My Amazon Review of Martin Baron's "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post"

 Democracy Dies in Darkness

 

I met Marty Baron in the early 1980’s when I was working as an economist at the UCLA Business Forecasting Project, and he was a reporter/editor at the Los Angeles Times. Who knew he would go on to lead the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe and then become the executive editor of the storied Washington Post. Although he was just starting out, he was a great journalist then and he became greater as the years passed.

 

In this book Baron puts us inside the Washington Post newsroom as it was hemorrhaging cash when he started there in 2013 and was then rescued by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who infused the cash needed to restore the paper back to its greatness. Just to note I have always been a fan of the Washington Post and much preferred it to the hoity toity New York Times. Through Baron’s eyes we se how the Post put together the stories involving the Snowden documents, the Steele Dossier, and its ongoing struggles with the Trump administration. Baron was clear from the start when he stated “We are not at war with the administration. We are at work.”

 

This is important because Baron had to face off with coteries of self-centered young journalists who thought that they were the story and that their opinions should be spayed across the news pages. To me if anything, Baron made a mistake in hiring most of them and the Post as well as other news organizations should look for viewpoint diversity as opposed to racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity. My advice would be to stay away from the Ivy’s; Baron is a case and point; he went to Lehigh.

 

Bezos comes across as a real mensch. Aside from putting up the big bucks needed to grow the newsroom, Bezos became personally involved in the freeing of journalist Jason Rezaian and his wife Yeganeh from Iranian prisons. So much so that when Rezaian arrived in Switzerland Bezos was there with his private plane to ferry them back to the United States. Similarly, Bezos was at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to protest the murdering of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Throughout it all, Bezos, for the most part, backed Baron and stayed away from making editorial judgements.

 

As someone who in his misspent youth was involved in editing and publishing an underground newspaper, I found Baron’s book fascinating. The reader gets the smell of the Washington Post’s newsroom, a place I visited many years ago before the move to its new digs.

For the full amazon URL see: Democracy Dies in Darkness (amazon.com)

My Review* of Greg Lukianoff's and Rikki Schlott's "The Cancelling of the American Mind:..."

The New Totalitarians

 

Greg Lukianoff’s and Rikki Schlott’s new book on the totalitarian nature of America’s cancel culture couldn’t be timelier. I would like to state at the outset that freedom of speech is very important to me because in my misspent youth I put myself at great risk for my beliefs.

 

As I write this, we are witnessing a rampage of totalitarian racial Marxists assaulting Jews on our most elite college campuses. It is not an accident that both Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, schools that witnessed among the worst antisemitic rampages in recent days, scored the lowest on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) scores on campus freedom of speech.  Just to note, Lukianoff is the president of FIRE and Schlott is a research fellow there.

 

This book can be considered a continuation of Jonathan Haidt’s and Greg Lukianoff’s 2018 “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Here Lukianoff and Schlott go into example after example of how people are canceled because of their heterodox beliefs. Most of the examples take place on college campuses, but there are telling examples in the publishing and the corporate world. Most of the examples involve the Left on attack with their rhetorical fortress built around the racial Marxist belief that oppressors can do no right and the oppressed can do no wrong. Thus, under their canon Israel defending itself from a wanton terrorist attack is guilty, while the Hamas terrorist dictatorship is innocent. Although Lukianoff considers himself a man of the Left, it fits neatly into Christopher Rufo’s right wing world view as expressed in his “America’s Cultural Revolution.” ( Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Christopher Rufo's "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything")

 

This book is not only a screed attacking the Left. The Right doesn’t get off easy as well. The authors recount how anti-Trump conservatives were cancelled, books were banned and “anti-woke” laws were put in place in several states forcing professors to walk on eggshells in what they can say on and off campus.

 

Lukianoff’s and Schlott’s solution calls for the creation of a free speech culture on college campuses, easier said than done, eliminating DEI loyalty oaths in the hiring and promotion of faculty, opening up more jobs to non-college graduates, and calling for employers to widen their horizons with respect to schools they recruit at. (i.e., more state schools over the Ivy’s) Indeed Lukianoff himself had to do away with the college degree requirement to hire Schlott.

 

I would go much further. In my view donors that feel the way I do should cut off their contributions to their alma maters, the entire DEI bureaucracy which enforces the cancel culture should be torn up root and branch and government should withhold funding for those institutions who fail to do that.

 

P.S. I received this book as a gift.

