinary. For starters, how did they get all these blow-ups so quickly. Now I get why they worry about distractions. But the one thing I don't get: All the worry on ESPN and the sports pages about how the players might go to South Beach and get drunk or into fights. South Beach is two-and-a-half-hours away! Boy those commentators know nothing.

Mom may not be happy, but I am. Go Peyton!

Labels: sports

Posted by B Feiler at 4:27 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

It Worked So Well for Mike Tyson

How's this for a rehabilitation program likely to win Michael Jackson a comeback in America's hearts: Convert to Islam! His brother says the singer, in self-imposed exile in Arabia, is seriously considering it.

"Michael, I feel, needs to become a Muslim because I think it's a great protection for him from all the things that he's been attacked with, which are false," said the former Jackson Five singer who now lives in Bahrain.

"There's a strength and protection there," Jackson told BBC Asian Newtwork.

Jackson said he believed his brother had given conversion "serious thought" during long spells in Bahrain.

"I was the reason why he had gone there because I wanted him to get out of America and just go somewhere it's peaceful and quiet and people pray five times a day which is beautiful."

If nothing else, this would surely clear the way for his grandchildren to be president of the United States. Just ask Barack Obama.

Labels: Islam, Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 9:04 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Deliver Us From the Flood

Today is the Muslim fast day of Ashura. If you want a model for the complicated issue of interfaith relations, few days would offer more nourishment. Ashura was once a Muslim holiday commemorating Mohammad's gratitude to the Jews for helping his early rise to power. It corresponded to Yom Kippur and was a mark of Islam's respect for Judaism and Christianity. As Wikipedia puts it, the holiday marked all the things that happened on this day:

-- The deliverance of Noah from the flood
-- Abraham was saved from Nimrod's fire
-- Jacob's blindness was healed and he was brought to Joseph on this day
-- Job was healed from his illness
-- Moses was saved from the impeding Pharaoh's army
-- Jesus was brought up to heaven after attempts by the Romans to capture and crucify him failed.

Today, only Sunnis recognize this aspect of the holiday. Shias fast for a different reason; it marks the discrimination against them.

Many Shi'a make pilgrimages on Ashura to the Mashhad al-Husayn, the shrine in Karbala, Iraq that is traditionally held to be Husayn's tomb. Shi'as also express mourning by thumping their chests and crying after listening to Speeches on How Hussain and his family were Martyred. This is intended to connect them with Husayn's suffering and death. Husayn's martyrdom is widely interpreted by Shi'a as a symbol of the struggle against injustice, tyranny, and oppression. The regime of Saddam Hussein saw this as a potential threat and banned Ashura commemorations for many years. In neighboring Iran, the remembrance became a major political symbol during the Islamic Revolution, as also occurred in the Lebanese Civil War, and in the 1990s Uprising in Bahrain.

Some might argue, as one Muslim writer did this week in Seattle, that Ashura should be a holiday of peace. This is a wonderful thought, and the interfaith upside of the holiday, but it also has become a mark of tension between Sunnia and Shias, as happened with the 2004 bombing in Karbala, in Iraq, not long after I visited the country. This bombing is the one president Bush has been referring to in his recent speeches. As we have seen in Judaism and Christianity, relations among faiths often takes the back seat when there's fighting within faiths.

Labels: Interfaith Relations, Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 8:07 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Thank God, The NYT Reads Feiler Faster

First it was EW, now it's the NYT. It seems everyone is reading Feiler Faster these days! And just in time. Our plan to scrap the standard-issue, laundry-list, thank-everybody-who-takes-ten-percent-of-your-paycheck thank you speech from the award show podium, first lambasted here after the Golden Globes, is coming under attack again, this time from Caryn James is the New York Times:

As the awards season lumbers toward the Oscars, you can almost envision what might happen when the Academy Awards are finally given out on Feb. 25. Forest Whitaker will fumble for words and mumble; Eddie Murphy will robotically deliver his list of industry thanks; Jennifer Hudson will work in a hokey use of the word “dream”; and Helen Mirren will pay tribute to the actual queen. Because this season has already brought three televised awards shows without a single surprise in the acting categories, the winners’ acceptance speeches have been hemmed in by an unusual problem: The same old people to thank and too many opportunities to do it.

This year’s predictability adds a feeling of déjà vu to what was already a dismal situation. The acceptance speech is a weird hybrid, part private thanks to Mom, Dad and spouses, part professional thanks so agents and managers don’t get mad, and part performance. But even as the shows have become more polished and star-laden, most winners maintain the silly illusion that they are addressing a room full of people and not a huge, fidgety television audience. The speeches have been especially repetitious at this year, as the same lines have ricocheted from the live Golden Globes on NBC two weeks ago to the Broadcast Film Critics Awards, and most recently the Screen Actors Guild Awards shown live on Sunday.

A few more tirades like this and we might actually get to hear some real "ums" from the stage of the Academy Awards.

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 4:52 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The Prince and the Painter
Monday, January 29, 2007

I know it hasn't exactly gotten a lot of press, but Prince Charles and Camilla have been touring the U.S. the last few days. On Saturday, he paid a visit to a fascinating (and highly duplicable) program in Philadelphia called Mural Arts in which over 2,500 (!) murals have been painted across the city, often in run-down neighborhoods. The murals become beacons for community excitement and redevelopment. Egged on by Camilla, Charles couldn't resist adding a few strokes to an image of Martin Luther King, Jr. The following image was sent to me by the P.R. rep for Mural Arts, who happens to be my sister.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 5:01 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

MVP Loser

Need one good tidbit to drop into someone's chili on Sunday night? You're not going to get much better than this. Heard on ESPN this morning: Who is the one Super Bowl MVP to come from the losing team? [Insert guessing music here.]

Chucky Howley. He was also named Super Bowl MVP for Super Bowl V, intercepting 2 passes and recovering a fumble in the Dallas Cowboys' 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Colts.

Labels: sports

Posted by B Feiler at 12:43 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Muslim Blood in the White House?

Some more facts and innuendo in the case of Obama's family background. Bill Sammon, who wrote an attack book on Al Gore after the 2000 election, suggests that merely the fact that Obama's father was once a Muslim and his grandfather and uncle were Muslims is a problem for Obama. Aren't commentators saying all the time, "Where are the moderate Muslims?" Makes one wonder if they really want to find one, or is it easier to assume that none exist.

“The Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa,” said a statement put out by the senator’s staff. But the school did teach the Quran, Islam’s holy book, along with subjects such as math and science, according to Obama, who attended when he was 9 and 10.

“In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school,” he wrote in his first memoir, “Dreams from my Father.” “The teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.”

Obama — whose father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims — explained his own first name, Barack, in “Dreams”: “It means ‘Blessed.’ In Arabic. My grandfather was a Muslim.”
In his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama added: “Although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist.”

Still, when his father, a black Kenyan named Barack Obama Sr., died in 1982, “the family wanted a Muslim burial,” Obama quoted his brother, Roy, as saying in “Dreams.”

The statement put out by Obama’s office last week referred to his father simply as “an atheist,” without mentioning his Muslim upbringing.

But with pundits already making faith a major issue in this presidential campaign — as evidenced by questions about Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormonism — Obama’s religious background is likely to come under further scrutiny.

“He comes from a father who was a Muslim,” said civil rights author Juan Williams of National Public Radio. “I mean, I think that given we’re at war with Muslim extremists, that presents a problem.”

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 12:24 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Abraham on Anti-Semitism

F. Murray Abraham, who won the Oscar for Amadeus, is playing Shylock in the Merchant of Venice and Barabas in The Jew of Malta, which New York Magazine calls "two of the biggest Jewish sterotypes in history." Why?

Labels: Interfaith Relations, Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 12:21 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Supreme Court Suck-Up Watch
Sunday, January 28, 2007

"I can't pretend that I had any idea then that he would be a serious presidential candidate -- that would have been a crazy thing for anyone to project at that stage of a career -- but he was certainly the most all-around impressive student I had seen in decades."-- Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, quoted by the AP, about his former research assistant, Barack Obama.

Labels: Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 2:03 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Barack Hussein Obama: Bibles of Blogging

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 11:23 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Israel Storms Sundance

Israel won a surprising two awards at Sundance this weekend:

The World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic was given to SWEET MUD (ADAMA MESHUGAAT) /Israel, directed by Dror Shaul. On a kibbutz in southern Israel in the 1970's, Dvir Avni realizes that his mother is mentally ill. In this closed community, bound by rigid rules, Dvir must navigate between the kibbutz motto of equality and the stinging reality that his mother has, in effect, been abandoned by the community. To read a review, click here.

The World Cinema Documentary Competition Jury presented a Special Jury Prize to HOT HOUSE/Israel, directed by Shimon Dotan. Here's a description: Veteran Romanian/Israeli director Shimon Dotan's doc "Hot House" is described by Sundance as a "brilliantly constructed, disturbingly provocative film [that] is both a humanizing force and an alarming wake-up call." The doc spotlights Israeli prisons and how they have become a breeding ground for the next generation of Palestinian leaders as well as a hive for future terrorists. Granted unique access to the prisons, Dotan interviews inmates who are committed to engaging Israel in negotiations as well as others who feel no remorse for their participation in suicide bombings.

Labels: Middle East, Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 11:12 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Red Hot Garth Brooks Chili Peppers?

A decade ago, while living in Nashville, I wrote a big piece in the NYT about why blacks don't listen to country music. Looks like I need to update that piece: Why Hispanics don't listen to country music! A fascinating piece looks at how Music Row in Nashville is scrambling to appeal to Hispanics as their percentage of the population in country's traditional base across the South, Southwest, and West explodes. A key reason has been the loss of a country station in L.A.:

The nation's No. 2 market joined New York, which has lacked a country station since 2002, and San Francisco, which bowed out of the country game in early 2005, as the third among the top five markets with no FM country outlet. (Two Los Angeles-area AM stations recently switched to country.)

Among the reasons for the KZLA switch: It's increasingly difficult to succeed with country radio in a market where Caucasians carry less and less sway. A 2006 Arbitron report estimated that only 5.4% of country radio's nationwide audience is Hispanic and 2.3% is black, while 92.3% of country listeners fall into Arbitron's "other" category (which includes Caucasians and
Pacific Islanders).

But in recent years, U.S. Census figures show, the Hispanic portion of Los Angeles County's population (which grew to 44.6% in 2000 from 37.8% in 1990) has passed up the county's non-Hispanic white population (which slipped to 31.1% of the total in 2000 from 40.8% in 1990).

A station in Miami has become a pioneer in this effort, but the core white audience of country has been pushing back: "There appears to be a very vocal bias (and/or) prejudice that exists in South Florida among whites who feel that the Hispanics have 'pushed' their culture and language on everyone else," explains [the station manager]. That bias makes it difficult to reach Hispanics using the WKIS airwaves, he says. "For example, we can't even do bilingual IDs without significant listener backlash."

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 7:56 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

No Thank You, Oscar
Saturday, January 27, 2007

Are the folks at the Academy reading Feiler Faster?! After my post-Golden-Globe-rant about how recipients at award shows should throw out their thank yous and be rewarded with more time to give their acceptance speeches, Ellen Degeneres announces in EW that the Oscar broadcast is planning something similar, even adopting another idea I've been advocating for some time now, letting winners post their thank yous, even ones they might forget in the moment (Hillary Swank), on the Internet:

I thought I wrote the monologue about a month ago and I was really excited that it was done. It just came to me and it was just brilliant and since then I've thrown that away. I'm sure I'll do that five times before the actual night. We don't want to play anybody off [during his/her acceptance speech]. We think people should be able to talk as long as they want. Hopefully, people throw their lists away and speak from the heart. We're going to have a thank-you Oscar website where people can go backstage and thank whoever they want instead of doing it on the show. The more impulsive and spontaneous people are, the more comedy there's going to be.... I don't look at it as there are rules for anything. That's why I'm not wearing a dress. I'm wearing a tux. I don't care what I'm supposed to look like. And I want to do the same thing that I've done with other awards shows — I want to be in the audience a lot. I want to be in different places and show what really happens there.

