;.cTIME 10 June
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l2,15,75,192,2,20,25,127,15,0,
;.l3,20,75,192,2,25,127,20,0,
;.l4,25,75,192,2,127,25,0,
MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
DATE:  6/6/96
RE:    
REF:   TIME 10 June 96 (Johanna McGeary; reported by Lisa Beyer,Bonnie Rochman, Eric Silver (Jlem);  Jamil Hadad ("Bethlehem");/Lara Marlowe (Beirut); JFO McAllister (Washington)
CC:
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I.  BLOCK THAT EVEN-HANDED RHETORIC:

"Folly, wrote Barbara Tuchman, is when leaders knowingly choosethe wrong path."
COMMENT:  Gosh, that must be a reference to Peres, who  sailed toIsrael on the Original NARRENSHIFF ["Ship of Fools"]
                                    
"Hope vs. fear, opportunity vs. peril,
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COMMENT:  No perilous opportunities? 
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a plunge into a risky future or an overhasty 
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COMMENT;  
	As distinct from an underhasty, or responsibly hasty?
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abandonning of the familiar, go-it-alone past.  Was it wise to putfaith in the dream of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Labour leaderShiomon Peres, who promised a New Middle East crafted ofcompromise, or to heed the wranings of Netanyahu, who spoke theword fear 11 times..." 
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COMMENT:  Coming Soon:  Bibi as Demagogue
l1                                                 
"Instability, paralysis, even folly?"

[The famous Stain-on-the-Jacket Pre-Debate Sneak-Attack:]
"For a moment Netanyahu turned red with panic."
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COMMENT:  The Post put it less colorfully.  Maybe nextsomeone says he was paralyzed with panic?    
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"The glib former diplomat.
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COMMENT:  
  Nu, and the Gettysburgh address was glib sound-bites?
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"The floating voters, who are swayed more by emotion thanideology".
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COMMENT:  Riding to power on the backs of the mindlessmasses, Bibi Netanyahu...
ANALYIS:  That's a definition of 'floating voter' -- onewithout a rational commitment at the time of the poll -- butits the existence of same that most Israeli commentatorsquestioned, when it became apparent that these were proNetanyahu citizens who don't confide in pollsters, or whomthe pollsters didn't both to question because they lackedtelephones.
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"His hard-line challenger kept sweet-talking about how he was forpeace."
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COMMENT:  'Sweet-talking' is USA slang, 19th cent., forduplicitous talk, typically by rake seducing a maiden.
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"Modernates like onetime Foreign Minister David Levy ..."
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COMMENT:  Well, only the USA could make Levy look like astatesman:  the  Boris Yeltsin of Bet She'an.
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[Quoting Sprinzak}:  "duped" 

"He so vituperatively -- and unfarily -- accused Peres ofthreatening to divide Jerusalem ...  "
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COMMENT:  Peres threatened to nuke Iran; his policies posedthe risk that Jerusalem would be administratively divided.
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"Netanyahu wants to freeze thigns as they are, though taht wouldsquash the most minial of Palestinian aspirations."
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COMMENT:  With nukes as most maximal?
Whatever happened to autonomy in Gaza-Jericho first as themost minimal"
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"In the short term, Palestinians are reacting calmly..."
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COMMENT:  You mean His Highness Chairperson Poopoohead's onHaladol? 

The PLO as moderates; Likud as extremists.  
Where's George Orwell now that we really need him?

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"but over time their response to an unbending Netanyahu couldflare up into a new intifadeh, the six-year stones-and-gunsuprising that finally forced Israel to negotiate with them"
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COMMENT:  Aw shucks.  Not Peres' statesmanlike vision thing?
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"Instead...he [Netanyahu] might drive despairing Palestinians intobattle."
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COMMENT:  Actually, battles are led by generals, who are moremotivated by strategic considerations than driven by despair;despair drives a man to stick up a liquor store or steal aloaf of bread.

