The Voice of Treason

“‘The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing,’ former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser once said. But from the U.S. point of view, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Maybe they just don’t want what we’re selling?”

– Jonah Goldberg, NRO

“The law of unintended consequences continues to throw up more consequences that were not intended. Israel is now boxed in between three pro-Iran entities (Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) and two pro-al Qaeda terrorist groups — Hezbollah that is dominant in Lebanon to the north and Hamas that now controls Gaza, the size of Washington, D.C., to the south.

Both are sworn enemies of the Jewish state. Hamas, a radical offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, first rose to prominence by planning and executing the first intifada against Israeli occupation in 1987. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas also runs welfare services for the poor, which in Gaza is almost the entire population of 1.5 million.”

– Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times

And then there’s Jimmy. The Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ election victory was “criminal” and the group was never properly encouraged, says Carter. Israel and a good chunk of the West just didn’t welcome the newbies with open arms. The U.S., claims the former president, along with Israel and the E.U., are dividing the Palestinian people.

We’re dividing the Palestinians? Uh, Jimmy, at the risk of sounding malaisical here, do you think they really require our help? Looks like they’re doing a fine job of it without us.

By supporting Mahmoud Abbas’ “new” government in the West Bank and denying the same to Hamas and the Gaza Strip, we’re the bad guys. May I remind the loose-lipped ex-president that the reason we don’t like Hamas is that they’re a bunch of terrorists who want to annihilate Jews? Obviously, Hamas and Carter have much in common.

I’m not particularly thrilled that we’ve gone off the consistency reservation again and are supporting Fatah, the “lesser” of the two terrorist groups, but we’ve been pouring money into that hellish pit for decades no matter what the local terrorists are calling themselves. (Incidentally, if we’re supporting terrorists, doesn’t that make us… oh, never mind.)

And, if, as I quoted that Gazan the other day, those in the Strip are supporting Hamas because they are “the winners” who hand out bags of flour and food coupons, where is the Palestinian loyalty to the West for wasting our taxpayers’ money on what looks more and more each day like another lost cause?

Obviously, that money never trickled down to the Palestinians in the street. Government officials, like the Sopranos, took their cut and spent it on themselves. And if Hamas really gave a sh*t about those pathetic people, they’d take Iranian dollars and distribute the wealth – how ‘bout two bags of flour? how ‘bout some industry other than rock-throwing? – instead of wasting untold amounts of ammunition, discharging their weapons endlessly into the air… and each other.

I remember a former coworker who regularly hosted lavish parties for Democrats in his home. An active Dem, he attended numerous political events and displayed the appropriate candidate bumpersticker on his vehicle. Just days before the 2004 election, there was a local gathering for John Kerry so Bill Clinton was there to rally the “troops.”

I did not attend, of course – hell, I don’t even get invitations from my own Party – but I did catch a bit on TV. Mind you, Bill had just had heart surgery in September, but it was shocking to see him so thin, so gray. Don’t get me wrong, I like gray. But on whales and on Irish wolfhounds – not on human flesh. When I saw my coworker I mentioned that I thought the former president looked like he was dying. His eyes quadrupled in size.

“WHAT? I was there – up close – and he looked fabulous! So trim!”

Mind you, I’d seen him on TV, a medium that makes a person look heavier, and the man looked like he was at death’s door. I’m reminded of this because I could not escape the multiple showings of the Clintons’ Sopranos parody video; therefore, when I saw Bill walking into the diner, I had the same thought.

To be fair, I’ve never found Bill Clinton particularly attractive, and it appears that if he’s ever had any looks they’ve certainly diminished. That “spark” has fizzled. But this is one of many minor details that had me critical of that video. I won’t list them all, so I’ll just focus on a few. First, when Hillary walks into the place, where’s her purse? It is a dream of mine to stop carrying one, but I have not yet found an alternative. I like to have certain things with me – identification, currency, keys, phone, pen, paper, PetPerks card, checkbook, debit card, proof of auto insurance and car registration, two dog photos, contact information – and, frankly, it’s just too much to stick in a pocket.

