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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review March 16 , 2012/ 22 Adar, 5772

Last man standing: This week it's Rick Santorum

By Paul Greenberg




http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Another week, another GOP presidential primary to note before moving on to the next inconclusive one. And so it goes on the long trail a-winding to exhaustion or Tampa or both.

This week congratulations go to Rick Santorum, I guess. He's this week's non-Romney, which is a kind of revolving trophy. Newt Gingrich had it for a fleeting moment after the South Carolina primary and has been hanging around the campaign trail ever since. No matter how many times he's asked to leave. Like a guest at a party who just won't go home. All his presidential campaign has proved to date is that, as South Carolina goes, so goes Georgia. He represented a congressional district there a couple of decades and political ages ago.

Oh, the man's still got a thousand ideas a minute, and there's even a winner in there somewhere, but, unfortunately, you've got to go through the first 999 to get to it. Meanwhile, the whole Gingrich for President enterprise consists of little more than a well-financed ego trip -- a thousand variations on Look at Me! Look at Me! Which is a sure sign not many people are looking.

When I look, all I see is another Harold Stassen. He wouldn't go away, either. A perennial presidential hopeful long after any such hope had faded, Mr. Stassen seemed to have taken up running for president as a kind of retirement activity. And, at that stage, he was about as convincing as his bad red wig. At least he stayed busy.

George H.W. Bush, aka Bush 41, had this way of stringing cliches together in telegraphic succession ("the vision thing"). He also used to talk about the Big Mo, meaning political momentum. Rick Santorum now has emerged from two Southern primaries -- in deepest Mississippi and Heart-of-Dixie Alabama -- with what might be dubbed the Little Mo. Whatever little it consists of, the odds are somebody else will have it next week.

This year The Little Mo tends to be passed around like a bottle of Crown as the GOP's presidential race more and more comes to resemble a 1920s-style marathon dance contest. It seems to be run on the same theory: The prize goes to the last couple of contestants standing, who'll be left to hold each other up, maybe on the same disjointed ticket, a la Reagan-Bush or Kennedy-Johnson.

But how sustain interest in this nigh-endless contest till then? Another name for those old dance marathons was walkathons -- for obvious reasons. At the end, the final contestants weren't so much dancing as dragging each other around the floor, like the last survivors crawling out of some disaster that refuses to end.

Week by week, this presidential race transmogrifies into a presidential schlep. Like the kind of Broadway show that never makes it to Broadway but is stuck in Philadelphia or maybe Poughkeepsie, where a new team of writers has been called in to save it, and the understudy and leading man keep changing places in hopes of something magic happening. It doesn't.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul is still backstage lurking. Like a little old man who runs a dusty antique shop in the middle of an otherwise busy block where the occasional visitor can see period pieces from the turn of the century -- the last century. Wind up the old music box in the window and hear populist themes circa 1898 -- the charms of isolationism, the beauty of the old gold standard, a medley of sentimental tributes to a perfect past that never was ... but business is always slow.

Politics and showbiz are not entirely dissimilar enterprises, which is why some of us gluttons for ennui find ourselves following every twist in this year's repetitive plot. Even as the theater grows emptier every performance. And all look forward to the highlight of the show: when the curtain falls. If it ever does.

How restore the sense of elevation that great drama affords when the country is stuck with this weekly game of musical chairs? For that, we have to look not to our politicians but our poets, thinkers, fabulists. To a writer like C.S. Lewis, who left us this reliable standard, this sure guide to go by when judging the passing hurlyburly of politics, and maybe even rise above it:

"It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time."

Maybe those simple words of C.S. Lewis's -- like all genius, simple -- will afford some perspective and even guidance as we go on to the next presidential primary and the one after that and the one ... till the tumult ceases and we are left with our own thoughts. And duties. And satisfactions. For it is the little things that may turn out to be the great ones, the lasting ones.

Paul Greenberg Archives

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JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.

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