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REVIEW:  ISRAEL ACCORDING TO TIME:
The intifada was a popular revolt by the Palestinian peopleagainst military occupation and economic occupation; its goalis a democratic state that will gain and protect civilliberties and human rights.  Its leader, ChairpersonPoopoohead, was democratically elected.
	In 1992 Peres secretly discovered that the PLO are notterrorists but moderates, and so he led the people of Israelinto the promised land of peace, requesting their approval(not granted, tho by a razor-thin margin, as long as one doesnot make a racist distinction between Jewish and Arabcitizens) 32 months later.                         
	Labour Levy & Poopoohead are moderates; Bibi & Hamas areextremists.                       
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"His [Likud]  campaign ads sought blatantly to redemonize the PLOleader.  Then wehn he realized he could not even pretend to keepthe peace process alive without the Palestinians' chosen
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COMMENT:  A good word.  Eg, 'self-chosen'?
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interlocutor
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COMMENT:  Interlocutor means maybe dictator?
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he grudgingly
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COMMENT:  Oh most niggardly and churlish grudge!
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conceeded he might have to meet him  after all.
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REVIEW:  Ok:  What we got here is your basic Peace Processwith (Re-tread) Demon.  A Peace Process is a type of Process;it does not necesarily have anything to do with Peace; buteverybody gets to jet to Onan & Sharm el Sheik & such. 
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"[with the defeat of Peres] Osrael's last direct link to itsfounding fathers is gone."
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COMMENT:  Don't tell Weizmann.
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"now that he has achieved his burning ambition to be PrimeMinister..."
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COMMENT:  Peres was mellow; take it or leave it.
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"Likud's siege mentality"
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COMMENT:  Ok, how many nations are currently in a state-ofwar with Israel?  What is the PLO's present officialposition?  
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AND NOW THE MESSAGE TO NETANYAHU:
"Some claim he is pragmaatic enought to jettison hot campaignrhetoric for cool reason and enlightened choice when hemust....Leaders who can assess their choices onlyh in terms ofpreconceived, fixed ntions, who refuse to benefit from experience,who rejet contrary signs of a better course, says historianTuchman
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COMMENT:  Talking of the appeasement process that led toWorld War II, or the Peres peace process? 
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are the wons deeomed to folly.  That, she  notes, is what costRehoboam, son of King Solomon, and Kingdom of Israel and  the 10tribes forever.
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COMMENT:  This is maybe a hint that the USA will pull theplug on Israel's technologic edge if we don't make Big Billlook like a Statesman so he can win the Whitewater Race?
.p
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MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
DATE:  6/6/96
RE:    Systemic nature of media-bias in TIME/Newsweek
REF:   TIME/ Newsweek in General

------------------------------------------------------------------
                               
GENERAL REMARK:  What TIME and Newsweek admittedly present arepolitical essays based on and taken for reports of news.  The byline is always that of the Writer, who is usually based in NewYork; not the reporter.   
	Thus in the bad old days TIME reporters had a reputation forproducing honest professional articles that were routinely mangledfor publication by the home office; and usually shlocked up withersatz---Vanity-Fair instant colloquialisms.   
	An element of systematic nedia bias -- by which I mean notmerely an editorial position carried into news articles, butcovertly carried into news articles, so that a reader of typicallyaverage perceptivity if not intellligence -- eg me, as J.L. Austinwould say -- assumes that he/she is reading a factual report, andso is quite receptive and vulnerable to systematic distortion,usually reflecting a political agenda, most likely of the newsmagazine's host nation.
	So that leads me to a new point, which is that news-magazineson the model of TIME (and thence Newsweek) are inherently biasedby a WRITER/Reporter structure in which the Writer is primary;rather than the traditional journalist structure ofREPORTER/Editor, in which the function of editor was secondary and consisted mainly in cleaning up language and tidying up structure.
	In contrast, The NY Times Weekly Review distinguishes Opinionfrom reporting, and reporters ostensibly write their own material 
(although NYT Weekly review writers now inject substantialeditorial bias).  The NY Times Magazine, as I recall, explictlyfeatured articles expressing the writer's viewpoint.  Seriousjournals of political commentary explictly develop the writer'sviewpoint, and specifically credit his/her sources. 

