What Happened Today: December 16, 2022
Bibi flirts with the Saudis; More JFK redactions; American kids are obese
The Big Story
Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, first of his name, leader of the Likud, comeback kid, fascist, Israel’s greatest Prime Minister, neoliberal pig, once-in-a-generation genius, Obama’s negation, King Bibi … Whatever you want to call him, he has big plans for his return to office. And they center on Israel’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. In an interview with Saudi broadcaster Al-Arabiya published Thursday, Bibi covered a broad range of topics, but the single biggest message was his overture of peace to the Saudi kingdom, which has never formally recognized Israeli sovereignty. Describing the potential diplomatic bond as a “quantum leap” for the region that would change it in “unimaginable” ways, Netanyahu added that a top priority in his next conversation with President Biden would be for the United States to “reaffirm” its support for her traditional allies in the Middle East—and he mentioned Saudi Arabia by name.
With characteristic chutzpah, the incoming prime minister also aired several outstanding grievances with U.S. foreign policy, calling any attempt to revive the Iran nuclear deal a “folly,” adding that, with or without U.S. support, Israel will act to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. “The actions that we took so far, and I’m not saying which ones we did, we did without the U.S.,” Netanyahu said. “We didn’t do it with U.S. approval because the U.S. probably would disapprove.” Wink, wink.
Recent rumblings out of Washington, D.C., suggest—to Netanyahu, at least—that the ongoing uprising against the Iranian regime has forced a few key players to adjust their risk-benefit analysis in pursuing the Iran nuclear deal, with sympathy for the future prime minister’s point of view. Although the Al-Arabiya interviewer pushed back on several points that, outwardly, ought to put distance between Israel and Saudi Arabia (Palestinian peace and Netanyahu’s ultra-right-wing anti-Arab coalition partners), it was clear from Netanyahu’s responses that he feels common interests will transcend those concerns. It remains to be seen what will happen in the strategic reshuffling that began with the Obama administration’s realignment toward the Shiite overlords in Iran. One thing is clear: The Sayeret Matkal Cowboy is back. Fasten your seat belts.
In the Back Pages: What’s There To Laugh At?
The Rest
→ Is it just us, or does Elon Musk know exactly what he’s doing? In another dramatic, attention-grabbing news cycle for Twitter, Musk suspended at least eight media figures—including Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar, Ryan Mac, and Donie O’Sullivan—for what Musk called “doxxing,” or sharing the real-time location of a user. In this case, the user is his son, X. On Wednesday, Musk wrote that any account posting “real-time location info” would be suspended, after his son was followed by a stalker in Los Angeles who thought he was following Musk, apparently because of the account @ElonJet, which tracks Musk’s private jet routes with publicly available information. Last night, Musk suspended journalists who had boosted the @ElonJet account. Now the European Union is threatening Twitter with potential sanctions. “News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” E.U. Commissioner Věra Jourová posted on Twitter. “E.U.’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights … Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.” Musk seems to be suggesting that the suspension will be just seven days, and though he hinted at bringing back the accounts sooner, it’s sparked all flavors of outrage—from those who say he’s a free speech hypocrite to others who point out it’s the same type of censoriousness practiced by the previous ownership, except they didn’t bannish CNN and New York Times journalists. Either way, it might all just be theater to drive up clicks and advertising revenue for the site, which is in need of a quick turnaround financially.
→ Quote of the Day:
Half a loaf.
That’s how Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which keeps a database of records on the assassination of JFK, described the latest drop of documents related to the murder. The Biden administration released 13,373 more documents on Thursday in accordance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, but unfortunately, as has been the case for years, many of the key documents were still redacted. Bradford’s organization sued the Biden administration for a timely release but told reporters, “The amount of documents released may look impressive, but …” According to his colleague Jefferson Morley at the foundation, a key memo from 1961 criticizing the CIA was still heavily redacted. “It's an important document about what Kennedy was thinking after the Bay of Pigs,” said Morley. “It’s really incredible to me that this document hasn’t been released.” The government was supposed to have released all documents by 2017, but the Trump administration withheld some because of national security, fueling more speculation about the 20th century’s greatest conspiracy: Was the CIA involved in the killing of the president? We at The Scroll recommend Oliver Stone’s brilliant film JFK for a primer on that hypothesis.
