The Root of All Evil

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And so we enter a more intractable phase in the conflict, which will not be a war over land or oil or even democratic institutions, but a war over narratives. The Arabs will nurture this Zionist-centric mythology, which is as self-flattering as it is self-destructive. They will demand that the U.S. and Israel adopt their narrative and admit historical guilt. Failing politically, militarily and economically, they will fight a battle for moral superiority, the kind of battle that does not allow for compromises or truces.

-- David Brooks for The New York Times

Yeah, those wiley Jews are always at fault. Didn't Hitler teach us that?

This is a familiar story that Brooks reprises, but he adds a twist about how supposedly progressive Western intellectuals who also tend to place the moral onus on Israel and the West are a vital source of support for this destructive, defeatest worldview. It is only that much more disturbing that so many Westerners can be sympathetic and supportive of these wild and dangerous notions in the misapplication of the ideal of wanting to see both sides.

( Brooks column )

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The Root of All Evil

♠
And so we enter a more intractable phase in the conflict, which will not be a war over land or oil or even democratic institutions, but a war over narratives. The Arabs will nurture this Zionist-centric mythology, which is as self-flattering as it is self-destructive. They will demand that the U.S. and Israel adopt their narrative and admit historical guilt. Failing politically, militarily and economically, they will fight a battle for moral superiority, the kind of battle that does not allow for compromises or truces.

-- David Brooks for The New York Times

Yeah, those wiley Jews are always at fault. Didn't Hitler teach us that?

This is a familiar story that Brooks reprises, but he adds a twist about how supposedly progressive Western intellectuals who also tend to place the moral onus on Israel and the West are a vital source of support for this destructive, defeatest worldview. It is only that much more disturbing that so many Westerners can be sympathetic and supportive of these wild and dangerous notions in the misapplication of the ideal of wanting to see both sides.

( Brooks column )

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Sopranos: The Final Season

But the main difference between “The Sopranos” and its spawn wasn’t prurience, it was ambition. Most shows overreach, or “jump the shark,” when they pile on too much melodrama and too many dead bodies. On “The Sopranos” it was the opposite: The show lost its way when it put murders and mischief aside and weighed itself down in ponderous character sketches and too many Bergmanesque dream sequences.

... Last season was particularly low on whimsy and the playful black humor that was so much a part of the series’s charm, and the first two episodes of the final season are mostly solemn and self-serious.

It’s just as well. Way back in the fourth season, when Tony resisted Carmela’s pleas that he protect his loved ones’ future with some estate planning, she told him to grow up. “Let me tell you something,” Carmela snapped. “Everything comes to an end.”

-- Alessandra Stanley for The New York Times

It had been my feeling that after that great exceptional third season, the show bowed down to the firestorm of criticism of all that wonderfully cathartic violence and sexism, and one only tuned in in the hope of seeing some spark of its former self and usually ended up disappointed. Well, here's hoping that it ends in a bang returning to it's old nasty self.

xXx

Sopranos: The Final Season

But the main difference between “The Sopranos” and its spawn wasn’t prurience, it was ambition. Most shows overreach, or “jump the shark,” when they pile on too much melodrama and too many dead bodies. On “The Sopranos” it was the opposite: The show lost its way when it put murders and mischief aside and weighed itself down in ponderous character sketches and too many Bergmanesque dream sequences.

... Last season was particularly low on whimsy and the playful black humor that was so much a part of the series’s charm, and the first two episodes of the final season are mostly solemn and self-serious.

It’s just as well. Way back in the fourth season, when Tony resisted Carmela’s pleas that he protect his loved ones’ future with some estate planning, she told him to grow up. “Let me tell you something,” Carmela snapped. “Everything comes to an end.”

-- Alessandra Stanley for The New York Times

It had been my feeling that after that great exceptional third season, the show bowed down to the firestorm of criticism of all that wonderfully cathartic violence and sexism, and one only tuned in in the hope of seeing some spark of its former self and usually ended up disappointed. Well, here's hoping that it ends in a bang returning to it's old nasty self.

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