Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

This American life lovingly focuses on Jewish wrongs, while ignoring Muslim depredations

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TAL_color2I was talking to someone the other day who was just thrilled that Ira Glass, a Progressive Jew who hosts the well received show This American Life (“TAL”), a staple of public radio, and his Jewish producers and staff, bravely devoted an entire show to a group of Hasidic Jews who have taken over the school board in a New York town, even though the town also has lots of black and Hispanic residents. Having taken over the school board, the Hasids, who resented paying property taxes funding public schools their students couldn’t attend, slashed funding for the public schools so that the Hasids would keep more of their money to spend on their Yeshivas.

Not only did TAL bravely report on these Jews, they admitted that the report could be perceived as antisemitic and inflammatory. Frankly, I doubt they were worried that any of their Progressive audience members would care, since most Progressives, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, loath the conservative Hasids. In addition, it’s a reasonable bet that none of the Hasids described in the report will storm the TAL studio any time soon to decapitate someone.

I was unimpressed. First, this is an old story, one I’ve heard and read about before. Second, the more I know about public schools the less I like them. The outraged black and Hispanic families would do well to seek alternatives to public schools as the Hasids did. And third, when it comes to “bravery,” as I noted above, there’s nothing brave about lambasting Hasidic Jews on a show that gets all its airplay among Progressives.

How many stories, I asked, has TAL done about Islamic radicalism amongst Somali immigrants or about honor killings in American Muslim populations or about the increasing radicalism of Michigan’s huge Jewish Muslim population. The Progressive friend to whom I spoke, the one who boasted about TAL’s brave stand, said I was talking about apples and oranges. He could not understand that there’s nothing brave about being antisemitic on public radio or attacking a group that won’t talk back.

I discovered that his defensiveness might also have arisen because, as best I can tell, TAL has never done anything at all critical of radicalism within America’s Muslim population — and this is true despite 9/11, the Fort Hood Killer, the Boston Marathon bombing, and all sorts of other “unexpected” acts of workplace violence by the Allahu Akbar crowd.

Go ahead and see for yourself. Go to the TAL homepage, and key in “honor killings.” Nothing. Key in “Somalian.” Nothing. Key in “Somalia.” Nothing about Islamic Minnesotans. Key in “Somali.” Nothing about Islamic Minnesotans.

Here’s what I did find when I started searching for Muslims or Islam or Hamas or Palestinians:

1. Israeli soldiers take pictures of Palestinian children by going to the family homes in the middle of the night and waking teen and tween boys to take their pictures. You could call it “Israeli soldiers behaving creepily,” kind of like the Stasi. It is a piece of extremely pro-Palestinian propaganda that holds up badly in light of what we learned during this summer’s war.

2. Israel’s false history, which hid the fact that, instead of all 700,000 Palestinians leaving of their own accord (so that surrounding armies could complete their massacre without fellow Arabs getting in the way), Israelis actually drove out some Palestinians and wouldn’t let them back in. Not a lot of Jewish love in this story.

3. In 2002, a whole program dedicated to (a) the boredom and imprisonment of life in the West bank; (b) the evil conservativism that peculiarly affected Jews after the Second Intifadah, and (c) the wonders of a new, moderate potential Palestinian leader, Mustafa Barghouti. Here’s an update:  Barghouti plays the moderate, but is among other things a staunch backer of the BDS movement, which aims to destroy Israel. Some moderate.

4. An October 5, 2001 story about a Muslim teenager giving the American Muslim viewpoint of the 9/11 attacks (although I’ll give TAL credit for acknowledging that this is an alternative view, shaped by a family that watches only TV from the Arab Muslim world).

5. A story about a Palestinian family facing prejudice in America.

6. A story about the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, and how they’re the way for goods to get into Gaza.

The only exception to the pro-Palestinian tilt in all these reports was a story about a Palestinian man who translates Israeli newscasts into Arabic, breaking the Palestinian government’s stranglehold on information.

None of the above stories are lies. All are supported by first person narratives. And all have a very specific point of view, and one that’s not a friendly one about Jews nor an honest one about Muslims or, more accurately, about the growing subsection of violent, jihadist Muslims in America and abroad.

What my Progressive friend doesn’t understand is that a half-truth is, in its own way, just another lie. So in my mind, I always think of this show by and for Progressives, some of whom happen to be Jewish, as This American Lie.

Disability claims — the new welfare

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I knew back in 1990 that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was going to be a disaster.  Why did I know that?  Because I was a lawyer and I immediately started to spend my time doing defense work for employers who were being sued by every employee who had a backache (illegally bad chairs), a phobia (I must have an office with an expansive view of the Pacific Ocean to combat my claustrophobia), or any other junk claim you can imagine.  I only saw the cases that went into litigation.  For every case I saw, there were undoubtedly 10, or 50, or 100 times as many cases in which the employer instantly caved when confronted with the employee’s demands.

And of course, once a person gets that “disability” diagnosis, suddenly the person qualifies for SSI (social security payments, not for retirement, but for disability).  I never did government work, but I can’t count the number of hale, hearty people who were suing their employers for ADA discrimination, collecting SSI payments, and living the lush life, with government subsidized housing and lots of free time for fun and travel.  Please understand that I’m not complaining about SSI payments for those who are genuinely unable to care for themselves.  (Although there are people who, despite what others think might be a handicap, are more competent than most people you’ll meet.)  A moral society helps those who can’t help themselves.  It has no obligation, however, to help those who won’t help themselves.

Handicapped claims are expensive in other areas too.  I’ve written before at this blog about the insanity that is bureaucratic control over handicapped access.  I agree generally that handicapped access is a good thing.  It benefits mothers with strollers as well as handicapped people.  I’m grateful that, when I’m with my Mom who’s quite disabled, I can grab a handicapped parking space and and have her totter up a ramp under her own steam, rather than having me lift her up the stairs.  Having said that, the notion of handicapped access becomes insane when a city spends tens of thousands of dollars to install a wheelchair ramp within two feet of a wide driveway, or forces a school to spend a quarter million redoing a wheel chair ramp because the bureaucrat’s tape measure reveals that the ramp, as built, is a quarter-inch narrower than the building code demands (but still wide enough for the widest wheelchair).

As with Prohibition, ADA was another over-the-top case of legislating morality.  A decent people make an effort to accommodate handicapped people, elderly people, and even young mothers.  An insane legislative mentality creates a world in which employers have to give mail room clerks corner offices if they claim claustrophobia, cities are forced to build ramps next to ramps, and schools have to spend hundreds of thousands over quarter-inch deviations.

In a very surprising move, the latest attack on the insanity that is modern disability law and welfare comes from, of all places, the Left.  Channa Joffe-Walt spent months investigating disability claims around the United States and concluded that it’s the scam what am.  Her conclusions first appeared on the Left-leaning radio show, This American Life, and she followed that with an NPR article:

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

Read the article or listening to the radio show.  Joffe-Walt’s findings are eye-opening for those who, unlike me, haven’t had a front row seat for this costly, inefficient, discriminatory Big Government bureaucratic travesty.  It’s a reminder that when we substitute government mandates for private morality, everything goes out the window.  How much better it would have been to create a moral culture that sees people voluntarily providing access for people who have true disabilities, but who nevertheless have gifts, energy, enthusiasm, and abilities that would make it morally criminal to prevent them from engaging in the world.