→ Thread of the Day:
In a thread worthy of its own book deal, visiting Yale professor of gender equality Alice Evans attempts to make sense of the American problem of 7 million working-age men who aren’t working. Western Europe, culturally similar to us, doesn’t seem to have an issue. Evans explores many possibilities: COVID-19 pandemic payments, marriage status, incarceration rates (related to marriage status), drug use (higher among unemployed men), single-parent homes (related to incarceration), the ease of getting disability insurance, and demand for labor. Ultimately, there may be no single cause of the crisis that Evans describes as men “playing Call of Duty stoned,” though a recent paper reported on by The Scroll suggested that blue-collar men are dropping out of the workforce because their wages have decreased relative to white-collar workers, and they don’t feel valued by society. Either way, if you’re into sociology even a little, Evans’ thread is a great read.
→ Sunday’s World Cup final is going to be huge in Africa, and not just because football is popular on the continent. A South African government survey has shown a 14% increase in sports betting year over year between 2008 and 2016, and the trend is being mirrored across Africa. Recently in Uganda, a government official lost $1,800 betting on a World Cup match with money that was appropriated to him on behalf of 243 people who had participated in a polio vaccination program. Needless to say, the recipients never got their money. Reagan Wamajji, a researcher for the Uganda-based Center for Policy Analysis, told the AP that the increased reliance on betting for income “threatens to push young men and women into its fatal depths.” He said he believes there should be anti-betting campaigns similar to those for tobacco. But some people are truly relying on betting for survival. Wale Babalola, owner of eight betting shops in Lagos, Nigeria, told reporters, “If not for betting, I wonder how some people will survive in this country.”
→ Russia launched a massive strike on Ukraine’s power grid Friday morning, with a salvo of 76 missiles, 60 of which the Ukrainian military claims to have intercepted. Nonetheless, the Ukrainian government had to issue emergency blackouts to compensate for the damage inflicted while it worked to make repairs to the grid in a wintery nightmare scenario. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the next shipment of weapons to Ukraine would make air defense “a priority.” Meanwhile, Russian and Belorussian troops are conducting large exercises on the Belarus-Ukraine border, which some believe may foreshadow a large offensive in the coming months, though the British Ministry of Defense says the troops “are currently unlikely to constitute a force capable of conducting a successful new assault into northern Ukraine.” As far as the continued attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, Putin admitted, “Yes, we do that,” while the head of the Ukrainian military, Valeriy Zaluzhny, countered, “The missile terror and the enemy’s daring attempts to break through Kyiv’s anti-aircraft defences will not force us to lay down our arms.”
→ If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it … say many of Morocco’s rural marijuana farmers. The Moroccan government recently passed legislation to legalize marijuana farming for medicinal purposes, hoping that with increased regulation, the underdeveloped region of Rif, where most marijuana is grown, will finally blossom. The Ministry of Interior projects that the change could increase income from the business by 33% by 2028. But the locals are happy with their current system and don’t trust a government that has ignored them for decades. “When the state was not shouldering its responsibility toward this region, the drug baron was taking care of us by buying the crop every year,” a farmer, Mohamed Bousemath, told Bloomberg. Many of the farming families in the region have eked out a living growing marijuana, which is turned into hashish and exported to Europe. For years, the government has turned a blind eye to the practice, even as farmers surreptitiously planted on land they don’t own. The leader of the government’s newly created agency to regulate marijuana said it will be an extraordinary opportunity for farmers, but Bousemath disagrees: “The drug lord is more honest and more humane than those peddling fake humanitarianism.”
→ Maybe the kids are all right. A small group of teens in New York City have labeled themselves the Luddite Club, and their meetings are conducted without smartphones. Some of them even have … flip phones! In their spare time they read Dostoevsky, Hunter Thompson, Vonnegut, and W.E.B. DuBois, just like kids used to before TikTok. They also paint. And listen to nature. “I still long to have no phone at all,” Logan Lane, the club’s founder, told The New York Times. “My parents are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart. But I guess I also like it, because I get to feel a little superior to them.” They’ve gotten some pushback that their club is classist, that some people need to be on their phone to get along. That may be, but you gotta start somewhere. We salute them. We wish we were them. We encourage you to read about them.
Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html
→ Okay, well, maybe the Brooklyn Luddites are all right, but America’s kids are gaining weight. A lot of it. The CDC released new BMI guidelines for children on Thursday, with a separate chart for obese kids. BMI, or body mass index, is a measurement of body fat based on height and weight. An ideal range for adults is 18.5 to 24.9, and of course there is variation based on sex and other factors. But the new charts extend all the way to 60. Sixty. Six. Zero. The CDC says the new charts are necessary for healthcare workers who are trying to help children that are obese. In 2018, 19.3% of American children were obese, compared to 5.5% in 1980, but that number has now increased to 22% post-pandemic. Who says keeping kids locked inside is bad for their health? It’s not as if obesity triples your risk of death from COVID-19 or anything.
→ For some reason, finding out that the Navy’s next ship is going to be named the U.S.S. Fallujah makes us flash back to George W. Bush standing on an aircraft carrier and announcing, “Mission Accomplished!” in May 2003. It’s not a great feeling. Nonetheless, the military has announced that a new vessel, an amphibious ship for the Marines, will be named after the Iraqi city, where at least 127 coalition soldiers died over two separate offensives in the Iraq War. Critics of the naming cite the nearly 1,200 civilians who were killed in the same operations. “Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah,” The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill wrote on Twitter. The government has awarded up to $3.2 billion to Ingalls Shipbuilding for the project, which is set to begin this month in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
→ Video of the Day:
A 2018 video first distributed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing the rounds on social media, and for good reason. In the clip, Bill talks about how improving health can help reduce the global population, as research has shown that healthier societies choose to have fewer children. If parents know their offspring are more likely to survive, they will have fewer children. Gates believes this is a good thing, as too many people will be bad for the planet and for the people who have to fight over resources. “Well, the population growth issue, at the global level, is not that daunting. That is, the population, percentage-wise, is growing slower today than in the past. And so it will actually peak out,” Gates said about the subject in a 2012 interview. “The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it's in the very poorest places that you're going to have a tripling in population by 2050.” As far as resources are concerned, Gates is the largest single owner of U.S. farmland, so in theory he could single-handedly feed a lot of the people he’s worried will soon starve.
TODAY IN TABLET:
The Changing Landscape of Hebrew Education by Paula Jacobs
From day schools to summer camps, charter schools to online classes, a diverse range of students are studying the language
The Ultimate Latke by Joan Nathan
How to fry up a batch of perfect potato pancakes this Hanukkah—and don’t forget the applesauce
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
In Out of the Fog, historical detective Brian Berger digs through newspaper columns, clippings, and other clues to bring readers the fascinating, scandalous, and forgotten tales of the past.
What’s There To Laugh At?
What made Bubbe and Zayde guffaw
By Brian Berger
No, really, are Jews still funny to you? Because, I’ll tell you, they’re hilarious to me, always have been: from the characters at Oneg Shabbat to the Marx Brothers, Gertrude Stein, Sophie Tucker, Daniel Fuchs, Mickey Katz, Molly Picon, Henny Youngman, Phil Silvers, Belle Barth, Mort Sahl, Nat Hiken, Pearl Williams, Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Jackie Mason, Tuli Kupferberg, Betty Walker, Wallace Markfield, Totie Fields, Woody Allen, Gilbert Gottfried. We all have our favorites.
In a period where no perceived offense is too slight to inspire its own protest (#Outrage), recalling this—the abundance of Judaism’s collective comic genius— is both empowering and calming. And so, in an attempt to trace back the Jewish genius for comedy I started wondering, what did our grandparents and our great-grandparents think was funny? And that led me, as so many roads do, back to the borough of Brooklyn and the history contained in its English language.
**
In 1914, advertisements for the Loew’s Fulton and Bijou Theatres in downtown Brooklyn—both part of the local vaudeville circuit owned by the Marcus Loew, himself an Austrian-born, New York-raised Jew—promoted: Harry Steppe, “famed as a Jewish comedian, and his ‘Kissing Girls,’ called the “whirliest, girliest show of them all”; “the celebrated Jewish comedian, Murray Bennett, who presents an unusual type of Hebrew onstage with more than ordinary skill”; and
Morris and Allen, “Jewish Comedians with big voices.”
How big? Big enough their resounded even while sharing a bill with Great Ergotti and his Lilliputians (midget acrobats); an impersonator—of European war leaders—named Saona; “colored comedians” Crumbley and Class (Jewish and Black performers often shared stages at this time); and one Florence Avery, “musical genius.”
**
In June 1923, the Brooklyn Standard-Union announced that after several years in England, “Henry Green, Jewish Comedian of note,” has “returned to his native land, and is re-entering the Keith vaudeville circuit in the one-act play which first earned him popularity, Aaron Hoffman’s The Cherry Tree.” In it, Green stars as “George Washington Cohen, the little Jew who, like the father of his country, couldn’t tell a lie.”