Maybe Bill was picking up the tab – who knows? It’s just that someone as important as Hillary should be toting around a phone and pen, at least. But this isn’t the only issue. If Chelsea was parallel parking — maybe she’s picking up the tab — then what I’ve been doing since age 15 has been incorrect. Did that look like parallel parking to anyone else? I mean, it was only a second, but it looked like she was just pulling into a regular parking spot.

And when exactly did Hillary order that basket of… of… what were those? They looked like greasy carrots. I’d like to give the woman the benefit of the doubt, so perhaps she called in the order before she headed over giving them her credit card number at that point so she wouldn’t have to haul a satchel and look feminine. I could go on, but why bother?

It just occurred to me, watching Bill and Hill together, that an intriguing October surprise would be his… well, demise. If it would help Hillary get into the White House, I wouldn’t doubt the residue on those carrots was Black Flag… or polonium-210. But if, as I suspect, the majority of Hillary supporters are, in fact, supporting Bill, then whacking her life partner just wouldn’t be prudent. The sympathy vote, though helpful in the past, simply won’t be enough for a third Clinton term. (She’ll have to postpone the surprise until after the inaugural celebrations.)

I actually think Rudy Giuliani could come up with a better parody video. And so I wait. The former mayor and U.S. Attorney has had extensive experience with gangsters. May that benefit him if he is the opponent of these two thugs.

“Dolmades, forget dolmades
Let’s live for now and anyhow who needs dolmades?
The moonlight, let’s share the moonlight
Perhaps together we will never be again…”

Dolmades: An Arabic term meaning “something stuffed.”

Every culture has its labor-intensive dish. A few years ago I went to a friend’s house where she had assembled several friends and relatives to produce a year’s supply of tamales. The lone gringa there, yet I managed (thanks to T’s quick online recipe search) to come up with the best shrimp and garlic tamales ever. The others were skeptical and said that there’s no such thing as a shrimp tamale, but after hours of steaming, they were by far the favorite.

Food teaches you about a culture. When ethnic became popular in the Seventies, my Anglophile brother finally stopped pretending he was the Fifth Beatle and discovered his Italian roots. (Truth be told, we are only one quarter English: Our father’s mother was Dutch.) Anyway, for some reason, he thought it would be a good idea to give my mother a pasta maker. Always a trooper, she produced some fresh pasta, spent days washing her new appliance, then set the thing somewhere… where it sat for the rest of its life, never to be used again.

My brother had failed to realize that my mother’s sauce was so superior that she could have ladled it onto cat turds and it would have been fabulous. It wasn’t the pasta that made her cooking so good. Cheap dry stuff — al dente — was sufficient. But every now and then, she’d get a bug up her butt and clear the table for a day of pasta making – without the big appliance. It was rare, but it happened.

I’m reminded of the time I was dating the very tall, very fair Costa Rican who always remained friendly with his ex-girlfriends. We met up with one (utterly gorgeous) and her family at a Brazilian club in San Francisco for dinner. When she found out my mother was Italian, she erupted:

“Wow! Then she must make gahnotchies! Oh, I just love gahnotchies! I mean, is there anything on earth better than gahnotchies?”

It was an awkward moment. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Hmmm,” I said. “I can’t really say. I don’t think I ever saw her make anything called… oh! Gnocchi! Yes, yes, she made gnocchi!”

Yeah, it finally occurred to me what she was trying to say, and it was gnocchi. I remember gnocchi because after the potatoes boiled and the dough was mixed, I was the one who sat in the kitchen for hours and hours and made the gnocchi. I remember making them as uniform as I could then carefully pressing the tines of a fork into each fat little dumpling. Sometimes what my mother called them was gnocchi, sometimes it was the similar-but-different cavatelli. But of course it didn’t sound like cavatelli when she said it. First, there was no vowel on the end. To this day, I still don’t know if my grandmother’s family name ended with an “i” or an “o” because no one in the family ever pronounced that last vowel. They always just dropped it.

Again, my mother routinely stressed that her family was Northern, but when she’d talk about her father and say something he’d always said when she was growing up, my sister and I would look at each other and nod. To us, a suspiciously Southern dialect. When she made the potato pasta, it wasn’t “gab-a-deel” or “cav-a-dell” or even “gav-a-deel” – it was more like “cav-a-teel.” I don’t care if her family all looked Northern – they often sounded Southern.

