Новости за 13.12.2017

When news broke that President Trump would be recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the media was quickly inundated with uncritically-quoted dire predictions of violent backlash across the Middle East. One week later, protests against the move have largely petered out, and mass unrest has not materialized, leaving reporters to awkwardly explain why. NBC now has an explainer on “Why Trump’s provocative Jerusalem move hasn’t sparked an intifada.” A representative headline in Vox reads: “Trump’s... Читать дальше...

Does urban planner Robert Moses seem like an odd choice as the star of a rock musical? Tell that to the creators of Bulldozer: The Ballad of Robert Moses, a new off-Broadway musical featuring American Idol alum Constantine Maroulis as the city planner who transformed New York City in the twentieth century.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is now clarifying a previous controversial statement denying that Qatar gives financial support for Hamas. According to a December 7th letter to Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon, which Tablet has obtained, Haley is now partially backing off of an October memo to Congress, in which she wrote that Doha “does not fund Hamas” and appeared to draw distinctions between Hamas’s political and military wings that run contrary to decades of US policy towards the group. Читать дальше...

First dates can be so awkward! What if you’re really into jazz and your date digs Phish? Or if you’re a vegan and your date dreams of Big Macs? Or if your date believes the Jewish state alone, out of all the world’s nations, ought to be singled out for sanctions, and you aren’t an anti-Semite?

Can an oyster dinner be heymish? Maybe when it’s at the swank yet unpretentious Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. Hear me out. A few nights ago your humble correspondent was fruitlessly applying herself to some research at the New York Public Library when a text came in from Congress for Jewish Culture Director Shane Baker. Did I want to get an oyster pan roast? I sure did. Do I even like oysters? I sure don’t. No matter. A five-minute scrum through the holiday crowds and Shane and I were being seated at the famed Oyster Bar. Читать дальше...

There’s only one American journalist who truly merits a Pulitzer Prize this year: Glenn Greenwald. He’s been on the biggest story of the year from day one. No, I don’t mean Russiagate, the main stage for the media’s preening self-advertisements of its heroic “resistance,” like “Democracy dies in Darkness.” In fact, the narrative holding that Donald Trump colluded with Russia is the chief piece of evidence that Greenwald has used to nail the year’s real top story—how the American press became a woozy facsimile of Pravda. Читать дальше...

Let’s be plain: there are not many good Chanukah movies. For the children, there is the Rugrats Chanukah special. For the adults… It’s A Wonderful Life? (One can only imagine a restless Jewish station manager conspiring to schedule as the yearly Christmas viewing a movie that is 98% human misery and only 2% Christmas.) However, blessed is the Disney Channel, for from this unlikely place came one of our only modern Chanukah classics (the other, of course, being The Hebrew Hammer in all its exploitation glory), Full-Court Miracle. Читать дальше...