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 10:43 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

No Sneezing on Delta: No "God Bless You"
Friday, January 26, 2007

My daughters are 21-months and they can say, "God Bless You." Now I must be careful not to sneeze on Delta, apparently. An overzealous editor snipped all the reference to "God" in "God Bless You" in the film "The Queen:"

The word God was removed seven times in all after an inexperienced employee of a California company that edits movies for in-flight entertainment was told to take out all profanities - including any blasphemy.

By mistake a bleep was inserted each time a character said God, instead of just when used as part of a profanity, according to Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, which distributed the movie to Air New Zealand, Delta and other carriers this month.

"A reference to God is not taboo in any culture that I know of," Mr Klein said. "We excise foul language, excessive violence and nudity."

Labels: Pop Culture, Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 3:22 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

No More Faxing That Prayer to the Western Wall

When I was growing up, I heard stories about how anyone could fax a prayer to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. That's so 1979. Today, in a Web 2.0 world, you can send your prayer via a new service called Pray Over IP (IP standing for Internet protocol). POIP sells phone cards that allow customers to record their prayers, which are then transmitted to a holy site of their choice via Internet phone and Webcams. Reports the WSJ:

"It's just $5 or $10, and you get eternal life," says Hanan Achsaf, chairman of POIP. "With the lottery, you pay that amount, and what do you get? A piece of paper. This is much better value."
The start-up is part of an explosion of technology being used for religious purposes in recent years.

Churches in Brazil offer audio clips of services through cellphones. Ringtones using religious music are gaining popularity. A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 30% of adults online use the Internet for their religious pursuits.

Mr. Achsaf's company, which estimates it has 1,500 users a day, sells its phone cards on two Web sites -- one for Christians and the other for Jewish users. The sites stream video from the company's Webcams, giving users a real-time look at where the prayers are broadcast. A user records his prayer by using a POIP phone card, which allows a prayer of as long as two minutes. After calling a POIP phone number (1-888-HE-HEARS in the U.S.) and inputting a personal-identification number from the card, the user gets a choice: press one for the holy site of Jerusalem, press two for the holy site of the Sea of Galilee, and so on.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 2:01 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Carter Apologizes, Dershowitz Piles On

Major developments in the Jimmy Carter story today. Carter appeared at Brandeis on Thursday night, the appearance that Dershowitz initially tried to squelch. The significant headlines: 1) Carter apologized for a passage in his book that some had said promoted violence

"I apologize to you personally and to everyone here," Mr. Carter said when asked about the passage by a student during his appearance at Brandeis University on Tuesday. After explaining that the passage was "worded in a completely improper and stupid way," Mr. Carter said he has asked publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. to change the wording in future editions of the book.

The questionable passage, which appears on Page 213 of the book, reads: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel."

Some of Mr. Carter's critics, including the Carter Center board members who resigned, say the text reads as defending terror tactics until a peace accord can be reached between Israel and Palestinians. "Repeatedly I call on all to terminate the use of violence," Mr. Carter said in response.

2) He defended the title, saying he was trying to be provocative. 3) Clearly trying to go on the offensive, he released a transcript of a meeting he had with John Paul II in 1979 in which he urged the Pope to recognize Israel. "I reported that the Jews in our country at least thought that he was biased against them because he had never yet mentioned Israel in one of his speeches," the transcript reads. "He replied, 'I have mentioned Jerusalem.' I replied, 'This is not adequate for the Jews.' "

After the appearance, Dershowitz told the crowd that this was the "Brandeis Carter," whom he liked, but that he didn't like the "Al Jazeera Carter," a clear reference to the fact that Arafat and others used to say one thing in English and another in Arabic. In other words: I don't accept your apology.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 11:59 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Ghetto Chic

A few years ago I spent a week in Rome writing about the Jewish community for a GOURMET special issue on the City. I learned how to cook Jewish artichokes, went to a festival at the thriving Jewish community center, attended a wedding. Naturally I spent a few days walking around the ghetto, just steps from the river, where Jews were locked in every night for centuries and prevented from taking a stroll along the water with their lovers, their children, their grandparents. Many were forced to attend church.

Few Jews were living there then, and the neighborhood wasn't all that chic. It was a history lesson, one that most Jews of the City wanted to keep alive, but certainly didn't need to wallow in. Along comes the NYT today for some reason expressing sadness that the Jews of Rome don't want to live in the place where their great-parents or higher were forced to live. It's exactly the kind of false piety that can be annoying in journalism about the Jews, but it does give an update on the area for anyone who dreams about visiting, or hasn't been in a while:

High real estate prices, not violence or bias, are driving the last Jews from their homes in the old ghetto, which is slowly transforming itself into a trendy enclave for the rich and famous. Experts say only 200 or 300 Jews remain, in a neighborhood that numbered perhaps 9,000 after the deportation of 2,000 or more during World War II.

But there is a second paradox. Even as the number of Jews living in the ghetto drops to near nothing, Jewish life is thriving.

Rome’s Jewish school recently moved to the ghetto from a neighboring area. Jewish shops, including the first kosher fast-food restaurants, are popular. Visits to the museum at the grand synagogue have doubled in two years.

“Even if Jews no longer live in the area, they come to open their shops,” said Daniela Di Castro, director of the Jewish Museum of Rome. “So there is always Jewish life around, to work, to go to the synagogue, to buy from the kosher market, bring their children to school."

Labels: Judaism, Travel

Posted by B Feiler at 8:40 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Does TV Cause Autism?
Thursday, January 25, 2007

One of the more explosive nuggets in the Bush-Baby Einstein fracas is the nugget that watching television and, by extension, videos might actually cause autism. This topic came up at lunch today with a group of parents of young children. Most were skeptical. The notion sounds preposterous on the surface, unless it's one of those things were drinking 800 gallons of Johnson's baby shampoo causes colon cancer.

But not so fast. It turns out there may be some science behind the claim. A report in Slate last October cites a new study from Cornell:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.

The Cornell study represents a potential bombshell in the autism debate. "We are not saying we have found the cause of autism, we're saying we have found a critical piece of evidence," Cornell researcher Michael Waldman told me. Because autism rates are increasing broadly across the country and across income and ethnic groups, it seems logical that the trigger is something to which children are broadly exposed. Vaccines were a leading suspect, but numerous studies have failed to show any definitive link between autism and vaccines, while the autism rise has continued since worrisome compounds in vaccines were banned. What if the malefactor is not a chemical? Studies suggest that American children now watch about four hours of television daily. Before 1980—the first kids-oriented channel, Nickelodeon, dates to 1979—the figure is
believed to have been much lower.

Gregg Easterbrook, the author of the article and a well-known counter-intuitive science writer, concludes:

Everyone complains about television in a general way. But if it turns out television has specific harmful medical effects—in addition to these new findings about autism, some studies have linked television viewing by children younger than 3 to the onset of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—parents may urgently need to know to keep toddlers away from the TV. Television networks and manufacturers of televisions may need to reassess how their products are marketed to the young. Legal liability may come into play. And we live in a society in which bright images on screens are becoming ever more ubiquitous: television, video games, DVD video players, computers, cell phones. If screen images cause harm to brain development in the young, the proliferation of these TV-like devices may bode ill for the future.

The aggressive marketing of Teletubbies, Baby Einstein videos, and similar products intended to encourage television watching by toddlers may turn out to have been a nightmarish mistake. If television viewing by toddlers is a factor in autism, the parents of afflicted children should not reproach themselves, as there was no warning of this risk. Now there is: The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends against any TV for children under the age of 2. Waldman thinks that until more is known about what triggers autism, families with children under the age of 3 should get them away from the television and keep them away.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 6:20 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

"Surge" in Baby Einstein Wars

Beware the State of the Union kiss! The web is abuzz today, with lefty bloggers dredging up charges against Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby, and the other baby bamboozling products. Turns out, the charges were filed by the Bush Administration! More, more, I say. (More, more dredging, that is. Here's why.). This is one White House surge that seems to be working.

CCFC Files FTC Complaint Against Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby, & BabyFirstTV

On May 1, 2006, CCFC filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, two of the leading producers of videos for infants and toddlers, for false and deceptive advertising. On June 13, CCFC added BabyFirstTV, the first television channel for infants and toddlers, to their complaint. Links to CCFC's complaint and supporting documentation are below.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 11:23 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

It Takes a Wiki to Cure a Child's Cold

Of course, as soon as Mrs. Feiler Faster decamped for Davos, the girls came down with colds. And as any parent knows, it takes a village to cure a cold -- largely because everyone has a different theory. Dahlia Lithwick explores this phenomenon and likens it to the Wiki-method of trying to arrive at conensus. Reading her funny piece, I was reminded of what my wife's aunt said about treating colds: Swamp it with medication, herbal wraps, and home remedies, and it will disappear in a week; do nothing and it will disappear in seven days:

Now, my husband and I had more or less finalized our wiki entry on caring for babies with colds. We had agreed, for instance, about the germ theory over the outside-with-wet-heads theory. We were, in the main, for hot liquids, baby Tylenol, hand-washing, and humidifiers. But as our boys are increasingly exposed to a growing number of end users, the markups of their illness wiki began to proliferate. One of the great-aunts quickly submitted the milk markup.

"No milk, no cheese, no yogurt," she wrote definitively. I went back that afternoon and edited this out. "The pediatrician has assured us that there is absolutely no connection between dairy and mucous," I wrote. My mom was spurred on to correct my error. "Absolutely no milk," she marked up my markup. "Also, no baths!"

When the baby started to smell funny that night, I checked his wiki for any Recent Changes. I noted the no-baths entry with some surprise and responded with a hasty edit: "Baths are okay," I wrote. "He finds them very soothing, and they are better than a sandblaster for the welded-on green mucous."

By the morning, "definitely no baths" had been reinstated, and "warmer slippers and indoor hats" had been added in by the lady at the supermarket who heard him coughing in the checkout line. Beginning to doubt myself and the gurus from What to Expect the First Year, I found myself mulling over these modifications. "Should we really be overheating him if it isn't cold out?" I typed into the comments section.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 8:34 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Does Osama Bin Laden = Martin Luther?

I've often wondered if Bin Laden and his followers, with their grim determination to eliminate all "innovation" in the faith, aren't akin to some of the wild Protestants of the first half of the 16th century. With their Salafi emphasis on the direct experience of scripture and the believer's ability to understand the text, they remind me of Luther's notion of "every man a priest." One could even ask whether Bin Laden himself isn't something of a Martin Luther figure, though the head of al-Qaida has none of Luther's skill at theology.

(I once remarked this to a well-known Saudi prince, who instantly replied, "No, he is our Savonarola." That remark floored me and suggested my interlocutor had been thinking about the subject.)

The Protestant Reformation took almost 150 years and, particularly during the Thirty Years' War, claimed an enormous number of lives. I'd like to believe that in our fast-moving age we can skip ahead to the liberalizing phase of a reformation in Islam. But religions don't change easily or quickly, and sometimes they have to take the longest route between two points.

Labels: Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 8:18 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Battle of the Scarf Comes to America

Looks like the battle of the scarf, waged from Turkey to Britain, may now be hitting the Homeland. A woman in Michigan (it of large Muslim population) was refused a hearing in court unless she removed her headscarf. Now she's won a reprieve.

A Muslim woman who lost her small-claims case after she refused to remove her veil in court has been granted a new hearing.

Ginnnah Muhammad, 42, of Detroit, plans to wear a niqab – a scarf and veil that covers her head and face, leaving only the eyes visible – at her Feb. 21 hearing.