Eh, mezza-mezz. Abruzzo, if you ask me, is closer to South than North. And, growing up Abruzzese, my mother remembers making pizzelles on an ancient iron that had the family crest on it. When we lived with my uncle in Mountain View (an even better cook than my mother because he had the patience to make braciole or, if you prefer, the more Southern-sounding “braggiole”), he had found a similar iron and I was assigned the job of pizzelle-making. Between the gnocchi and pizzelles, I never had time to get into trouble. Parents, take note.

I stood for hours, holding a heavy pizzelle iron over a gas flame, then turning, so each individually baked cookie was evenly golden on both sides. Four thousand eggs and a bottle of anisette later, every surface in the house was covered with cookies that tasted like licorice dog biscuits. I was eleven and what anisette didn’t go into the batter went into me. How else do you expect a kid to stand at the stove for fourteen hours?

It’s how I developed patience and a fondness for menial labor. I’d never made tamales before I went to my friend’s house, but I mastered the technique, fell into a groove, and out-tamaled everyone in the room. It was like that on Saturday when T and I decided to make dolmades.

Suddenly Greek food sounded good, and T went online for recipes. We drove to Sunflower Market and picked up lamb, beef, pork, grape leaves, cucumber, yogurt, pitas, more wine, and a few other items to create our first homemade Greek meal.

We ended up with three recipes: one for dolma, one for gyros, and one for a tzatziki sauce. But was this really Greek cuisine? It’s hard to tell. Call ‘em dolmades, domalthes, sarma, dolmasi, tolma, dolmeh, or prakheh – it’s still a stuffed leaf. From Albania to Turkey, people are stuffing some combination of meat, rice, spices, and vegetables into some kind of leaf. These were California grape.

Dolmades: An Arabic term meaning “something stuffed.”

Uh, yeah – like my refrigerator! I’ve got enough of these things to feed the Iraqi Army for the next six years. Happily, they can be frozen, because I don’t think T and I — and the dog — are going to get through them all. But whatever they are, and whatever country’s cuisine they most resemble, they are marvelous leftover and served with the garlic and Sicilian olive oil-rich tzatziki sauce.

And now I know how many grape leaves can fit into a jar. Too many!

“On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.”

– Chester Arthur

I beg to differ. I believe there was an era when these were truisms, but times — unfortunately — have changed. To paraphase, quite liberally, Lloyd Bentsen:

“See, I loved Ernie Banks. I met Ernie Banks. Ernie Banks was a hero of mine. New Cubs, none of you are Ernie Banks.”

I do not support football, soccer, or basketball principally because most of the current players appear, to me, to be thugs. Baseball has always had its share of miscreants, sure, but brawls and on-field misbehavior was usually limited to a handful of teams. I continued to support the Cubbies since childhood not only because of a genetic defect, but because I felt the Cubs were somehow better than that. Players and fans in my hometown have always been generally well-behaved. Nice. Win or lose.

Then I saw the shocking display two weeks ago between teammates Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett in the dugout. And now the nasty exchange between the Cubs and Padres. There have been incidents in the past peppering the game, but this is simply one fisticuff too many for me to allow.

I’m boycotting 2007. I know this rings hollow because October is heroin to me. Yes, I’ll probably be watching the playoffs and World Series, but I’m not going to watch any baseball until then.

The players have finally succeeded in taking all the fun out of this game. Aye, the wretched bastards…

o·bam·a·na·tion (o-bŏm’ə-nā’shən)
n.
of or relating to the heinous cult surrounding Barack Obama, a portmanteau word combining obama + nation, sounding humorously like abomination

Ex: Hillary is a bad Democratic candidate, but the other is just an obamanation.

– Urban Dictionary

If I have to see that “I Got A Crush… On Obama” video one more time, I’m going to have to ask if this is a violation of the Equal Time Rule.

“… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

– Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81

“… A resident of a Hamas-dominated neighbourhood, identifying himself only as Yousef for fear of reprisal by his neighbours, said Gazans would always back the winner, regardless of ideology.