**
In April 1925, a Brooklyn Citizen ad declared Dr. Abraham Coralnick, Kiev-born, University of Vienna educated, associate editor of the Yiddish newspaper Der Tog (The Day), would lecture on “Jewish Humor” at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, at 667 Eastern Parkway, in Crown Heights. His address, delivered in Yiddish, would consist of three parts: 1. Old Jewish Humor 2. New Jewish Humor as interpreted by Sholom Aleichem 3. Jewish humor in America.
**
In April 1929, the Citizen announced that “Ludwig Satz, well-known Jewish comedian, one of the greatest on the stage, and a supporting cast from the Public Theater, where is now playing A Seder Night, will broadcast over WABC this evening, at nine o’clock.” A month later in the Standard Union, Satz was elevated to royalty—“The King of Jewish Comedians”— for his role in the hit Yiddish musical comedy, A Galician Wedding, then playing at the Rolland Theatre in Brownsville. Briefly profiled in the same paper that November, it was noted that Satz— who was born in Polish Galicia in 1894—had played 500 roles, and was often compared to Charlie Chaplin.
In January 1934, Irving Davidson, president of the Bethel League of Bethel and Manhattan Beach, spoke on Jewish Humor to the Young Folks Auxiliary of the Petach Tikvah in Crown Heights. Summarized a Brooklyn Eagle reporter:
“Although the Jew is known as ‘the eternal troubadour of pain,’ his centuries of constant struggle with life has brought forth a vein of genuine racial humor and keen wit… The genuine humor of the Jew, according to Mr. Davidson, is intellectual and subtle. He asserted that the popular vaudeville humor of [Eddie] Cantor and [George] Jessel is not essentially Jewish.”
**
In December 1936, Eagle radio columnist Jo Ranson noted that “The magnificent writings of Sholom Aleichem, rated the ‘the Mark Twain of Jewish Literature,’ will be turned into radio dramatizations over WMCA starting tomorrow night at 7:30.” Remarkably, the series, titled “Sholom Aleichem—Jewish Humor Dramatized,” would be the first time the Yiddish writer’s works had been translated for public presentation. Added Ranson: “The author’s ability to laugh at the weakness of his fellowmen, at the same time as calling attention to their virtues, brought him wide popularity in Jewish literary circles.”
**
When the now canonical A Treasury of Jewish Humor, edited by Galician-born, Brooklyn-raised, historian and folklorist Nathan Ausubel, was published by Doubleday & Co. in June 1951, it was reviewed in the Eagle by Dr. Sidney Tedesche, Rabbi of Union Temple at 17 Eastern Parkway. A man of keen literary and cultural engagement (in 1940, for example, he gave his congregation a stirring sermonic review of then Brooklynite Richard Wright’s new novel, Native Son), Tedesche clearly adored his subject and after a brief introduction, he starts spritzing litany:
“Here you will find Zangwill, Agnon, Sholom Aleichem, Feuchtwanger, Peretz, Bialik, Untermeyer, Yehudah Halevi, Solomon Maimon, Nordau Perelman, Werfel, Zalman, Schneour, Heine, Golding, Yehudah Steinberg, Mendel Moicher Sforim, Molnar, Ludwig Lewisohn, Irving Feineberg, even George Brandes and the best of numerous others, a veritable treasure trove of every age of Jewish experience.
“Here you will find the unbelievable wage and nondescripts, quasi-geniuses, incompetent dreamers and legendary figures who have enriched ghetto, medieval and modern Jewish life throughout the generations.
“Here you will read of people who live on nothing and who tread on air, the sceptics, scoffers, impudent fellows, the beggars who graciously and patronizingly allow you to be blessed with the privilege of giving to them. Here we find the luckless ones whose misfortunes were so exaggeratedly preposterous that their woes were proverbial, the Shmendriks and Smigeges, the fools and simpletons, the Schlemihls, the Nudniks, the Phudniks (a nudnik is a bore with a Ph.D.) and Trombeniks and a full glossary so that you will not lose your way among a people whose faith, earnestness and humor kept an enter people from every being lost. Through a labyrinth of bewilderment, they kept their sanity and survived because of the gift of humor.”
Fantastic roundup today! Bibi ❤️ Saudis, Luddite kids, and Jewish humor. I'm here for all of this.