Muhammad wants to contest a rental car company's $2,750 charge to repair a vehicle that she said had been broken into by thieves. “I'm hoping that the judge ... listens to my case and judges the case on its merits, not on how I look,” Muhammad said.

In October, District Judge Paul Paruk told her he needed to see her face to determine her truthfulness and gave her a choice: take off the veil while testifying or have the case dismissed. She kept it on.

Labels: Islam, Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 7:57 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Baby Einstein Isn't Smart
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

One of the odd things about the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night was seeing the woman who invented Baby Einstein sitting in the First Lady's Box. Like any new parent, I can easily find a stack of Baby Einstein videos around my house. For those of you who haven't seen them, they are smartly packaged, brilliantly named, inane videos that involve close-up, colorful shots of toys mixed with classical music. I hate them, along with most of the other videos. Mrs. Feiler Faster, it must be said, loves these videos. Let's just say it's a disagreement between us. I get that sometimes dinner simply cannot be cooked and the cab cannot be loaded for a trip to the airport without popping in a video. I'm not a total dope here. But for daily use, I don't like them at all, notwithstanding all the experts who recommend no television for those under two.

Labels: Family, Twins

Posted by B Feiler at 5:11 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Mom Is Reading! (And She Disagrees)

Nothing like the Colts to get my Mom to stop forwarding all that email spam humor! She emails in response to my posting on the Colts: "You left out very important info in your Colt blog. When Irsay sneaked out of Baltimore in the middle of the night to move the Colts to Indianapolis everyone was furious. And then he decided to keep the Colt name. Disgusting! I could never be a Colt fan now even though Manning is great. Mom"

Labels: sports

Posted by B Feiler at 4:11 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The Other Rape Case

Ouch: Israeli president tries to claim immunity against rape charges.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav, facing charges of rape and abuse of power, asked parliament Wednesday to temporarily remove him from office in an effort to blunt growing calls for his resignation.

Katsav has been under intense pressure to quit since Attorney-General Meni Mazuz notified him Tuesday that he planned to indict him on a rash of charges after a monthslong investigation into allegations by four women who worked for him.

The president, who has not commented publicly on the impending charges, stopped short of resigning, which would deprive him of the immunity he enjoys while in office.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 1:33 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Are 1,000 Rabbis Economic Terrorism?

A reader writes in response to my post, Does 1,000 Rabbis Equal a Wal-Mart?

I live in Pomona, our town has 1,900 registered voters. In my opinion, the development is questionable as to its religious basis, if you look at the site plan it has one small "school" and housing for as many as 1,000 "students" and their families (estimated population of 4,500). Residence will be for 15 years while they "study". Our infrastructure can't support this, nor should our tax dollars go to support a development of this size. If it passes, our village board will be ousted, zoning will go away, and more properties will fall prey to this developer. This is economic terrorism as a way to conduct a hostile takeover of a beautiful rural village. RLUIPA is misguided and stupid legislation.

Labels: Judaism, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 1:24 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

One Book, Philadelphia

In my in-box this morning, an article in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer forwarded by my sister. Read through to the bottom. It's a Q & A with Todd Bernstein, president of Global Citizen and founder and director of the Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service.

Quotation to live by: "Life's persistent and most urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others? ' " The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Books on my nightstand right now: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama; At Canaan's Edge, by Taylor Branch; The Holy Experiment, by Violet Oakley.

Favorite author, nonfiction: Tom Friedman.

Favorite poet: Maya Angelou.

Favorite beach reading: New York Times, without wind.

Book or author other people have praised but I never liked: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville.

A book that influenced how I live my life: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

TV shows I'm not ashamed to admit I watch: Hardball With Chris Matthews (MSNBC), 60 Minutes (CBS), The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central), Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO), Antiques Roadshow (PBS), The Dog Whisperer (National Geographic Channel).

TV show I hate to admit I like: 24 (Fox).

Movie I love so much I've watched it more than twice: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It's better if you get it.

Web sites I visit regularly: Google; CNN; Philly.com; Corporation for National and Community
Service (www.cns.gov); eBay.

Magazines I read regularly: Preservation, Philadelphia Magazine, Bicycling.

Favorite types of music: Jazz, blues, funk.

Last concert/performance attended: Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo' .

Recording I play when my soul needs a lift: "Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off)," by Parliament Funkadelic.

Person in my field whom I most admire: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford.

Living person I'd most like to join for dinner and conversation: Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

Heroes from history: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the man who stood in front of the column of tanks on Changan Avenue near Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989.

If I had the power to order all of the Philadelphia region to read one book, it would be: Abraham, by Bruce Feiler.

And here's why: The book analyzes the common values among several of the world's predominant religions. If we had better understanding about the common roots of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, perhaps we might embrace our common humanity.

At as my sister comments: "How cool is this!?"

Labels: Bruce in the Media

Posted by B Feiler at 9:33 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Jews of Iran

I have been to Iran twice this decade, and on both trips I visited the Jewish community. That's right. There are Jews in Iran -- the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel, as many as 35,000. One of my favorite chapters in Where God Was Born (which, as you can see on the left with our handy new icon, goes on sale next week in paperback) describes my travels in the Jewish community with my wife, including a funny moment when she completely upstaged me after giving a short thank you speech at a local synagogue.

In light of the recent rhetoric about destroying Israel coming from the increasingly ostracized Iranian president, the BBC checks in on the Iranian Jewish community in Israel:

Every day the Voice of Israel radio broadcasts to Iran in Farsi. Twice a week Menashe Amir, a Persian Israeli, hosts a rather unexpected talk show. The callers are all from Iran and the vast majority are Muslim.

The show attracts two to six million listeners everyday from a country where the Jewish community is just 20,000 strong. [ed note: I think this number is low.] "I would say if 10 people are calling us from Iran, only one is talking about destroying Israel or death to Israel," said Mr Amir.

The Iranian callers cannot ring Israel directly. They have to phone a number in Germany which is patched through to the Jerusalem studio.

Labels: Judaism, Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 9:13 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Jesus Saves, Moses Invests
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I'm just learning about this phrase for the first time, though it seems to have an active life as a racial slur, point of pride, evangelical recruiting tool, and bathroom stall graffiti haiku. Anybody know the origin?

Labels: Christianity, Judaism

Posted by B Feiler at 2:47 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

You Think President Bush Has Problems

Israeli president charged with rape. Haaretz:

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz decided Tuesday that President Moshe Katsav should face charges for alleged rape, sexual harassment, obstruction of justice, fraud and breach of trust. The sexual assault charges relate to the claims of four women who worked for Katsav during his terms as president and before that as a cabinet minister.

Katsav's attorney, David Libai, told reporters Tuesday that the president would fulfill his promise to the High Court of Justice and suspend himself until Mazuz issued a final decision on the matter.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 12:48 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Madrassah-gate

Lots of fallout today from the untrue report that Barack Hussein Obama went to a madrassah in Indonesia. Fox News and Glen Beck on CNN Headline News apparently yakked up the story quite a lot. Says TVNewser:

Yesterday, Barack Obama's spokesman called Fox News "appallingly irresponsible" for repeatedly broadcasting allegations that the senator attended a madrassa as a child." CNN did what any serious news organization is supposed to do in this kind of a situation. We actually conducted an exclusive firsthand investigation inside Indonesia to check out the school that Barack Obama attended as a little 6-year-old boy," Wolf Blitzer said on yesterday's Situation Room. Senior international correspondent John Vause, reporting from Jakarta, showed that the school is not a madrassah.

CNN checked it out and is gloating:

CNN's Anderson Cooper rubbed it in Fox's face on Monday night."Barack Obama's Muslim education in Indonesia -- others are reporting the heat. We are sticking to the facts," he teased on 360 last night.Then, introing John Vause's segment, he said: "Other news organizations ran with Insight's story. They didn't check the facts. We did."And after the package, Cooper concluded: "Well, that's the difference between talking about news and reporting it. You send a reporter, check the facts and you decide at home."

Fox's John Gibson shot back:

"Howard Kurtz is ignoring the obvious," John Gibson responded on his radio show Monday night. "The story is not about whether Barack Obama went to a madrassah terrorist training camp when he was five years old. The story is that people who oppose, who have interest in opposition to Barack Obama, are attaching his name to the word madrassah."

In other words, Hillary. Why does this matter? Beyond the obviously political issue: Opponents are trying to turn Obama into a Muslim radical in the same way opponents tried to turn John Kerry into a French elitist. The larger issue is the role of religion in America. Maybe instead of announcing in Abraham Lincoln's hometown next month, thereby trying to play up his race and play down his inexperience, Obama should announce in Kennedy's hometown, trying to play up his youth and down his religious background.

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 10:35 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Barack Hussein Obama, Part the Latest
Monday, January 22, 2007

Following up on my report about Barack Hussein Obama, I see now that CNN is reporting that recent news accounts that Obama was educated in a radical madrassa in Indonesia are false. Can tales of terrorist training camps be far behind?

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and step-father and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 7:21 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Wikicoup?

Hard to know if this will amount to anything, but it sure is fascinating: Wikileaks, a user-generated leak blog for documents in oppressive regimes. Here's TIME's take:

By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistleblowing. That is, of course, as long as you don't accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency.

The website claims that it will use the same software platform as Wikipedia, the wildly popular online grassroots encyclopedia, to let users anonymously post documents and analyze them. In theory, this system will protect leakers' identities while exposing government and corporate corruption worldwide.

Labels: Technology

Posted by B Feiler at 6:51 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Roll Over in that Grave, Johnny U

Turns out my Mom is not alone! From the Chicago Tribune:

Every sports town brags that it has the best fans in the world (except maybe Philadelphia), but teacher Colleen Pavelka might have put Chicago over the top when she asked doctors to induce labor on Friday to assure her husband would be able to attend yesterday's NFC championship game at Soldier Field.

Obviously, Mark Pavelka is a huge Chicago Bears fan if he was grappling with the choice of watching his wife have a baby or maybe watching Rex Grossman lay a giant egg, but to hear that his wife was willing to move up the birth of the couple's second child just so he wouldn't have to face that decision, well, it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Labels: sports

Posted by B Feiler at 5:33 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Code Blue

I'm the kind of person to be skeptical of the cult of certain businesses that pop up from time to time in the media. OK, Starbucks might have good coffee (I'm not a coffee drinker) and health care, but its food sucks. And Apple? My IPal speaker for my IPod spends far more time broken than fixed, often leaving me music-less in, say, Argentina when trying to put my girls to sleep.

I flew JetBlue to and from L.A. last week. I chose them in part because I wanted to watch the playoffs on the flight out, helping to kill the time. The service was fine. I had brought food so I didn't miss the lack of food. And the seats on the back of the plane had enough legroom.

On the way back, though, the flight was delayed an hour, then we had to stop in Salt Lake City because we couldn't carry enough fuel. They comped the movie, but I would have preferred the few hours even to "The Last King of Scotland." But today this email arrived.

Dear Bruce,

Thank you for flying with JetBlue Airways on flight #354 from BUR on January 18, 2007. We regret that we were not able to operate your flight as scheduled because of the fuel stop in Salt Lake City. We sincerely apologize for your late arrival and the inconvenience the situation may have caused you. As always, the safety of our customers is our first consideration.

To thank you for your understanding, we have issued you a $25 JetBlue electronic voucher.

Wow. Now that's impressive customer service.

Posted by B Feiler at 4:43 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Castro Is Not Dead

From the AP:

A spam e-mail with messages including "Fidel Castro dead" and "Saddam Hussein safe and sound" contains a virus which has infected thousands of computers, Spain's Association of Internauts has said.

With speculation rife about the Cuban leader's health, the association said that a computer would be infected by the virus if the recipient opened the message.

"The virus is affecting thousands of computers," the association said Monday.