– The Globe and Mail

The Romans dispensed free wheat to the poor to gain popular support; the Republicans bestowed 30 million pounds of moldy processed cheese; the Democrats pledge free healthcare and college degrees; and Gazans will back anyone who gives them “a bag of flour and a food coupon.”

My, how far the world has come since the days of chariot races and free wheat. It’s 2006 and we’re up to our flabby asses in chariot races — American Idol, America’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance?… well, hell, for that matter, CNN, FNC, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS — so where’s my freakin’ wheat ‘n’ cheese?

It might explain why that dead democracy e-mail keeps circulating:

“… the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Everybody’s got their hands out, and no one is stepping up to say: “Enough is enough, you greedy bastards! There is no free lunch!” It might not be lunch, but someone’s giving something away. The line forms on the left, but be quick and get in now – it’s getting longer every day.

“If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government.”

– James Earl Carter, Jr.; February 2006, after Hamas election victory

“A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.”

– Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

It’s become so commonplace, so normal for the Left to blame Republicans, “Neocons” specifically, for everything that’s going wrong in the world – the Middle East, specifically. To balance things out a bit, would it be acceptable for me to submit here that it is the Democrats who are responsible for this current problem?

Which problem, you ask – there are so many. Specifically, Iran. I watched all the debates and, like Rudy Giuliani, I came away with the impression that the Democrats do not see Iran as a threat. Maybe a threat in the future, some said, but an immediate threat? Nah.

Since the Brownshirt and other Iranians know precisely what we in America are thinking, saying, and doing, I cannot help think that the Democrat Party has just handed Iran an engraved invitation to ramp up their misbehavior. They’re holding Americans hostage (again), killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now they’re dispatching members of Fatah and sneaking up – ever closer – on our friends next door.

Look at a map. Geographically, Iran is already too close to Israel for comfort, but now that Iran has moved into the Palestinian territories – Gaza, specifically – and is murdering Palestinians, why is it so absurd to think they won’t be killing Israelis next? Oh, wait… they already do that.

If the non-existent global war on terror is merely a “bumpersticker,” as John Edwards likes to say, and Iran is a make-believe threat, then an appropriate bumpersticker over there (that we can continue to ignore) might be:

“West Bank, here we come!”

And an appropriate one here could be:

“It’s 2008! We’re gonna get whacked.”

“For a second I thought I was dead. But, when I heard all the noise, I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they’d been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would’ve been dead.”

– Henry Hill, “Goodfellas”

It’s been a tricky thing, trying to avoid hearing how the seasons of The Sopranos are progressing, and especially tricky this past week, trying to avoid hearing how the final season, the final episode ends. You see, I never watched The Sopranos.

How can that be, you ask. Everybody watched The Sopranos. And as someone who memorized every episode of the Steelgrave arc of Wiseguy and the best Scorsese and Coppola films, how could you not watch The Sopranos? You took your little Italian mother to see The Godfather: Part III on Christmas Day, 1990! (Well… we all make mistakes.)

Yes, everybody watched The Sopranos. Because everybody loves gangster movies. Everybody loves the Mafia. Even Rudy Giuliani, mobster slayer, does Godfather imitations. Even Bill Buckley writes about The Sopranos on NRO. How could you not watch this show?

Easy. I don’t have HBO. So I waited for syndication and had just started watching the series on A&E. Hyper-edited, I felt I was missing something, so our friend Bob FedExed his DVD collection from the Bay Area. But because the series has become such an important part of our culture, I now know who gets whacked, when they get whacked, and how. And, of course, I know how the series ends.

I wasn’t going to even mention it – after all, there are much more important things going on in the world. Like, Israel woke up in the morning and Iran was in the backyard, jimmying open their patio door. But people seem less upset about this and more upset about how The Sopranos ended. Pshaw, I say. It didn’t matter how it ended – no one would have been happy.

If Tony had been whacked, would anyone be happy? If Tony had come out in his bathrobe and boxers and picked up a newspaper from the driveway of either his current house or a new house compliments of the Witness Protection Program, would anyone be happy? Nah – it would have been a too-obvious rip-off of Goodfellas. Tell me: What ending would have made a devoted viewer happy?