	Again, the first rule of media bias is the Fine PrintPrinciple:  Never leave yourself open to a Gotcha!.  Never tell adirect lie; but when the news or truth doesn't fit the bias,present it as inconspicuously as possible.  
	TIME/Newsweek do not hide the role of their writers, but,rather like Poe's purloined letter which sat in plain sight withthe rest of the daily mail, TIME/Newsweek present articles ofopinion in the format of a news-magazine. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
.p
MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
DATE:  6/6/96
RE:    
REF:   TIME 10 Jun 96 (Kramer)
CC:
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This seems to be clean, rather insightful reporting, with a fewdigs at the PLO.  
	If memory serves, it was Dave McReynolds 
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[NYC 60s Executive officer of War Resisters' League, led byBayard Rustin; informally associated with the [Democratic]Socialist Party of Norman Thomas.]
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who said of the NY Times, "You have to read between the lines, butat least there are lines to read between."

	In this article, a few points come out:  
	(1) PLO financial corruption: "Shaath's well-appointed home - an incongruous sight in the midst of Gaza's rubble"; 
	(2) PLO support of Peres ("given how much we have invested inPeres' being able to continue it [the peace process] on theIsraeli side, well, for us it's as if [Poopoohead] were runninghimself."  To which the writer adds, "Just about everything thatcould help Peres, they have done -- or more exactly
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[but here the writer seems more to be covering himself thanto be withdrawing his previous remark for qualified restatement;  
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and to be using that convention that the reader "hears"written articles as if they were oral presentation toset out an intentional double-meaning -- for correctstyle in written discourse is usually to state onlyone's concluding position, not the supplantedpreliminary positions]
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have not done"
	 
	(3) PLO control of the Israeli-Arab vote:
	"the Palestinian Authority had urged Arab clerics and othertrusted pro-Peres Palestinians to go door to door to push ArabIsraelis to the polls.  After a last-minute surge, 79% of them didvote, and more than 94% supported Peres"
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COMMMENT:  Again, reading between the lines, this indicatesthat the Israeli-Arab vote was selectively mobilized, usinglocal people who presumably knew the electoral inclination ormalleability of the people they mobilized; that leaves openthe question of whether potential dissidents were intimidatedfrom voting.   Again, in the context of Qana, one must see a94% vote for Peres as something other than a free honestexpression of popular sentiment; particularly since thefinancial personal interests of Israeli Arabs would seeminversely preportional to the strength of the 'Palestinian'factions in the territories. 
	Another interesting point is that the writer notes thatIsraeli-Arab 'clerics' were used to turn out the vote; theseare people presumably associated with the Islamic movement;that tends to confirm persistent claims (in the JP, indiametric contrast to what had become in effect an officialline of the Peres administration) of a de facto alliancebetween the PLO and Islamic fundamentalism.
.p
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MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
DATE:  7 Jun 96
RE:    
REF:   TIME 10 Jun 96 (Lisa Beyer; with reporting by Eric Silver)
CC:
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TITLE:  The Making of Bibi
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[Ah, this is more like it; classic Bibi-bashing.
I'm note quite sure  what Lisa Beyer does for a living; shewas last featured driving an auto to the Central Bus Stationof Jerusalem to be photographed with steno pad interviewingpassengers for an article on suicide-bombers.]
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SUMMARY:  This is a consistently biased article.  The easiestexamples are gratuitious non-balanced strings of pejorativeadjectives , starting with "swagger" "smirk" "well-practicedgestures" in the first pargraph, and concluding with "selfsatisfied smirk" "polish" in the last paragraph.  
	But it's relatively mild bias; annoying rather thanoffensive.  The points I claim as examples of bias are subtler,far more arguable than those presented in Eye on Media.
	One might argue that this makes them more interesting, atleast for a theory of meaing. 
	And anyhow, I'm trying to work up the nerve to open the postelection issue of Newsweek.

TITLE:  The Making of Bibi

COMMENT:  I don't think the USA quite knows what to make of thatnick-name, but it does seem to make them uncomfortable:  Machismois quite important in the USA, if only because there are so fewopportunties left, at least to men, to exercise it.  Gentelemen inthe USA just don't ordinarily take their leave of other adults bysaying "Bye-bye". 
	Reckon the journalists will get a bit of mileage out of thatnickname.

 	We start with the sort of off-key word-play that only TIMEwoulld tell -- in this case on the biblical-style name'Netanyahu', which, better-known in the modern shortening'Nathan', was an epithet intended to express gratitude for divineprovidence, not to arrogate any exception merit to its bearer.