Other messages sent with the virus include Venezuelan President "Hugo Chavez dead", "President of Russia Putin dead," and "US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel." Another read: "The (US) Supreme Court has been attacked by terrorists."

Labels: Technology

Posted by B Feiler at 9:02 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Color Blind
Sunday, January 21, 2007

Feiler Faster gives you tomorrow's commentary today. The last week was a remarkable week in American history/pop culture/politics/sports: In a first, three of the top four acting awards at the Golden Globes went to African-Americans: Forrest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson. Barack Obama instantly became (with all due respect to Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton) one of the leading contenders to win his party's nomination for president. And Sunday, Lovie Smith became the first African-American coach to lead his team to the Super Bowl, followed three hours later by Tony Dungy, another African-American (there are five in the league). All this in a week when Tiger Woods chose to sit out the PGA tour and forego the chance to become the first player to win seven tour events in a row. That happens this coming weekend.

Labels: Politics in America, Pop Culture, sports

Posted by B Feiler at 11:57 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Wherever You Are Johnny U ...

The legend in my family is that my mother delayed my birth on a Sunday afternoon many decades ago to watch Johnny Unitas lead the Baltimore Colts in an important game. I've never wanted to verify the story. It's been too rich. Then I went and married into a Patriots' family. The Colts and the Pats wasn't a rivalry; it was completely one-sided. The Patriots won all the games that counted. Still I picked the Colts, year after year, in recent years. I had lost some faith in recent months, but today I believe again. Who couldn't have believed?! What a game. Tom Jackson said in ESPN tonight that it's not a rivalry until both sides win. It's a rivalry now. And, with New Orleans out, a clear someone to root for in the Super Bowl: Peyton Manning. Go Colts!

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 11:22 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Humps Against Davos

I came from California just in time to say goodbye to my wife, who left for a week in Switzerland and the annual World Economic Forum held at Davos. My favorite story from Davos happened a few years ago. We were speaking on the phone and I was reporting on some breaking news, that Ariel Sharon, then PM of Israel, was likely to get indicted in a bribery scandal. "Wait a minute," she said. "Let me find out." I heard from talking on the other end, "My husband is on the phone and he says ..." She came back a few minutes later and said, "Shimon Peres was just walking by and I decided to ask him."

So if you want to have a protest against the powers that be at Davos and could think of the perfect symbol of your oppression, of Third World powerlessness, and the one think they are unlikely to have in the Alps: Camels!

Here's a report from Nairobi: "Glue-sniffing street-boys, men on camels, and women balancing clay pots on their heads marched from one of Africa's biggest slums at the start of an anti-capitalist fest hosted by the continent for the first time."

Labels: Camels

Posted by B Feiler at 7:08 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Does 1,000 Rabbis Equal a Wal-Mart?

My friend Peter Applebome has a fascinating piece in the NYT (hidden behind the firewall) about a showdown outside New York City between a rabbinical college that wants to open a facility to train 1,000 rabbis to adjudicate religious disputes and the local town that would be overrun, instantly tripling in size and losing its local character.

Ground zero at the moment is a wooded corner at Route 202 and Route 306. One side of Route 202 in the unincorporated town of Ramapo is the site of a zoning battle over 200 acres likely to house multifamily homes and religious schools built by a Brooklyn developer. But the main issue for now is the other side, in the village of Pomona.

THERE, on a 100-acre tract purchased for $13 million, a Brooklyn-based group called the Congregational Rabbinical College of Tartikov plans a college where, organizers say, 1,000 rabbis, living with their families, would study for 15 years to become religious judges presiding over civil disputes among Orthodox Jews.

A formal proposal is not likely before late February, but on a property zoned for single-family homes on one acre, drawings and plans developed by the group show as many as 10 buildings with space for at least 4,500 residents, parking for 1,000 cars and buildings as high as six stories.

Given the size of the families in nearby Hasidic communities, the population estimate is probably low. All this in a village with a population of around 3,200.Residents are stunned.

The town is using the argument towns often make against Wal-Mart, the community would kill the town. The college, meanwhile, is citing a federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (known by its acronym, Rluipa, and pronounced ar-LOO-pah). Enacted by Congress to “protect religious liberty and for other purposes,” it says municipalities must be able to show a “compelling” public interest in rejecting land-use proposals by religious groups.

The article is probably inaccessible to many, but here's a summary in the local paper.

Labels: Judaism, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 6:13 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Borat the Break-Dancing, Bar Mitzvah Bum

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 3:53 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

God at Sundance

Having just spent a week in Hollywood, I know firsthand that religion is still an active topic in the entertainment industry. The projects seems to follow the model one sees on the bestseller lists these days: Pro or con. Meaning they are either going after the population that is interested in religion, usually in a way that Hollywood perceives is reverential, like the recent film on "The Nativity", or they are attacking religion, often by portraying religious conservatives as hypocritical, like the recent documentary "Jesus Camp." The pro or con framework is tired and largely reflects the bias of the media. It fails to capture the much more interesting things going on in the middle, where faith and doubt, church and state, mingle in more complicated and fascinating ways.

"Save Me" -- Scott, a young gay man living the wild life, is checked into a Christian "ex-gay" ministry where he and his mentor, Mark, become torn between their feelings for one another and threats of damnation.

"The Island" (Russia) -- A Russian barge worker, left for dead by Germans during World War II, is rescued by monks and 30 years later still lives at the monastery as a hermit. His antics and questionable sanity disturb the monks, but locals trust in his healing powers and believe he can see the future.

"The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun" (Denmark) -- Mr. Vig, an 82-year-old virgin living alone in rundown castle, partners up with a headstrong nun to fulfill his dream of turning his home into a Russian Orthodox monastery.

"On a Tightrope" (Norway/Canada) -- The Uighur people, China's largest Muslim minority, live under Chinese government control. Four Uighur orphans try to learn an ancient tightrope walking tradition, a metaphor for the Uighur people's struggles.

Labels: The Bible in Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 9:08 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

"I Don't Think the Bush Administration Understands Iran"
Saturday, January 20, 2007

That message loud and clear from Sen. Rockefeller, who's finally said out loud what anyone following this story has known for some time: The Bush Administration, and its water carriers, are following the Iraq playbook when it comes to Iran:

The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who took control of the committee this month, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.

“To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview with the New York Times in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 5:48 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Feiler Slower
Friday, January 19, 2007

This Week on Feiler Faster:

Frozen Navel Gazing -- When L.A. gets a snow day, it gets a traffic day.
A Muslim Schindler -- When Muslims and Jews worked together.
Egypt Puts a Blogger on Trial -- When tyranny meets the keyboard.
Looks Who's on the Wrong Side of the Ayatollah Now -- The president gets slapped down.
Cheney Knew of Secret Talks -- The vice president, Syria, and Israel
Maybe Castro Needs the Nobel Peace Prize -- The Nobel longevity plan.
No Thank You -- How to improve award shows.
Golan, Golan, Gone -- Syria and Israel play footsie.
The Muslim Archie Bunker is a Hit -- Canada meets its neighbors.
Tower of Babel -- Road Rage in L.A.
King Goes to War -- MLK and the Fundamenatlists.
Carter Imbecilic? -- A reader takes me, and Carter, to task.
Prime Minister Dershowitz -- No Carter Without Me

Please come back soon.

Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Frozen Navel Gazing

Having recently pooh-poohed the reports that New York was having a Global Warming Summer in January, I had the opposite experience this week in L.A. Driving on Sunset Blvd. on Wednesday, I could quite figure out what all the white debris on the grass and flower beds was. At first I thought it was for some movie. Then I thought maybe it was some kind of fertilizer. Then I realized: It was SNOW! It wasn't snow exactly, and it wasn't exactly ice. It was somewhere in between. Apparently there's a word for it (begins with a 'g'), but I can't quite recall. And in Malibu it actually did snow in the higher elevations. They actually closed a freeway. The highways got a snow day! Which means everyone got a traffic day.

It would be funny, except for this: Prices on fruits and vegetables are expected to trip in as recently as the next two weeks, apparently. And we can't blame this on OPEC. Here's the LAT:

In the strongest sign that the freeze will hurt consumers, navel orange prices doubled at the wholesale level, with the highest grade, large-sized navels increasing from up to $17 per bushel last week to about $35 Tuesday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wholesale prices for other produce have also risen. As recently as Friday, California-grown broccoli was wholesaling for $16 to $18 a carton in Los Angeles, according to the Department of Agriculture. On Tuesday, the same cartons sold for $20 to $24. Iceberg lettuce that sold for $11 to $12.50 on Friday was selling for $16 to $20 a carton Tuesday.

Posted by B Feiler at 12:44 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

A Muslim Schindler

A wonderful story. The Anti-Defamation League has honored an Albanian Muslim family that saved 26 Jews from the Nazis. On Thursday, the ADL posthumously awarded its Courage to Care award to Mefail and Njazi Bicaku, who sheltered Jews in the mountains of central Albania while the Nazis searched the area.

The Bicakus already have been recognized by Israel and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, which awarded them its highest honor, the Righteous Among the Nations Award.

“In the moral void that engulfed the world in those nightmare days when the cruelty of the Nazis ran rampant, the Bicaku family was among those few shining stars,” said Michael Salberg, the
ADL’s director of international affairs.

Posted by B Feiler at 12:31 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Egypt Puts Blogger on Trial

Egypt doesn't just crack down on terrorists and democrats. It cracks down on bloggers, too. An Egyptian blogger went on trial today on charges of insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife. "It was the first trial of a blogger in Egypt, where a string of anti-government bloggers have been arrested the past year, drawing condemnation from human rights groups. Abdel Kareem Nabil, who has been in detention since his arrest in early November, could face up to seven years in prison if convicted on the charges, court officials said." The blogger was apparently a former law student who has been detained in the past.

Posted by B Feiler at 12:24 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Looks Who's on the Wrong Side of the Ayatollah Now

The drip, drip, drip of pressure against the president of Iran is growing -- and not from the right in the U.S. From the right in Iran. Feiler Faster has been reporting for some time that internal pressures against the president of Iran are ultimately a greater threat to his security than external pressure, and much more in our interest. Now the NYT reports that the supreme leader in Iran is sending public signals that Ahmadinejad should back off his saber rattling with the West:

Just one month after the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program, two hard-line newspapers, including one owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the president to stay out of all matters nuclear.

In the hazy world of Iranian politics, such a public rebuke was seen as a sign that the supreme leader — who has final say on all matters of state — might no longer support the president as the public face of defiance to the West.

Talk. To Iran. Now

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 12:17 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Cheney Knew of Secret Talks
Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Haaretz advances the ball on its exclusive story about secret talks between Israel and and Syria by reporting that Cheney was kept abreast. Cheney.

Senior officials in Washington told Haaretz that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was kept in the picture about these indirect talks between Syria and Israel. Ibrahim (Ayeb) Suleiman, the Syrian representative, also said this at his meetings with former Foreign Ministry director general Alon Liel, adding that Cheney had made no move to stop him from participating in the talks.

And yet the Bush administration just ignored the Baker-Hamilton proposals to negotiate with Syria and has encouraged the heavy-breathing about war with Iran.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 10:11 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Maybe Castro Needs the Nobel Peace Prize

I was on the fence about wanting to win, say, the Nobel Peace Prize, but this surely changes that: You get to live two years longer!

New research at the University of Warwick in central England shows that scientists who have won the prize for their work in chemistry and physics not only get cash and kudos but they live two years longer than colleagues who have only been nominated.

"Status seems to work a kind of health-giving magic. Once we do the statistical corrections, walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about two years to a scientist's lifespan," Professor Andrew Oswald said.

