The Bookworm Beat 10-14-15 — the hot quick links edition, and open thread

Woman-writing-300x265So much to share with you, and so many demands on my time. I’ll make it quick, tantalizing you with short links to wonderful things:

We know the other media outlets are hostile to Israel, but is it possible that Fox News is also turning on Israel? CAMERA has caught it doing exactly the same thing as CNN or the BBC — blaming Israel, the only pluralist, democratic, modern, humanitarian country in the region for the ferocious, malignant, blindly hate-filled upsurge in terrorism unleashed against ordinary Israelis. (As you know, a Saudi owns a significant share in Fox TV. Israel’s friends have long been concerned that this might affect Fox’s objectivity with regard to Israel. I’m not saying that this ownership explains Fox’s slip-ups, though. I just note the ownership in passing.)

Here’s the deal:  When Fox News and John Kerry are agreed about something, you know that (a) Fox is in error and (b) there’s the possibility that something is very, very, very wrong over at Fox.

For those who like stories about dystopian futures, Richard Fernandez has a humdinger, imagining the year 2030 in a world lost to Obama’s foreign policies.

Just this past weekend, a national conference for teachers and administrators convened in Baltimore to discuss what’s really wrong with America’s education system. If you thought they were focusing on fatherless families, union depredations on school districts and students, and meaningless, politically correct education, you thought wrong. It’s you — you, the white person over there, hiding in the corner — who is what’s wrong with education. Zombie explains what’s going on, but you’d have to be crazy or a Leftist really to understand the dynamic.

Poor Bernie forgot to read Kevin Williamson’s explanation about the inevitability of income inequality. Had he done so first, he might not have sounded like such a moron at the debate. (Although considering that he was pouring his Marxist bile into the ears of kids who have been educated in public schools and expensive Leftist enclaves, the bile found a receptive, equally ill-informed audience.)

While I’m on the subject of the debate, Daniel Greenfield wrote an incredibly funny, pointed spoof.

I gave it my best shot, but I don’t like Pope Francis. Theodore Dalrymple puts his finger on my problem: the Pope is a pandering Leftist politician, rather than a principled spiritual leader.

In every presidential election in the past few years, there have been two problems. The first is that, since Reagan left the scene, conservative politicians have been utterly inarticulate. Before 2015, the only exception was Newt, who was articulate, but was quickly stifled by both the Left and the GOP.

The Bush duo, father (“Message: I care”) and son, were famously inept when it came to either selling core principles or rebutting Leftist slanders. McCain and Romney managed to be even worse at that job than the Bushes.

Thankfully, though, things are a bit different with the current crop, Carly is feisty, which shows promise, but she’s untried politically. Marco Rubio is extremely articulate, but I can’t forget his immigration cave-in. Ben Carson quietly and strongly sticks to his guns, but I don’t think he’s thought through enough issues to go far. I prefer Ted Cruz as the best communicator of the bunch, but I know others — all of whom are true conservatives — who find his tone and delivery smarmy.

This year’s good communicators, however, are running into the other problem with presidential election years, which is that the Left has successfully re-branded itself as centrist, even as it hews more and more communist (although Bernie-mania may undo that canard). Anyway, Daniel Greenfield explains how Americans have been sold a bill of Leftist goods.

Speaking of Cruz, David P. Goldman, one of the savviest conservative thinkers around, thinks Cruz will top the ticket. That’s fine by me, ’cause Cruz continues to be my favorite. Goldman posits a Cruz/Rubio candidacy, which I’d also be fine with, but I’d be equally happy with Cruz/Fiorina or Cruz/Carson.

Niall Ferguson wrote a devastating expose of the Obama Doctrine, which he’s finally deciphered. Richard Fernandez adds to that take-down. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Ben Shapiro on the global Left’s ingrained hatred of Jews who, by their very existence, remind them of everything that’s wrong with the Left, past, present, and future.

I meant to fisk the New York Times’ risible column detailing things that make a real man, but, girl-like, flaked out. Thankfully, Larry Correia, man-like, got the job done.

Yeah, about that much vaunted Australian success story when it comes to gun grabs: One Australian says to forget the hype. The truth is that Australia had exactly the same experience as England. Once the gun grab was completed, crime went up.

I find the Swedes taken en masse to be unbearably smug, not to mention disgustingly antisemitic. (Note: I know there are extremely nice individual Swedes in abundance, but I’m talking about the Swedish collective.) For that reason, when I read about raging Muslim riots in Stockholm, my one sarcastic thought was, “Aww. It couldn’t happen to a nicer country.”

Finally, something completely different: Sarah Bernhardt and the birth of the modern celebrity.