	Having disarmeed potential critics by showing that she knowsat least one word of Hebrew, our interepid reporter/writer thencloses in for a quick knockout:  
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"Israel's new Prime Minister is self-assured
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(Cf. T.S. Eliot's apparently anti-Semitic carricature:
"one on whom assurance sits / like a silk hat on aBradford millionaire"
Bradford being, I read, the turf of parevnus.)
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but more than that, he has the air of someone who is pleasedwith himself
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(that has a derrogatory ring in USA English, but I can'trecall why -- maybe that the USA icon, from Gary Cooperto Bogart to Eastwood, is the sad, cynical hero, whodoes what duty calls  for, but without vanity nor evenpersonal satisfaction -- a sort of update of theChristian ideal of Knight )
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someone who thinks he knows more than those around him
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(In the USA, no greater sin -- every piano player &nuclear physicist is expected to go out to the ballgame)
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-- and deserves more.  It is visible in his swagger, 
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(Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) finallycomes through; 
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usually I find TIME beat me to it, and picked onlywords whose official defintions, tho not popularconnotations, are unobjectionable. 
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"Swagger:  to conduct onself in an arrogant orsupercilliously pompous manner; esp. to walk with an airof overbearing self-confidence")
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Like:  Why not analyze the walks and body languageof all the MK's:  Sharon is a Merkava.  Peres was awinging martinet.  Beni Begin (another name toconjure with) looks like Mr. Peepers, except thathe sticks incongruously to principles.  David Levylooks like a horned owl mushroom, tho less animated(that may require a major media makeover, if theUSA, following Baker, decides again to use him inattempts to destablize the government.)  

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his smirk
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(Oy:  the Revenge of 'fleet-footed Achilles' and  'rosyfingered Dawn':  'smirk' is the epithet now of theassassain of Rabin -- the gloat of perverse satisfactionof a dam'nable back-stabber.  
	Regicide is usually a bit traumatic.}
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his well-practiced gestures.
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[Reagan for sure:  Like R. Zalman Shachter said, only in theUSA would we hire an actor to play the part of President.

Media bias seems to consist, in one dimension, ofconstellations of "Little Lies" (maybe corallaries of a "BigLie", crafted to assist a political agenda).  One of theLittle Lies  -- what Newsweek calls,  with ironically wittycandor, 'Conventional Wisdom' -- is that Netanyahu was nomore than a Master of the Sound Bite -- one who, like Reagan,had mastered the media but gave little or no thought to thepositions he professed, except to change and adjust them asnecessary to maximize his popularity and elect-ability.
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	It is perhaps because the media are still entangledin their own Little Lie that this week's ConventionalWisdom seems to be that there are sound grounds to hopethat Netanyahu -- as Clinton did -- will yield tointernational pressure and covertly abandon if notovertly repudiate the position on which he campaigned. 


So far media reaction to Netanyahu has been veryrestrained, that seems to follow the U.S. line.  Thefirst big sh-t--storm should come after Netanyahu meetsClinton, at which stage someone's apt to notice thathe's for real.   At that point the State Department maystart running for Mecca, trailing the media like a dogwith tin cans.
  
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Tom E. Friedman is an exceptionally well-positionedweathervane; if there's anything to leak from HighPlaces, 'twill fall on his self-annointed cupoloe.
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Then we have Netanyahu's Youth -- ie, 46 -- this from anexceptionally age-ist country where JFK was the only modernnational hero.




LEADING QUESTION WITH SET-UP & 2 PHANTOM TAXI-DRIVERS:

"Apart from ambition, self-regard, and a glossy finish, hiscritics have asked, what else is there to Netanyahu?  ManyIsraelis have found him too smooth to be taken seriously."
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[If so, 21,000 more found Peres too slick.]
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"His father, a disciple of Ze'ev Jabotinsky"
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[`disciple'?  Revisionism as a cult, with brainwashedmindless minions? ]
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"Netanyahu can be touchy about his family."
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[Yup; it's called media-management.  Antidote tosensationalistically andtendentiously-driven mediaexploitation. ]
l1                           
"They [the Netanyahu's] have made a kind of cult of this son[Jonathan]
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[Ah -- with altars and incense and such?  Not to mention themidnight invitation-only midnight masses?
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"producing three books about him and establishing the JonathanInstitute, devoted to the study of terrorism."
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[Not your average cult.  Ingeniously distinguished as propermemorials for a promising man who died young. 
	And there is an obvious analog with Joe Kennedy Jr.]
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"A year later, in need of money, he took a job ..."
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[Clearly a put-down, although not one with obvious point.]
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"In the U.S. Netanyahu made a pont of getting to know wealthyJews..."
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[Shocking.  But then, an arriviste will cultivate the moneygrubbers
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{ I oughtn't cultivate my paranoias, but:  with whatsort of target readership would the preceeding quotedremark be taken as a telling put-down -- like someonesaid, each week they sell 3 million copies just to havean excuse to address a few dozen folks with summercottages in Newport and private lines to the WhiteHouse}
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[quoting an otherwise unidentified [apparently former] "Israelidiplomat"]: "Bibi made a point of cultivating people as far awayas the West Coast..."
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[Now what is someone with a perfectly good apartment andfull-time job in New York City doing cultivating folks in Californ-i-ay?  Opposite side of everything.  They didn'teven join the Union until 1850, and half of 'em  -- thesouthern half -- still don't hardly know it.  'Ceptin' theHollywood Jews maybe; they're smart.]
l1                             

"Netanyahu's Americanness 
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[needless to say, we ain't talking here of Canada nor Mexiconor Central nor South America; American means USA]
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has contributed to the view that he is too slick and superficial
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[As distinct from TIME, MacDonalds, and Clinton?]
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"Mystique is not substance, however."
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[Not so loud; what could the USA do in place of Presidentialelections, if there's another baseball strike?]
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Photo captions:

Netayahu with Jonathon:  Caption:  "Brother hero."

Netanyahu with wife and children: "... admitted to an affair, butnow talks in interviews about diapers.
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[Now for starters, President Bill Clinton is best-known forhis affairs.  And it's a peculiar Puritanism that assumesthat no married man who ever had an affair could possiblecare about raising chldren.   Nor did Netanyahu precisely'admit to an affair',  since in Israel, unlike the USA, thatis not considered a matter to be submitted to electorate forfinal judgement; ; he acknowleged it publically, to forestallan apparent blackmail move. ]
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I take back everything in this memo:  This is a balanced article;I've just come to the balance:  it's in paragraph 10, just afterthe quoted remark "'He comes across as Mr. Sound Bite, as shallowas Ronald Reagan.  But ...'  The balance extends through theentirely of paragraph 11 (all 3 sentences of it).

Par. 12:  "During the party leadership campagin, Netanyahu brougha US-style media scandal upon himself...police found no evidence... Netanyahu was compelled to apologize to Levy.
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[This is a bit of revisionism:  Netanyahu paniced underpressure and fantasised a Moroccan mafia.  If the policefound no evidence, there never was a crime.
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Closing paragraph:

"Neither Bibigate nor the self-satisfied smirk
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[Again class:  who is it who smirks?  What happened to makeBibi President?  Who's the plain honest man that we all lovebut not Abe Lincoln?  Who's that oily upstart Jew?  Do youthink maybe the Secret Agents could get us a nicer man, if we trust them, and don't let those pushy people on theCongressional Oversight Comittee spoil everyting?]
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"nor the American manner"
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[the one thing the goyim won't forgive us, apart from  thatregrettable incident during the pre-Pesach rush a fewmillenia ago, is spoiling the natives.   Like Michener said[in The Source]: The  Revenge of Ahmed the Camel Boy.  Andnow Netayahu is Americanizing the Jews, and that gruffsoldier with the heart of gold scarce back from his own wake. If things get any worse, there'll be no place left to go forvacation but Disneyland, and we don't like mice much. ]
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"prevented Israelis from going for the whole package, not just thepolish but the steel underneath."
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[Even-handed compliments yet, except that Uncle Joe Stalingot it first.]
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"If the younger, smoother candidate raced to the top amost beforehis resume built up to it, 
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[Oy:  Now who are they targeting?  Assistant CEO's in fear ofdownsizing?]
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.a3
the slimmest of majorities ..."
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[I guess we're stuck as Conventional Wisdom with that'slimmest of majorities'; to speak of a 'Jewish majority' isimpossibly un-PC.]
 
                                       




 


                           
                                      
                    