Posted by B Feiler at 7:29 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

No Thank You

I watched The Golden Globes on Monday night at the home of some friends in the film and television industry. During the telecast, I was complaining about the endless litanies of Thank Yous -- not just those who voted, as well as parents, lovers, and children, but agents, lawyers, stylists, assistants, drivers, neighbors, spammers, emailers, gaffers. STOP! My hosts disagreed. Strongly. This is not a television show, they said. It's an industry award dinner, and the primary audience is people in the industry, and they like to hear the thank yous. If I were in the industry, worked on a project, and wasn't thanked, I'd be upset, too. My friend, in fact, was specifically told some time ago that she wasn't going to be thanked on a project she worked on and she was quite upset. We're lucky to be watching such an inside experience, she suggested.

I wasn't persuaded. The air time alone is incredibly valuable -- hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute -- and could be better used to promote the shows themselves, I said. In fact, I advocated a proposal I read about a few years ago: A winnter gets 30 seconds if they insist on only giving thank yous, but if they agree to forego the thanks yous and talk about something more interesting, they get 3 minutes. Brilliant! We'd all watch, rather than tuning out during the speeches.

Needless to say, I was the only one supporting this proposal. Any takers??

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 6:48 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Golan, Golan, Gone?

Haaretz: In a series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006, Syrians and Israelis formulated understandings for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

As part of the agreement on principles, Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remained open: Syria demanded the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel asked for the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years

At the buffer zone, along Lake Kinneret, a park will be set up for joint use by Israelis and Syrians. The park will cover a significant portion of the Golan Heights. Israelis will be free to access the park and their presence will not be dependent on Syrian approval.

Israel will retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret.

The border area will be demilitarized along a 1:4 ratio (in terms of territory) in Israel's favor.

According to the terms, Syria will also agree to end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and will distance itself from Iran.

Posted by B Feiler at 3:46 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The "Muslim Archie Bunker" is a Hit!

As reported here last week, the CBC has launched a new show called "Little Mosque on the Prairie," about a Muslim family in central Canada. Well, the ratings are in and it's a huge hit, the biggest show on the network IN A DECADE! This is great news, helped, no doubt, by the camels in downtown Toronto last week. Can a U.S. network be far behind? Here's the report from the IHT:

When it comes to producing a funny television show or movie in Canada, producers here have a reliable stable of topics — French-English relations, urban-rural dynamics and anything that involves a bumbling politician or the United States.

But Islam — something of a third rail of comedy throughout the Western world — did not make the list, which is one reason the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's new situation comedy, "Little Mosque on the Prairie," is attracting such attention here.

"It is a risk doing a sitcom about what can be considered a very touchy subject," said Kirstine Layfield, executive director of network programming at the CBC.

But the series premiere last Tuesday attracted 2.1 million viewers, impressive in a country where an audience of one million is a runaway hit. The CBC has not had a show draw an audience of that size in a decade, according to the network.

Posted by B Feiler at 3:25 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Tower of Babel

As someone who grew up (and still spends a lot of time) in Georgia, I hate it when people assume we still use outhouses and eat hay every day. As someone who lives in New York these days, I hate it when outsiders assume that we step in potholes and get mugged every day. Were I to live in Los Angeles, I would surely resent it that people assume we drive around in limos and get shot at in road rage every day.

Well, I'm in L.A. all week on business -- doing research on a number of projects and having a number of meetings. Today I was driving back into the city from Palm Springs, several hours east of town, and making good time (with the help of my new handy GPS), when I suddenly I encountered a wicked traffic jam. After parking on the freeway for half an hour, they actually CLOSED THE FREEWAY I was on. Closed it. Leaving my GPS confused and me lost for nearly an hour. Later, I learned that a driver had saddled up beside a Honda and fired two shots through the window, instantly killing the driver. Road rage.

After learning of this instance on the evening news, I set out from a friend's house back to my hotel. Again I was making good time, when suddenly I encountered another wicked traffic jam, this time caused by a line of 200 black Cadillac SUV's lined up to ferry guests home from The Golden Globes.

Road rage and limo jams in the same night. It's enough to make me go drink some moonshine.

Labels: Travel

Posted by B Feiler at 2:59 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

King Goes to War Against Fundamentalists -- 40 Years After His Death
Monday, January 15, 2007

From Abraham to Abraham Lincoln, every major historical figure finds his life reinterpreted by each succeeding generation. A new book about MLK finds, not surprisingly, that he was against Fundamentalism and in favor of the Social Gospel. Here's a report from the SF Chronicle today:

King was not a conformist Christian. He not only eschewed literalism, he was a strident critic of how the Christian church perpetuated injustices such as slavery and segregation.

"Too often has the church talked about a future good 'over yonder,' totally forgetting the present evil over here," King wrote in 1952 to Coretta Scott, his future wife.

Within a decade, King would lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest legal segregation and numerous marches for voting rights. He returned repeatedly to the idea that true Christianity is practiced through the work for social justice.

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood," King preached in 1962 to his congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

And another professor adds, Duke's Richard Lischer, adds: "King went to seminary and received a doctorate from two bastions of liberal theology, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, respectively. A professor told him that neither Moses nor the exodus were real -- an irony, given that King was called "new Moses" for his role during the civil rights era.

Posted by B Feiler at 11:13 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Carter "Truly Imbecilic"?

A reader writes in response to my recent post about Jimmy Carter: "My concern with Carter is not that he might have been "bought" by Arab money. Funding usually trails the opinion, not the other way around. Carter has been sympathetic to Arab viewpoints, so funding came to his programs. My concern was the inflammatory language and revisionist history in his book."

And later:

Mr. Carter's decision to wade into the debate with such a slanted tone does not help this problem; rather it feeds the divisions that polarize the dialogue. His factual errors are damning, and his selective memory smacks of propaganda, not history. There are villains and dirty deeds on both sides of this conflict; why Carter chose to take such a one-sided view of the battle is beyond me. His explanations to date have been unctuous and unbelievable. I have listened to several, and he sounds oblivious to the reality of his writings and his manner suggests that he is either lying about his motivations or truly imbecilic.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 11:06 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Point!
Friday, January 12, 2007

Nifong reportedly (ABC News) wants out as Duke rape D.A. A last ditch effort to save his job, no doubt, and step down before the case is thrown out, but a point nonetheless in my high-stakes Prediction Game with my brother.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 6:03 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Prime Minister Dershowitz: "No Carter Without Me"

Prime Minister Dershowitz is not content to savagely attack Jimmy Carter on the Internet: Now it turns out he's been saying that Carter should not be allowed to speak at Brandeis unless he debates Dershowitz. Eh? The president who negotiated the Camp David accords cannot be heard on the subject of Israel-Palestine unless he debates Alan Dershowitz?!? If Dershowitz is so concerned about balance, where's the other side?

As the Boston Globe reported this week, Carter originally turned down the invitation (Good for him!) but this week a compromise was worked out:

Last month, the former president told the Globe he had declined an invitation from a university trustee to speak at Brandeis, because it came with the suggestion he debate Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School who has criticized Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

Carter's original decision set off a furor on campus and sparked a petition of more than 100 students and faculty members, who said Carter should be invited to speak without debating Dershowitz. Others contended that inviting Carter to speak without a debate would violate the university's responsibility to promote free speech.

The invitation to Carter also triggered questions about how open the predominantly Jewish campus is to views critical of Israel.

At least we finally have an answer of who should take the next open seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 9:46 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

There Was Not a Single Spot on the Ground That Was Free of a Human Body

Labels: Islam, Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 8:41 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

But Will He Be Sworn In Using the Koran?

Not just Washington is for Muslims anymore. Word out of Jerusalem today that Israel has appointed its first Muslim cabinet minister. And the reaction is just what you'd expect if you've been reading the headlines here and here: It's a threat to Israel's religious heritage; it's a threat to the Arab campaign against "apartheid."

ISRAEL'S first Muslim cabinet minister received a baptism of fire yesterday as an extremist Jewish coalition partner termed him a "plague" and hard-line Arab nationalists denounced him as a "fig leaf" for apartheid.

Esterina Tartman, an MP from the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party said that the appointment of Ghaleb Majadale to the post of science, culture and sport minister harms Israel's character as a Jewish state. "We need to burn this plague out of our midst and god willing, the lord will help us with that," she told Israel Radio.

Mr Majadale, 53, a businessman and veteran Labour party functionary from the northern town of Baka al-Gharbiya, hailed his own appointment on Wednesday as "a historic, precedent- making step that I could not turn down." Amir Peretz, the defence minister and Labour party leader whose popularity has plummeted since Israel's failure to win last summer's war with Hezbollah, is believed to have made the appointment in order to secure the support of Mr Majadale and Arab Labour party members for his June bid for re-election as party chairman.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 8:29 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Yale Bashing
Thursday, January 11, 2007

Move over Duke, we have a real assault in the Yale community. For those of you who haven't been following this story, a Yale singing group was assaulted on the streets of San Francisco on New Year's Eve after singing the National Anthem at a private party. The trouble began when some Sacred Heart graduates crashed the party, reports a local TV station, and by many reports, became jealous at the attention the young men from Yale were receiving.

They repeatedly tried to start a fight. Nineteen year-old Richard Aicardi, wearing a Santa hat at the party, called in reinforcements and a nearby surveillance camera caught one vehicle that brought some of the attackers. They ganged up on the members of The Baker's Dozen as they trickled out of the party.

Sharyar Aziz's jaw was broken in two places. He had to be rushed back to New York for reconstructive surgery. His jaw is wired shut. Other members of the group suffered black eyes, scrapes, a severely sprained ankle and a serious concussion.

Now a new controversy has erupted that SF police tried to overlook the story. Much more heat yet to come.

Labels: Yale

Posted by B Feiler at 10:39 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

God Is Not Next

Pew has just done it's new survey of "Generation Next," defined as Americans who grew up in the shadow of 9-11, or 18-25 year olds. Among the headlines, two-thirds feel their generation in unique (natch) and a majority say their main goal is "getting rich." (Thirty-six percent have tattoos, down from 40% for 26-40 year olds.)

Even given that vast majorities think binge drinking, casual sex, and illegal drug use are rampant in their generation, the news on God is striking.

1) 20% of Nexters say they have no religious affiliation, twice the number (11%) who said the same in the late 1980's. 11% of those over 25 fall into the same category, consistent with other surveys I've seen.

2) Protestants are suffering the most. 44% define themselves as Protestants, down 15% since the late 1980's. 25% define themselves as Catholic, down 14%. Jews remain constant at 2% of the population.

3) 63% believe in evolution over creationism, more than 20 percentage points higher than those older than 61.

Is Generation Next the next-to-last for the notion of America as the most religious nation in the world?

Labels: Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 10:02 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Is Carter "Bought and Paid for by Arabs?"

A wave of news, and, I'm afraid, a setback on the Carter front today. For newcomers to the site, Feiler Faster has been writing about the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter's new book for some time now -- first criticizing the hysteria among Jews who deride a book by a well-known Arabist as, well, sympathetic to the Arabs; then, complimenting the much more interesting second-wave of commentary on the book that shows how Carter is actually going against decades of Christian thought on Israel. Helpful hint: Lambasting a Christian for being anti-Christian is much more newsworthy than lambasting him for being anti-Jewish.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 4:49 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

You Can't Get to Heaven Without Changing Planes in Atlanta
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

That's what we used to say growing up in Savannah, and the reason was Delta, one of the backbones of Atlanta's boosteristic-biz mentality. Cut to today. I don't particularly have a horse in the Delta-U.S. Air merger talks that are all over the media today, from the NYT to the WSJ, even though half my life's savings are caught up in Delta Frequent Flyer points. But I do have a horse in my predictions game with my brother, and one of the big differences we have is on this issue: I have that the merger will happen; he has that it won't. Here's the analysis from the NYT Dealbook blog:

After crunching the numbers on US Airways‘ latest bid for Delta Air Lines, several equity analysts said Wednesday that it seemed to present a better payout for creditors than Delta’s standalone reorganization plan. Their estimates were slightly different, but three of them calculated that US Airways was offering at least $2 billion more than Delta would be worth if it emerged from bankruptcy on its own. Their analysis suggests that US Airways’ new offer, consisting of $10.2 billion in cash and stock, may get serious consideration from Delta’s creditors.

