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May 24, 2013

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: When I didn't so 'humbly disagree'

Caroline B. Glick: Thank you, Hafez al-Assad

Diana West: From the Brooklyn Bridge to London
Morgan Housel: Why spotting bubbles is so much harder than you think

Environmental Nutrition editors: NuVal labeling to the rescue?

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Memorial Day: Jews Serving and KIA in War on Terror; Liberace Bio-Pic; Jew Wins "Survivor"; Shalom, Dr. Brothers; More

The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen: HIDE THESE FROZEN TREATS FROM THE KIDDIES!: Sangria pops; Irish cream pudding pops; mango Lassi pops

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 July 20 2011 / 18 Tamuz, 5771

Decline of the English Scandal

By Paul Greenberg




http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Consider this an obituary for a newspaper. The suddenly late News of the World succumbed at 168 this month to a fatal case of shame aggravated by financial calculation. Its chronic hubris became acute under its latest owner, who has not been free of that malady himself.

The end came as a shock. Who knew The News of the World was even capable of shame? And now it's died of it. Its insatiable appetite for scandal finally did it in. For once its zeal got in the way of its owner's ambitions instead of furthering them. And it had to be put it out of its misery. Its last great scandal, as it turned out, was its own.

The saddest thing about NoW's abrupt passing is that it won't be around to cover it, complete with the required pictures of the dramatis personae scurrying out of their lairs with faces hidden from prying paparazzi.

Nothing could save The News of the World as evidence began to pile up of outrages low even by its famously low standards. Like hacking into the phone of an abducted schoolgirl to eavesdrop on increasingly desperate messages from family and friends. And listening in on the phone calls of relatives of British soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Spying on royalty may be almost an English tradition by now, but Tommies -- and their families -- used to be off-limits.

Oh, yes, a history of bribing police officers was also mentioned in dispatches. As high-level resignation follows high-level resignation, Scotland Yard begins to look more like the Keystone Kops.

At least two parliamentary investigations have begun, and neither will be pretty. This can of worms has just been opened, and there's no telling what other scandals will slither out.

The good news is that there are still lines even a British tabloid may not cross with impunity. The outcry against NoW's sleazy ways has been deafening. And widespread. It covers the spectrum of British opinion from toff to prole. Maybe there'll always be an England after all. And an English sense of decency.

Ordinarily the fall of another storied newspaper is an occasion for mourning, but the mercy killing of this sick, sick operation raises hopes. Despite all one has heard about the deterioration of British manners, old John Bull is still capable of recognizing behavior up with which he will not put.

There was a better time when it was simply assumed that some things would never change, like roomy London cabs, the red pillar-boxes of the Royal Mail, and, yes, The News of the World. That publication may not have been to everybody's taste, like kippers or orange marmalade, but it was a staple of a stable culture. For 168 years. Now it, too, has vanished. Sunday mornings will never be the same.

In one of his memorable essays (weren't they all?) George Orwell dilated on the "Decline of the English Murder," blaming its deterioration on the crass Americanization of once proper British homicide.

Mere brutishness, Orwell complained, had replaced the kind of finely laid plot that would require a Lord Peter Wimsey to unravel. The refinement and planning of "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club" (Dorothy Sayers, 1928) has given way to vulgar crime sprees. It's a great loss.

It was a loss Orwell greatly mourned in his elegiac little essay in 1946, which naturally enough, began with a reference to The News of the World:

"It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?

"Naturally, about a murder."

Not just any kind of murder, but a proper English murder -- one that could be savored by a popular culture still bound, at least publicly, by ties of middle-class propriety. A culture that could still be fascinated by tales of poor blokes led astray by some decidedly un-English passion for the illicit, like extra-marital sex or keeping your seat while an old lady is left to stand on the Number 15 to Westminster.

"With all this in mind." Orwell wrote, "one can construct what would be, from a News of the World reader's point of view, the 'perfect' murder. The murderer should be a little man of the professional class -- a dentist or a solicitor, say -- living an intensely respectable life somewhere in the suburbs, and preferably in a semi-detached house, which will allow the neighbours to hear suspicious sounds through the wall. He should be either chairman of the local Conservative Party branch, or a leading Nonconformist and strong Temperance advocate. ... Having decided on murder, he should plan it all with the utmost cunning, and only slip up over some tiny unforeseeable detail. The means chosen should, of course, be poison."

Of course. But there's not a drop of poison, except that of the poison-pen variety, in the scandals that killed The News of the World.

Now, in place of a mystery worthy of a Dorothy Sayers or P.D. James, all we get is a lot of electronic snooping that would embarrass an IT middle manager.

This sad deterioration in the style of scandal -- from typically British to indeterminate -- can also be blamed on Americanization, which by now has morphed into globalization. Not even the nationality of Rupert Murdoch, the press baron at the center of all this hubbub, is clear. Australian, British, American, all or none of the above? Welcome to a world, and press, without borders. Or distinctive cultures. Art Nouveau and Art Deco, or any art at all, has lost out once again to the International Style.

It's not just The News of the World that is gone but the world that made it a good read and a window into the British psyche. The decline of the English scandal, like that of the English murder, is a tribute to an earlier world. When a society with its own idiosyncratic features fades away, however quaint or eccentric or even hypocritical its standards were, its scandals won't have much character, either.

Paul Greenberg Archives

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