Tear Down the Other Wall
Bury my heart at wounded knee.
Free Nelson Mandela.
Do spend seven years in Tibet and take Martin Scorsese with you to film the bloody thing.
Name streets after Martin Luther King Jr.--he deserves the honor. So does Medgar Evers. Rosa Parks is an immortal.
Rambo's gone into Burma to defend the honor of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Bobby Sands and Steve Bilko--martyrs. But so is Mohammed al-Dura.
Hollywood does like to spotlight the world's underdogs. Well, except for one. Try getting the green light for a project on the heartbreaking massacres at Sabra and Shatila.
Appointing Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, as his first order of the day, is the first but won't be the last time we shouldn't be disappointed when we discover that Obama is incapable of walking on water, and that of course he owes a lot of folks with very special interests in a big way, and that those people now must be compensated.
We do know that already, don't we--that Obama can't heal lepers nor give eyesight to the blind. Don't we. Don't we?
Free Nelson Mandela.
Do spend seven years in Tibet and take Martin Scorsese with you to film the bloody thing.
Name streets after Martin Luther King Jr.--he deserves the honor. So does Medgar Evers. Rosa Parks is an immortal.
Rambo's gone into Burma to defend the honor of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Bobby Sands and Steve Bilko--martyrs. But so is Mohammed al-Dura.
Hollywood does like to spotlight the world's underdogs. Well, except for one. Try getting the green light for a project on the heartbreaking massacres at Sabra and Shatila.
Appointing Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, as his first order of the day, is the first but won't be the last time we shouldn't be disappointed when we discover that Obama is incapable of walking on water, and that of course he owes a lot of folks with very special interests in a big way, and that those people now must be compensated.
We do know that already, don't we--that Obama can't heal lepers nor give eyesight to the blind. Don't we. Don't we?
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4 Comments:
There is the possibility that people can expect compensation and be told: You signed up for this and off on this.
They might be told: It was made patently clear what intentions were so get ready to sacrifice your self interest on the altar of change.
Either way, I personally expect a few people who did embrace him as a kind of Messiah are going to need a little help. I was never much of a fan of his rhetoric, but I'm always, and always will be, a fan of doing what it takes to create that future. So IF they get disappointed, I'll do what I can to help them get over it and on with it.
Booda, well, yes, it could happen. Obama has promised the world more dialogue, fewer bombs. That has to be the future. Meanwhile, people in Gaza are in really bad shape for having the audacity to follow Bush's advice and elect their leaders--who were not the leaders Israel wanted them to elect. This Rahm Emanuel prides himself on being an "offer no quarter" kind of guy--sooooooo, we'll see. Can a US president rein in the IDF and NOT be accused of being an anti-semite? Can anyone?
I've never been to Israel. Would you say there's not a thread, a current, even the slightest of breezes that doesn't distinguish between the state and anti-semitism?
At any rate, I don't know if dialogue alone is the strength he represents. The Bush Administration could've yacked and yacked for hours and it would have still been talking from a belligerent and breathtakingly arrogant position.
Booda--there are peace activists on both sides who are shouted down (or shot down) by the extremists on both sides. But remember what happened to poor old Vanessa Redgrave in the 80s when she filmed a documentary on life in a refugee camp? She was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer.
And then there is this question which constantly nags me: Why does Hollywood champion every underdog but one? Palestinians were massacred by terrorist groups that Emanual's daddy belonged to. They were forced off their lands at gunpoint by Europeans who just happened to be Jewish. IDF retaliation for rocket attacks is always obscenely disproportionate. As we speak, Gaza is being strangled for fuel and medicine. This is why "they" hate us. Thom Friedman says the solution is one man one vote but that would be the ideological end to a non-secular ideal borne from the brain of a religious zealot named Theodore Herzl--an ideal that our "in theory" secular leaning government wholly supports. No nativity scenes on courthouse lawns, but it's ok to send billions in aid to a government on a mission from God? To answer your question--yes, any suggestion that Israel goes too far is too often shouted down as being anti-semitic and disrepectful to the memory of the 6 million. A holocaust/apartheid is tragic--whether it happens to Jews or Native Americans or Tibetans or god forbid Palestinians.
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