I submit that the ending that ended the series was the one. Again, I only mention this because Buckley offered his two cents, and I actually like his interpretation. It makes sense. I can’t really analyze the episode in great detail because, of course, I didn’t see it. Only the final seconds, as Meadow is parking, then running towards the diner, and running towards her family and everything it is — as she always, despite her protestations, seems to do. And, as Tony looks up, the screen goes black.

In the few episodes I have seen, what is the core of the show? The family. Whether it’s Tony immediate family, his extended family, or the “family business,” the show is all about la familia. And what did Tony’s family do best? The immediate family always managed to gather together for dinner. Carm insisted on that. It was the one rule to be obeyed. Even family members he couldn’t trust and didn’t like showed up to this ritual. And his business family always managed to do the same: gather around a table and stuff their faces. It’s an Italian thing. We’re very into food. A Sunday dinner can go on for… well, days.

How perfect, then, how natural, that despite eight years of family drama, the series ended with the family once again sitting down together to have a meal. Their last? Maybe. Maybe not. During the hours of non-stop analysis, one critic said something that triggered a reaction. There are three ways to interpret this, he said. One: Tony gets whacked. Two: the audience gets whacked. Three… uh, I don’t remember three because as soon as I heard two, that’s all I needed to hear. Yes, that was it, the audience got whacked.

But not in the way I think he meant it. As soon as I heard his comment and saw Tony looking up and then it was black, it all made perfect sense to me. It was like Henry Hill explaining in Goodfellas: “If they’d been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would’ve been dead.” It’s because you don’t see it coming. One minute you’re there, the next minute you’re dead. Everything goes black. It’s quick, it’s unexpected, and it’s understood by every made guy.

And, at the precise moment that screen went black, so, finally, did the audience.

“… Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz.

Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere — that sphere that towers over all Berlin — the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner:

‘This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.’

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I’ve been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they’re doing again.

Thank you and God bless you all.”

– Ronald Wilson Reagan, June 12, 1987

So every now and then I switch over to MSNBC to monitor how they’re covering a particular story, right? Well, I thought I’d sit through Hardball and, mind you, I wasn’t really paying close attention because I was cutting out pictures from store ads for my personal immigrant. (The literacy program tells the tutors that we will be an immigrant’s “personal American,” so I’m assuming that the student is my “personal immigrant.”) So today I’m cutting out pictures of tools, appliances, and common household items.

Incidentally, why do we call toilet paper “bath” tissue? Again, how the hell does someone learn our language? English is just so hard. I know this because Chris Matthews is still referring to our VP as “Cheeney.” (You know, it’s difficult to take Chrees seriously ever since I saw him tear up over that Hugh Grant/Billy Bob Thornton scene in Love Actually. “I just love that movie!”, admitted a dewy-eyed Chrees. Eeeeewwww. That, I say, speaks volumes about our Chrees.)

Anyway, I’m cutting away and I hear him say he’s going to “interview” Mike Huckabee. I should have put down my scissors and paid closer attention, but I just kept on clipping out my pictures, looking up from time to time to catch Huckabee’s expression. The “Jesus Christ, what aren’t you getting?” one.

That whole exchange was… weird. Chrees just seemed so uncomfortable and the “interview” ended so strangely. Still cutting away, I stopped to look up when Chrees mentioned the anniversary of Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev – tear down this wall!” speech. A familiar video clip. A bold statement. Much cheering. Chrees seemed confused and asked one of the guest panelists something like: “Gee, Reagan seemed popular – was he?”

The current “cowboy president” isn’t popular in Europe, said Chrees, but was Reagan – another “cowboy” president – actually liked outside the United States? Why, yes, sort of, explained the panelist whose name escapes me, because Europeans recognized that America had a “real” enemy then, so they were more likely to side with America since, compared to the Soviet Union, America seemed a bit more likeable.

I dropped my scissors. A “real” enemy? Ah, so what I hear you say is that America doesn’t currently have a “real” enemy? You’re saying we have a… a “bumpersticker” enemy? Well, Chrees was quick to respond to the panelist, recalling what it was like growing up with the Soviet threat – it was scary! More scary, said Chrees, than any of the (bumpersticker) “terrorists.”

Um… what, precisely, are they putting into the water coolers there at MSNBC?