“US Airways believes a merger with Delta can produce $1.65 billion of annual synergies, which, we think is doable,” Merrill Lynch’s Michael Linnenberg wrote in a research note Wednesday. He said a combination would produce a value of $12.7 billion to $15.4 billion, with a midpoint of $14.1 billion. That compares to a value of $10.7 billion, at the midpoint, under the Delta plan.

“While it is likely that a US Airways/Delta merger could take longer to close than Delta emerging from bankruptcy, one cannot ignore the magnitude of the cash component of the US Airways offer,” Mr. Linnenberg wrote.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 7:15 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The Baptist Civil War

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have joined the decades-old civil war of Baptists.

With the help of former President Carter, Baptists who have distanced themselves from the conservative Southern Baptist Convention announced plans Tuesday for a major meeting that aims to improve the Baptist image and broaden its agenda.

Carter, who left the Southern Baptists in 2000 after the denomination came under conservative control, and former President Bill Clinton, also a Baptist, joined leaders of about 40 Baptist groups in making the announcement at The Carter Center.

"Our goal is to have a major demonstration of harmony and a common commitment to personifying and to accomplish the goals that Jesus Christ expressed," Carter said.

Actually, Carter's involvement is not new; but Clinton's public involvement would appear to be a new twist. Religious reconciliation is one of four broad areas that the Clinton Global Initiative has dedicated itself to addressing, and while attacking another denomination (fundamentalists in the Baptist community) may not seem like a good tactic, it's actually a bold move to strengthen the moderates. Picking up on what I said yesterday, the oft-heard claim, "Where are the moderates?" in Islam can equally be applied to Christianity. Here's another full-throated yell.

Posted by B Feiler at 1:33 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

What Jefferson Thought of Islam

Christopher Hitchens has posted an acerbic attack on Rep. Ellison on Slate. While acknowledging that the act of being sworn in on the Koran was a masterstroke against the Religious Right, he challenges the new congressman to denounce his onetime affiliation with Louis Farrakhan: "If Ellison now wants to use his faith to justify an appeal to pluralism and inclusiveness and diversity, he needs to repudiate the Nation of Islam, and in much more unambivalent terms than any I have yet heard from him."

He points out that Jefferson included Islam in his list of protected religions and saves his coup de grace for the Jefferson Bible, when the future president trimmed out all the miracles from the gospels and published a much smaller book.

As far as I can find, he avoided any comment on the religious dimension of the war. But then, he avoided public comment on faith whenever possible. It was not until long after his death that we became able to read most of his scornful writings on revelation and redemption. And it was not until long after his death that The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth was publishable. Sometimes known as "the Jefferson Bible" for short, this consists of the four gospels of the New Testament as redacted by our third president with (literally) a razor blade in his hand. With this blade, he excised every verse dealing with virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and other puerile superstition, thus leaving him (and us) with a very much shorter book. In 1904 (those were the days), the Jefferson Bible was printed by order of Congress, and for many years was presented to all newly elected members of that body. Here's a tradition worth reviving: Why not ask all new members of Congress to swear on that?

And here's a tradition worth inaugurating: The Quran repeats and plagiarizes many passages of the New Testament, including some of the most fantastic and mythical ones. Is it not time to apply the razor and produce a reasonable Quran as well? What could be more inclusive? What could be a better application of Jeffersonian original intent?

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 12:53 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Wrong Number
Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Every day, at roughly the same time of day, I get a call on my BlackBerry from the following number: 425/562-3215. I know this because I don't use my BlackBerry for its phone service. I don't know my own number. My wife doesn't know the number. No one knows the number. I've never used it, even once. I just have to have it as part of my Cingular data service. Sometimes the number will leave a message, but it's always blank, and I have to incur huge expenses to delete it from my voice mail box, which leaves an annoying icon on the face of my BlackBerry.

Today I typed that number into Google and learned that it's a scam. It calls you, says it's from your cell phone provider or some such, and asks for your credit card, Social Security #, etc. There are numerous references to this number on the Internet. But Cingular won't block it. I did learn how to delete the messages from my voice mail box without using the BlackBerry phone service, and I do feel better about the whole situation. But now I know there's a phantom number out there waging war, and I want it stopped.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 11:33 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Quote of the Day

"I look forward to the evening," Stephen Colbert said, of an upcoming appearance on The O'Reilly Factor. "It is an honor to speak face-to-face with a broadcasting legend, and I feel the same way about Mr. O'Reilly."

Tip: To see a clip of me on The Colbert Report, click here.

Labels: Quote of the Day

Posted by B Feiler at 8:28 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

William Wants a Doll

As I've been discussing over the last week, every year my brother and I have a very complicated (I won't even go into the scoring system) predictions game. This year, I won handily. Below are my predictions for 2007. Part of the fun is keeping score throughout the year. I already regret not having picked McGuire out of the Hall of Fame.

Super Bowl -- Chargers
World Series -- Mets
Best Pic -- The Departed
World Leaders No Longer in Power -- Maliki, Siniora, Abbas, Reid, Mubarak
Dow Jones -- 3,000
Arts/Entertainment -- Scorsese wins first Oscar
Politics -- Nifong forced out from Duke "rape" case
Media -- NYT ends TimesSelect
Sports -- Bonds surpasses Aaron
Geo/Science -- Both Houses overturn Bush stem cell veto
Random -- Harry Potter killed in final book
Economics -- Delta/USAir merge
Cabinet -- All in power
Outrageous -- William announces engagement

Declared presidential candidates on 12/31/07
D – Clinton, Biden, Richardson, Edwards, Obama, Kucinich, Vilsack, Clark
R – McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Gingrich, Brownback, Hunter

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Live and Let Liver

You heard it first here on FeilerFaster, under the headline: Duckeasies and Free Gras after Foie Fatwah. Now the AP has gotten around to reporting that restaurants in Chicago are flouting the recent foie gras ban. ''We need to focus as much as possible on things that actually make people sick and kill people,'' said Health Department spokesman Tim Hadac. ''Our mission is to protect human health and not the health of geese and ducks.''

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 4:20 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

A Bishop in Teheran

As someone who has been to Iran twice in the last decade, including a long trip chronicled in Where God Was Born, I believe that a lot of the hype of surrounding Iran in the media these days bears an all-to-comfortable connection to the alarm that was hyped about Iraq a number of years ago, with the aid of a vicious dictator with a track record of gassing his own people. The voice of pause are too few, and too rare. But they seem to correspond to nearly anyone who's visited the country.

John Chane is the Bishop of Washington and a friend I made through the interfaith work I began in 2002 with the publication of Abraham. Long before that book was featured on the cover of TIME and became what it became, he offered his clout to an Abraham Salon I was trying to organize in WDC. Since then we've done a number of events together and I find him to be a gracious and passionate advocate of moderation and humanity in religion.

He's just come back from Iran and has posted a report here. Some excerpts:

The recent victory of reform-minded candidates in Iran's municipal elections, coming on the heels of the Iranian government's reprehensible conference for Holocaust deniers, neatly symbolizes that country's complex and confounding nature. Which event tells us most about that nation's future course?

I believe Americans and their religious leaders can help shape the answer to this question by establishing relationships with moderate religious leaders in the Islamic Republic. I recently visited Tehran with three other leaders in the Episcopal Church, a trip that deepened my belief that the future of our world hinges on fostering respect and cooperation among the three Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
...
Over the course of three days in Tehran, we engaged in intense mutual scrutiny. In candid conversations with top religious and political leaders, we discussed the war in Iraq, the unhelpful rhetoric of both of our presidents, the controversy surrounding Iran's nuclear program, and our mutual fears over the volatility of the Middle East. We did not leave these meetings having come to agreement on all of the political issues that divide our two countries, but with the sense that our conversations had been fruitful and friendly, and that we should explore moving beyond dialog and into true partnership.

Where are the moderate voices in Islam? is a question I often get. Here's a moderate voice in Christianity on Iran. Will it be heard?

Labels: Interfaith Relations, Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 3:40 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

El Al Caves in Kosher-gate

Following up on a story I talked about before the holidays, El Al, Israeli Airlines, appears to have completely caved to the right wing in Israel, which make up a bulk of its airline passengers. El Al has agreed to observe the Sabbath, and if it wants to break the Sabbath for some reason (i.e. a plane gets delayed from Europe and wants to fly a few hours later, as triggered the crisis some months ago), the airline has to ask permission of a leading rabbi in Israel. Ask permission from a rabbi who would likely be celebrating the Sabbath?!

In trying to save face, El Al released details of conditions it has purportedly turned down: "El Al said some of the rabbinical committee's main demands were not accepted. Among them were the demand for a veto-wielding rabbi who would rule on company decisions, as well as specifying sanctions against the airline in case the agreement was violated."

They say they are strong because they rejected a "veto-wielding rabbi!" Threats of boycott by conservative religious groups in the United States seem thrown around all too easily here, and seem less and less effective. In Israel, they still work apparently.

Labels: Judaism, Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 9:10 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Candidly, Women Don't Read Torah
Monday, January 8, 2007

Twenty-five years ago this month the Reform Jewish community ordained its first woman rabbi -- Sally Priesand. On her retirement, she spoke with NPR. She also released the rejection letter she received from the Hebrew Union College:

Dear Miss Priesand,

We are pleased to learn of your interest in our college. Since you state in your letter that your interests lean specifically to the rabbinate, we would have to inform you candidly that we do not know what opportunities exist for women in the active rabbinate, since we have, as yet, not ordained any women.

Sincerely yours, Joseph Karasick, rabbi, assistant to the provost, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

Labels: Judaism, Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 4:47 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Are the Stem Cells Wars Over?

This provocative headline from TIME about a new study showing that stem cells are beginning to prove worth the hype -- without the concerns of some religious communities. One of my predictions for this year is that both houses of Congress will overrule a Bush veto on stem cells:

It's always dangerous to use the word "breakthrough," especially in an area of science haunted by contentious politics and the risk of false hope. But a new report in the latest issue of Nature biotechnology makes it hard to resist. Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard have just announced that they've derived stem cells and used them to grow an amazing variety of cells, including liver, bone, fat, blood vessel, muscle and nerve cells. And they did it without even touching an embryo.

Labels: Politics in America, Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 4:22 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

World's Largest Shawarma
Sunday, January 7, 2007

Camels are not just for the desert any more. In order to promote its new show, "Little Mosque On The Prairie", the CBC organized what they called "the World's Biggest Halal Shawarma Sandwich" -- a 300-pound shawarma, or turkey giro, in the middle of Toronto. As one local blog reported: "Torontoist loves good street theatre and it loves free food, and this provided both, so why not go? Heck, there were camels and everything. Nothing says "entertainment" like camels!" These photos are from their report.

Labels: Camels

Posted by B Feiler at 9:51 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

"The Muslim Archie Bunker"

Canada is abuzz with the debut on Tuesday night of a new comedy, Little Mosque on the Prairie, about, well, you guessed it:

In the advance scenes of a new Canadian television comedy, a Muslim man stands in an airport queue talking to his mother on a mobile telephone.

'Don't put Dad on the phone,' he implores. 'I've been planning this for months, it's not like I dropped a bomb on him. If Dad thinks it's suicide, then so be it. This is Allah's plan for me.'

The passenger in front of him, a sensibly stout Canadian, cranes her neck to listen in on the conversation, becoming increasingly and comically alarmed. As she rushes off to tell the authorities, the man finishes his sentence. 'I'm moving to the prairies to run a mosque.'

