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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (25329)	1/20/2004 4:15:22 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 793759

What's wrong with this sentence: He reformed, went straight, and became a politician. Perhaps he's a reformed trial lawyer. Americans just love redemption.

To: Lane3 who wrote (25329)	1/20/2004 4:20:04 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793759

TARGETING FRIEDMAN: The hard left has every reason to despise Tom Friedman. He can bring himself to praise the Bush administration from time to time; he's pro-Israel; he's an optimist about progress in the Middle East that can accommodate the Jewish state. But this diatribe from Cynthia Cotts at the Village Voice is particularly vicious. She's offended that Friedman is ... religious. A recent prize was donated to ... a synagogue! The horror: "In Israel, religion and politics are inseparable. Orthodox Jews have considerable power, and Reform and Conservative groups fight for leverage. While Friedman does not usually identify his arguments as religious ones, he has exhorted moderate Jews to be as passionate as extremists, and he endorsed the war in Iraq, which he casts as a moral imperative... Friedman's religious beliefs are relevant because they shed light on his political ideology, which he espouses with tremendous authority. In a New York Times column published shortly before Yom Kippur 1997, Friedman called on moderate U.S. Jews to give money to Israel "in a very targeted way," so that it would not end up in the hands of "ultra-Orthodox elements." In the same column, Friedman wrote that he had recently turned down an invitation to talk about Arab-Israeli affairs to an "American-Israeli educational institution," because he was required to end his speech "on an uplifting note." These days, Friedman routinely bills himself as an optimist. In a recent column addressed to Israeli moderates, he wrote, "We have nothing to lose but our pessimism." In a speech he gave last fall, he declared, "I am an optimist by nature." And upon accepting the award last week, he recalled how his editor at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had praised him, saying, "You're the only optimist we have." Asked whether he had ever agreed to give a speech on the condition that he take an optimistic stance, Friedman declined to comment." What on earth does this have to do with anything? All it amounts to is an attempt to dismiss or undermine Friedman's views because he's a religious Jew. Some on the left really are bigots, aren't they? andrewsullivan.com