*-Amazon has yet to post the review. 11/16.   Amazon rejected this review because of  a "violation of community standards." I slightly edited the review and it appeared on 12/4 at the following URL:  The New Totalitarians (amazon.com)

Reliving the 1930's - Part 5

We started this series in March 2014 ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s)  with Putin taking Crimea and using his proxies in eastern Ukraine and the last one was in April 2017 with  Trump’s and Obama’s vacillation in Syria in 2013 and 2017. ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s - Part 4) With this blog I go further in that I now believe that we are no longer in the Post-Cold War Era, but rather we are now in what future historians will call a pre-war era.

 

Instead of facing the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis we now face the Russia-China-Iran North Korea Axis We see this new axis playing out in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Taiwan Straits. All the signs were there in the 1930’s with Japan invading Manchuria in 1931 and the heart of China in 1937; Italy invading Abyssinia in 1935, and Germany reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. However, it was not until 1938 that they were taken seriously.

 

In terms of economic policy protectionism was the order of the day in the 1930’s and we now witness the Biden Administration continuing and amplifying Trump’s protectionist trade policies. Although Biden’s trade policies conflict, he remains a committed internationalist. However, the Republican Party is reverting to its 1930’s form with its America First withdrawal from the world.

 

At home America’s college campuses look like prewar Germany where in many cases it is no longer safe for Jews to walk freely to class. Although anti-Zionism has always been a cover for antisemitism, recent events have ripped off all of its pretentions of being anti-Israel while still liking Jews. Nevertheless, unlike the 1930’s, Jews in America have more to fear from the Left than from the Right when the Father Coughlin’s of the world ruled the airwaves.

 

Further unlike the 1930’s when America had real leadership under Franklin Roosevelt, today’s divided government is challenged by a Putinista faction in the Republican Party that is implicitly allied with the new axis of evil. Be warned the clock is ticking.

  

My Amazon Review of James Ellroy's "The Enchanters"

West LA Noir

As is his style James Ellroy goes deeply into the underbelly of Hollywood. Most of the activity takes place in Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu. His vehicle is a novelized version Freddy Otash, a private investigator and police officer who was a well-known Hollywood fixer. The time is Spring/Summer 1962 when Otash was hired by Jimmy Hoffa to find dirt on the Kennedy’s, especially with their involvement with Marilyn Monroe. Monroe comes off as a drug addicted psychotic who was just fired from what would have been her last movie, “Something’s Gotta Give.” She dies of an overdose with suspicions something more was involved.

Along the way we meet Peter Lawford who is married to Kennedy sister Pat. Lawford’s role is to find young women for the Kennedy brothers. Meantime his wife Pat rekindles her affair with Otash.

Ellroy take us into the drug dens and sex pads of Hollywood. Most of the debauchery is known to LA police chief William Parker and LA sheriff Peter Pitchess. We also have a younger Daryl Gates who would later become LA’s chief of police.

Mixed into all of this is Darryl Zanuck’s 20^th Century Fox which is hemorrhaging cash coming from huge overruns on “Cleopatra” an epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. As a side note Fox would later sell half its movie lot in what was to become Century City.

Otash is a pill-popping alcoholic who kills a couple of people as the somewhat convoluted plot moves along. I arrived in LA two years later with little knowledge of the depravity the book depicts, probably exaggerated. My warning for the reader is that this is a long book, 448 pages in the print edition. 

For the full Amazon URL see: West LA Noir (amazon.com)

Easing the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza: It is up to Hamas

 There is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but it is up to Hamas, not Israel to ease it. Hamas can do the following:

1. Cease all rocket attacks on Israel.

2. Free the 240 Israeli and other nationality hostages.

3. Allow a corridor for Palestinians to move south to get out of the way from the fighting and allow a corridor for food and medical supplies, but not fuel.

Further it is important to recognize that the speedier the Israeli victory the speedier the Palestinians will be freed from the Hamas dictatorship which will allow for a peaceful rebuilding of Gaza.

My Zoom Interview with Professor Meron Medzini on "Golda's War Diaries"

 On Sunday October 29th I interviewed Professor Meron Medzini on the new Israeli documentary "Golda's War Diaries." ( https://go2films.com/films/goldas-diaries/)  This was part of a program sponsored by the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival and the Temple Beth Shalom's Israel Committee. We discussed the current Israel/Hamas War, the 1973 War, the recent Helen Mirren film, and Golda Meir's career. Prof. Medzini was Golda's spokesperson before, during and after the 1973 War. 

The link to the interview is below:

Prof. Meron Medzini Interview Final Cut - YouTube