This is the world of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a new comedy airing in January on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Even though it hasn't yet aired an episode, the show is creating such an advance buzz that the CBC pushed up its production to launch in the new year, instead of airing in the Fall as originally planned. The show will air for the first time in Canada on Tuesday.

The series' name was taken from the wholesome 1970s US series Little House on the Prairie, but unlike the show set among pioneers in the 1800s, the subject matter in this show comes solidly from the post-9/11 world.

I'd love to hear from anyone who sees it.

Labels: Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 9:42 PM 1 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Harvard Snubs God

My wife, it must be said, is not exactly a reader of Feiler Faster. But she is a contributor! She rolled over in bed last night, while reading the Harvard alumni magazine (insert joke here), and announced she had a great thing for me to blog about: Harvard, as part of curriculum overhaul, would require all students to take a course in religion -- one of five required areas of study. Here's a graf from a piece in the Boston Globe that revealed the plan last October:

Harvard University, founded 370 years ago to train Puritan ministers, should again require all undergraduates to study religion, along with U.S. history and ethics, a faculty committee is recommending.

The surprisingly bold recommendations come after years of rancorous internal debate over what courses should be required of all Harvard students. The current core curriculum has been criticized for focusing on narrow academic questions rather than real-world issues students could likely confront beyond the wrought-iron gates of Harvard Square.

The report calls for Harvard to require students to take a course in "reason and faith," which could include classes on topics such as religion and democracy, Charles Darwin or a current course called "Why Americans Love God and Europeans Don't."

"Harvard is no longer an institution with a religious mission, but religion is a fact that Harvard's graduates will confront in their lives," the report says, noting 94 percent of incoming students report discussing religion and 71 percent attend services.

Sitting down tonight to write about this plan, which obviously was news when the new alumni magazine went to bed, I happened upon this article from CNN.com, dated December 14:

Harvard University said Wednesday it had dropped a controversial proposal that would have required all undergraduates to study religion as part of the biggest overhaul of its curriculum in three decades.

Efforts to revamp Harvard's curriculum, which has been criticized for focusing too narrowly on academic topics instead of real-life issues, have been in the works for three years. A proposal for a "reason and faith" course requirement, which would have set Harvard apart from many other universities and made it unique among its peers in the elite Ivy League, was unveiled in a preliminary report in October.

"We have removed 'reason and faith' as a distinct category," a faculty task force said in a revised report, excepts of which were obtained by Reuters. "Courses dealing with religion -- both those examining normative reasoning in a religious context and those engaging in a descriptive examination of the roles that religion plays today and has historically played -- can be readily accommodated in other categories," it said.

Talk about forgetting your roots! One could hardly overemphasize the centrality that religion played in Harvard's founding, curriculum, education, and culture for it's first 200 plus years. Until the 1820's, the commencement speech at Harvard was given in Hebrew -- as it was considered the original language of humankind and the standard of the educated person. Also, religion clearly is the dominant issue of our time, and requiring more students to confront it in an academic way, particularly in the moment in their lives when they are most likely to be confronting it in a personal way, seems laudable. Also, the trendsetting power that Harvard would have to force others to

Having said that, and not being privvy to the internal deliberations, my first reaction is that religion need not be isolated from other large blocks -- social science, liberal arts, history, art, literature -- all of which overlap the study of religion. I mean doesn't religion come up in a lot of classes in the history of Western civilization, the history of Eastern civilization, the art of the Middle Ages, the literature of anywhere, even the history of science? God ought to be in a lot of classes at Harvard. Proposing that he have his own requirement, suggests a greater problem with how universities view the world.

Labels: Bible in America

Posted by B Feiler at 9:04 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Angels Not Tough Enough
Friday, January 5, 2007

A Friday afternoon smile: Meredith College, a women's college in North Carolina, has decided to drop its century-old nickname, The Angels, because it's "not tough enough!" As the school's athletic information director told the Charlotte Observer: "What are you going to say? 'Kill 'em, Angels?'"

Labels: The Bible in Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 6:16 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Cartoons and Death

A British man who was protesting the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in 2005 was convicted today and faces up to life in prison.

A 27-year-old Muslim man has been found guilty of soliciting murder during a protest against the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Briton Umran Javed of Washwood Heath Road, Birmingham, who had denied the charges, was also convicted of using words likely to stir up racial hatred at last February's demonstration.

The Old Bailey jury had heard how Javed said "bomb, bomb Denmark; bomb, bomb USA" into a loudhailer outside the Danish Embassy on Sloane Street, Knightsbridge.

Labels: Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 5:02 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The Mayans and the Jews

Posted by B Feiler at 4:27 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

A Tree Does Not Bloom in Brooklyn

One of my favorite parts of cherry blossom season in Japan, during the many years I lived there, was learning all the different words the Japanese have to describe minute differences in cherry blossom season. There's a word for the time when just the buds are out, a word for seeing them in sunset, a word for having a picnic under them, a word for taking a stroll beneath them, a word for when the petals coming raining down at the end. For all I know, there's a word for when the blossoms come out early, in the snow.

Maybe now we need a new word: Cherry blossoms have become the canary in the mine for global warming. Whenever we have a burst of springlike weather in mid-winter, as we've been having in New York, the ultimate expression of this odd turnabout is that the cherry blossoms are blooming early. I keep reading, for example, reports that the cherry blossoms are blooming in Brooklyn. Most recently on Drudge, at this hour.

Labels: Media, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 11:42 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Get Your Hand Out of the Collection Plate

Yesterday I was talking about how bracing it is for anyone who spends any time reading about the history of religion in America to learn that a whopping 155 members of Congress are Catholic. As recently as a few generations ago, this news would have caused deep concern in large portions of the Protestant majority in America. Today, the opposite news rises to the surface: the Catholic Church is sagging under the weight of its moral weakness. The NYT flags the following story on Page 1 today: A study at Villanova has found that a stunning 85% of churches experience embezzlement of their funds. EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT.

“As a faith-based organization, we place a lot of trust in our folks,” said Chuck Zech, a co-author of the study and director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova.

“We think if you work for a church — you’re a volunteer or a priest — the last thing on your mind is to do something dishonest,” Mr. Zech said. “But people are people, and there’s a lot of temptation there, and with the cash-based aspect of how churches operate, it’s pretty easy.”

There will be no need to ask "Where's the outrage?" over this story, it's going to be loud -- and not just in Catholic churches. And as an outsider to the Catholic Church, I can only conclude that this is another piece of drip-drip information that's going to deeply undermine the authority of the institution. Pull back just for a second and look at the wallops: gay priest cover up, huge financial settlements, The DaVinci Code, financial scandals. Put this in the context of the power the Church has had over Western Civilization for the last seventeen centuries and it's hard not to think we are entering a new era when religion is going to be less and less defined from above and more and more defined as an individual creation.

Labels: Christianity

Posted by B Feiler at 9:18 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Married Priests?

At first glance this appears to be a bigger deal than it is: A meeting at the Vatican to discuss the readmission of married priests. The news is from a meeting in Nov., 2006 that Catholic News re-ran this week as part of its most popular series from 2006:

A Vatican meeting presided over by Pope Benedict yesterday discussed the possible readmission of "priests who at present meet the conditions foreseen by the Church", while reaffirming "the value" of celibacy. A Vatican statement said "the value of the choice of celibacy according to Catholic tradition was reaffirmed as was the need for a solid human and Christian formation, be it for seminarians as well as priests who have already been ordained," Reuters reports.

The meeting had been called to debate a strategy to deal with the schism threatened by controversial Zambian Archbishop Emanuel Milingo's plan to create a personal prelature for married priests following his recent ordination of four married men in Washington DC.

At second glance it may be downright odd: "Milingo, a charismatic faith healer and exorcist, is not just a keen proponent of marriage, but tried it himself in 2001 at a mass ceremony held by the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church."

Labels: Christianity

Posted by B Feiler at 8:54 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Duckeasies and Free Gras after Foie Fatwah

Who says civil disobedience is dead? Chefs in Chicago are taking all sorts of measures to get around the recent ban on serving foie gras. In one case, first reported this week, a restaurant served the delicacy free, since the law forbids only the sale of foie gras. "A [Health Department] department spokesman said the restaurant Bin 36 avoided a citation when health inspectors paid a surprise visit and found the restaurant was not illegally selling the liver delicacy but instead giving it away as a free side dish," something strongly hinted at on the menu.

In another case, a North Side restaurant-owner took the official warning from City Hall, threatening "punishment" if he continued to serve foie gras, framed it and set it beside his cash register. "We displayed it proudly," Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug's, a gourmet sausage eatery with daily specials including "smoked pheasant topped with foie gras chunks," was quoted as saying in the Tribune. "My customers and myself enjoy foie gras." The story also noted chef Didier Durand, who has conferred the priceless "duckeasies" label upon local chefs refusing to dishonor culinary tradition by refraining from serving foie gras.

Meanwhile, a Chicago Sun-Times story quoted a spokesman from the Health Dept as saying the issue is "without question the least-important thing we're called upon to do."

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 1:41 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Olmert on the Ropes
Thursday, January 4, 2007

As I mentioned earlier this week, my brother and I have an annual predictions game. I'm going to post my predix for 2007 in the next day or so. One of our categories is picking world leaders who will no longer be in power by year's end. Looks like I may have missed a chance in not picking the prime minister of Israel. A new poll shows his chief rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, would trounce him in his own party. "Israel Radio on Thursday released the poll of 345 Kadima voters conducted by Panorama Markets. It found that 49 percent of Kadima voters would back the Israeli foreign minister as party leader if early elections were held, compared to 8.7 percent for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 10:44 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Doesn't Anybody Publish Bibles or Korans Anymore?

Posted by B Feiler at 3:11 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

It's Jefferson's Koran! (Updated -- Live on CNN)

Well, now we know who has the better political skills! Keith Ellison, the new Rep who intends to use the Koran in his inaugural day tomorrow, surely gets the last laugh with his announcement that he intends to use a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Considering that Jefferson once published his own Bible in which he snipped out all the miracles, this move is unlikely to stop the carping from the Religious Right, but it gets my vote as political move of the year so far!

Here's the key graf from a report on the WaPo:

"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.

Jefferson's copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson's collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn't the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies -- the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.

UPDATE: Those political skills paid off! CNN is carrying Eillison's swearing in on Jefferson's Koran LIVE!! And here's Pelosi showing up. It goes without saying that no one else's private swearing in is being shown.

Labels: Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 3:02 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Catholics Top Congress

Labels: Bible in America, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 12:24 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

The End of Fundamentalism?

Andrew Sullivan has what is, in my mind, the defining blog covering politics and religion. His mix of short squibs and longer, more thoughtful posts, gets the mix almost exactly right, in my opinion. I disagree with lots of what he says, for sure, but I enjoying seeing how his mind works. As he has written about there, and elsewhere, for months, his new book explores the role of humility in religion, and especially in dealing with God. This is a big theme of mine in Where God Was Born. Most people take confidence from the Bible; I believe in its very narrative, especially the way God continues to shift his allegiance from first sons to second sons, from king to prophet, from Israelite to non-Israelite, the Bible is sending a message that humility must be part of our relationship with God.

Andrew has just posted a new piece arguing that 2006 was the year of humility in religion. Here are two key grafs:

There was the strain of Islamic Wahhabism incubated in Saudi Arabia, exported to Afghanistan and wreaking havoc in Iraq. There was Shi'ite theocracy, centered in Tehran, made more terrifying by the apocalyptic worldview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the West, the dominant form of Christianity was Fundamentalist Protestantism, gaining new converts and, fused with the Republican Party, flexing powerful political muscles. And in the Vatican, the conservatism of John Paul II found its natural successor in the austere and more thoroughgoing orthodoxy of the new Pope, Benedict XVI. There seemed no stopping this cultural surge, just various attempts to adjust to it, restrain it from violence and temper its extremes.

And then in 2006, there was an unmistakable pause, a moment of self-examination, even the hint of a great humbling. The most absolutist visionaries found a limit to their certitude. Benedict XVI went in a matter of months from proclaiming an irreducible gulf between Christianity and Islam to visiting a mosque in Turkey with white slippers on his feet. He publicly called for Turkey, a secular state but a Muslim country, to be integrated into the European Union. In the U.S., the religious right saw its most enthusiastic repre sentative in the Senate, Rick Santorum, go down to defeat by a crushing 18 points. For the first time, a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage failed — in Arizona. State initiatives for embryonic-stem-cell research became a wedge issue for ... Democrats. Religion finally cut both ways in democratic discourse. For the first time since the evangelical revival began in the 1980s, too much rigidity began to cost politicians votes rather than win them more.

If only this were so. I disagree that fundamentalism was the "dominant" brand of Protestantism. It's by far the minority. The Shia revolution in Iran was in 1979 and has been showing many, many signs of weakening in recent years, despite the political rise of the new president. His evidence of a turnaround in 2006 are more persuasive, but I think in retrospect will be tied to the overreach of the Iraq War, which, as I write in my book, was more tied to religion than anyone ever admitted. If anything, I can't help wondering if this "turning point" is more associated with the publication of his book. Its reaction in conservative quarters might be evidence against him, however.

Labels: Bible in America, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 8:40 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Tinsel Floss

Word out of Europe today that officials in Germany have found a novel way of recycling thousands of used and unsold Christmas trees: Feeding time at the zoo! "Elephants around the country will enjoy a delicious lunch today consisting of about five Christmas trees each," Berlin Zoo spokesman Ragnar Kuehne told Reuters on Thursday.

Posted by B Feiler at 8:22 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Osama-mania
Wednesday, January 3, 2007

First CNN, now Yahoo! The Vast Clinton Left Wing Conspiracy?


Via TPMCafe.

Labels: Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 10:45 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Iran in Iraq

A lot of talk about this report in the New York Sun that U.S. officials have captured documents in Iraq showing that Iran is influencing both Shia and Sunni insurgetsn in Iraq to create "total mayhem." The key graf:

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

Despite what you may hear, this story reinforces what I've been saying that reports of a broad Shia Crescent stretching from Iran to Gaza are grossly exaggerated. Just as the U.S. was doing back in the '80s when we supported Bin Laden (and Saddam) against various of our enemies (Afghanistan and Iran), Iran is primarily ensuring that the U.S. gets bogged down in Iraq, even if it means supporting their natural enemies. The rivalry between Iran and Iraq is too deep -- and too old -- to be easily erased.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 2:53 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Cradle in the Sun

Labels: Biblical Archaeology, Christianity, Judaism

Posted by B Feiler at 10:53 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Zen and the Art of Caucusing
Tuesday, January 2, 2007

The NYT Caucus blog (which is behind the firewall) points out that in addition to the first Muslim in Congress, the Chamber is welcoming its first two Buddhists. The blog asked them what they intended to use for the ceremonial welcoming. To repeat: NO ONE SWEARS IN ON THE BIBLE. NO BOOKS ARE USED. Anyway, here was their answer:

Representative-elect Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat who ousted Representative Cynthia McKinney in the Democratic primary, became a Buddhist decades ago, though his family does not share that faith. A spokesperson said that Mr. Johnson plans to use a Bible, citing tradition.

Besides, there is no book in Buddhism that’s equivalent to the Bible or the Koran, said Representative-elect Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat. She said she probably would not use any book, but that in the past, when she was sworn in as lieutenant governor, she used a friend’s family Bible.

Posted by B Feiler at 5:20 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Teddy Was Jerusalem

From Haaretz: Theodor "Teddy" Kollek, who as mayor for more than a generation shepherded the transition of Jerusalem from a Mideast backwater with a glorious past to a world capital of culture and politics, died Tuesday at age 95.


"Teddy was Jerusalem and Jerusalem was Teddy," Mayor Uri Lupolianski said Tuesday. "With his spirit and personality he symbolized the true unified Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. The city of Jerusalem and the entire state are indebted to Teddy for his tremendous contribution to the people of Israel, the state and its capital."

Interesting tidbit: According to the article, he was named after Theodore Herzl, the legendary founder of Zionism.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 11:39 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Barack Hussein Obama

I've been looking for somebody to say something interesting about Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, ever since some Republicans began making it their new favorite fact about the shooting star. Slate chimes in now with a history of the middle name as attack slur. It points out that middle names—often the maternal maiden name—came into fashion in the United States in the middle of 19^th century. Only three of our first 17 presidents carried middle names: John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, and James Knox Polk.

But the bottom line: the name could prove costly.

The research of Grant W. Smith, a professor of English at Eastern Washington University, who has studied how voters react to the sounds of candidates' names, suggests that Obama's name could hurt him with undecided voters, who, since they sometimes cast ballots on the basis of vague sentiments, may be influenced by a candidate's unusual moniker. Surnames have a far greater impact than middle names, said Smith, who thinks voters will actually groove to the rhythm of Obama—though, he notes, it "would be better to have the accent on the first syllable"—O-bama (Apparently, names that echo the soothing cadence of nursery rhymes appeal to voters). Smith acknowledges, however, that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden stir "very powerful associations" in the minds of Americans.


Obama's "Hussein" highlights the surprising, if very occasional, utility of middle names in politics, particularly in attack politics. Middle names can be particularly helpful in undermining a candidate's manufactured image. Consider Jim Webb's effective middle-assault on incumbent George Allen in the Virginia Senate race. To fend off charges that Webb applauded flag burning, a Webb aide repeatedly derided "George Felix Allen Jr." for choosing to "cut and run" rather than serve in the military during Vietnam, as Webb did. (Allen shares a first name and last name with his father but technically is not a junior


This was a brilliant swipe, since "Felix" conjures up not the image of a football-tossing, Confederate-flag-waving good ol' boy, as Allen portrayed himself, but of Felix Unger, the kvetching, overfastidious bachelor of TV's The Odd Couple.

Update: It's not just the last name. RawStory has news that CNN mixed up Obama and Osama last night.

Labels: Islam, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 9:08 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Could Abraham Have Owned Camels?

A team of anthropologists say they have identified a camel rider among the skeletal remains which belongs to a man from the 3rd millennium BC.

The team were from the Anthropology Department of Iran's Archeology Research Center and the British New Castle University, who had the mission to conduct paleo-pathological studies on the remaining skeletons of Burnt City adults.

The team say evidence of bone trauma suggests that the rider lived most of his life on camelback, possibly from the time he was a young adult to the time of death.

Labels: Biblical Archaeology, Camels

Posted by B Feiler at 8:33 AM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Indiana Jones and Noah's Ark
Monday, January 1, 2007

I've spent quite a lot of time in recent years both trekking up Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey, reading about all the people, from Czar Nicholas to astronauts to photographers on Air Force One, who claim to have found Noah's Ark, to the endless number of websites that track the hunt. In the course of that time, I once stumbled onto a "real actual script" that purported to be the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series, in which he races to find the ark. Makes sense. I flipped through the script online, then thought little about it.

Suddenly, today, Steven Spielberg confirmed that he will begin shooting the fourth episode this year, for release in 2008. No word on topic. Within minutes, the blogosphere erupted with speculation about the topic, and a movie buff in the UK has provided the backstory to the script I saw.

In the spring of 1995, Last Crusade screenwriter Jeffrey Boam privately admitted to having been asked to write a script, with subsequent rumours suggesting that the story concerned an attempt to foil a Soviet plot to establish a missile base on the moon, or had something to do with the UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico - or both. Then on May 29, 1996, a script entitled Indiana Jones And The Sons Of Darkness, credited to Boam (from a story by George Lucas), was posted on the internet by someone who claimed to have lifted it from Lucasfilm's offices. The script, which concerned a race by Indy to beat the Russians to the remnants of Noah's Ark, was removed fro the web a day after its initial posting, fuelling rumours that it was genuine. But four months and several cease-and-desist notices later, ambitious Indy fan, Robert Smith 'fessed up to having written the bogus script. "I was paid the ultimate compliment by those fans who believed the script was the real McCoy," he said later. Smith's confession didn't stop the ever-reliable Daily Mail from reporting that Sons Of Darkness was going ahead, with Kevin Costner as Indy's 'bad seed' brother.

Labels: Middle East, The Bible in Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 9:25 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Point!

Super Bowl Champion -- Indy (0)
World Series Champ -- Cardinals (2)
Best Picture -- Brokeback (0)
Three World Leaders No Longer in Power -- Sharon, Frist, Mandela, Rove, Delay (3)
Dow -- 11,000 (0)

Then we make predictions by category:

Arts/Entertainment -- Ang Lee wins Oscar for Brokeback (1)
Politics -- Santorum defeated in PA Senate race (1)
Sports -- Braves lose division for first time in 15 years (1)
Geography -- Supreme Court overturns TX redistricting (1/2)
Random -- Arnold out as CA gov (o)
Economics -- Ken Lay convicted (1)

Cabinet Officer not in power -- Rumsfeld (1)

Outrageous -- At least one ex-U.S. president dies (2)

In the final tally, this was one of my best outings in years, and I defeated my brother 12 1/2 to 7 1/2. Tune in on Tuesday for my '07 predictions and help me keep score all year.

Labels: Family

Posted by B Feiler at 8:33 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Feast of the Sacrifice

We've had a lot of conversations in my family over the last few days about the annual Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid ul-Adha) now underway in the Muslim world. It was this festival that was responsible for the Breaking Camel News yesterday and was reportedly one of the main reasons Saddam's execution was hastened to Saturday, to beat the holiday. My parents are on vacation in Morocco and report that the entire country is shut down as sheep are paraded through the streets. One group held this was just the Festival of the Sheep, others that it was part of the Haj, others that it was part of Ramadan.

Eid ul-Adha is one of two Eids, or festivals, that Muslims celebrate as part of the annual Haj, or pilgrimage. The Eid marks Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Unlike many press reports, and even the account in Wikipedia, the son is not named in the Koran. As I discuss at length in my book Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, one group of Islamic interpreters said the son was Isaac, because the Bible says so, and the others insisted it was Ishmael. Over time, because of politics (Islam's battle with Judaism and Christianity), the Ishmael came won. The custom today is to sacrifice an animal and give the meat to the poor.

But problems often occur, as this account my brother forwarded makes clear:

More than a thousand "amateur butchers" in Turkey spent the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in emergency wards Sunday after stabbing themselves or suffering other injuries while sacrificing startled animals. Of at least 1,413 people treated at hospitals, four were severely injured, crushed under the weight of large animals that fell on top of them, the Anatolia news agency reported. Muslims sacrifice cows, sheep, goats and bulls during the four-day religious holiday, a ritual commemorating the provision of a ram for Abraham to sacrifice as he was about to slay his son. They share the meat with friends, family and neighbors and give part of it to the poor.

At the risk of making light, it reminds me of reports one sometimes hears in New York about the number of visits to the emergency room of amateurs cutting their hands while slicing into a bagel.

Posted by B Feiler at 12:42 PM 0 comments  
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

Previous Posts

• Feiler Faster 2.0 Relaunches on Monday, July 23
• No Sunscreen for God
• Murder in Baghdad
• Harry Potter Is Christopher Hitchens' Best Friend
• Hindu v Christian in the U.S. Senate
• But It May Not Be Working
• Leveling the Praying Field
• Lame Name Tag
• The New New Old Coke
• Midnight in the Mall of Good and Evil

Archives

• November 2006
• December 2006
• January 2007
• February 2007
• March 2007
• April 2007
• May 2007
• June 2007
• July 2007

Search Feiler Faster