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Opinion

Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us.

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Essence Of The Absurd

T

hese are the countries whose
land or water borders with
Iran are currently in dispute;
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, United Arab
Emirates, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan.
Syria claims all of neighboring Lebanon
as its own and is doing all it can to under-
mine its government.
Claims to the territory of Kashmir have
led to three major wars between Pakistan
and India.

to the discredit of the Iraq Study Group
that if fell into the same mud puddle in
making its report. The road to peace in
Baghdad may be long, winding, potholed
and dangerous, but it doesn't go anywhere
near Jerusalem.
The Arab states have been pound-
ing that drum for decades, all the while
ignoring their own fractious borders.
War between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s
over the estuary to the Persian Gulf cost
an estimated one million lives. That is a
quantum jump
over the toll on
the closer
both sides in all of
Israel's conflicts
combined.
Yet it is suppos-
edly the Israeli-
Palestinian dispute and only this that
blocks the realization of peace.
Clearly settled international borders are
almost an anomaly in the world. Not even
islands are spared, to which the history of
Ireland and Cyprus attest. Events of the
last few months indicate how unsettled
the frontier between the United States and
Mexico really is, and the War of 1812 had
to be fought before anything approach sta-
bility arrived on the border with Canada.
Chaos theory holds that the closer one
comes to the edge of any entity, the more

Chaos theory holds that
one conies to the edge of art;' entity,
the more unstable it becomes_

Egypt's disputed borders with Sudan
and Libya have been the source of conflict
for years. In fact, its only border that is
internationally recognized is the one with
Israel.
And yet it remains the conventional wis-
dom in almost every discussion of Middle
East policy that until Israel's territorial
disputes are resolved to everyone's satis-
faction, there can be no peace. Or as the
popular phrase goes: The road to peace in
Baghdad runs through Jerusalem.
This is, of course, nonsense, and it is

Dry Bones 4R2 4 14 ..1 ,

IS:
r THE "ARE QUESTION
OUR ARAB

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unstable it becomes. So
`NEIGHBORS RATIONAL
a conflict over territorial
ENOUGH TO KNOW
boundaries is as close
THAT IRAN IS A
to being natural as any
THREAT
TO US ALL?"
aspect of human affairs.
According to Iranian
journalist Amir Taheri,
there have been 22 full
scale wars over territori-
al disputes in the last 50
years in the Middle East
and not one of these
had anything to do with
IT'S THE
the Israeli-Palestinian
ANSWER
THAT'S
conflict.
DEPRESSING!
It is, instead, the
absence among these
nations of any willing-
ness to resolve conflicts
by compromise, the
essence of a democratic
society, that permits
small disputes to esca-
late irrationally into
DryBonesBlog.com
full-blown warfare. Israel
is only a tiny part of the
much larger issue: How do you settle dif-
how easily they were led into believing the
ferences in a culture that sees issues only
absurd. I
in black and white?
There were highly intelligent people
E-mail letters of no more than 150 words to:
letters@thejewishnews.com .
who labored long and diligently over the
Iraq Study Report. It is sobering to realize

Reality Check

Shape Up, Celebrities

T

hings are messy in Iraq. The auto
industry is tanking. The dollar is
used as tissue paper in Europe.
But I always thought that just as long
as America kept its lead in celebrities, we
would be all right.
I'm not so sure anymore. We're just not
turning out celebrities the way we used
to.
I grew accustomed long ago to musi-
cal stars who can neither sing, dance nor
play an instrument, and whose one tal-
ent seemed to lie in being able to talk in
rhythm while waving their arms.
Well, that's democracy at work. Is it
fair that musical stardom should be
denied to someone simply because they
lack musical ability? That's outright dis-
criminatory.
People now seem to feel that they are
entitled to be famous. Talent is only the
frosting, pleasant but not essential.
But now we're getting to the point

where reality show
contestants who
can't even talk in
rhythm and wave
their arms in the
correct manner
are regarded as
celebrities. I saw
one guy who was
described that way
and his biggest
accomplishment
was that he lost
more weight than any of his competitors.
What kind of example is that to set for
the world?
There is Paris Hilton, who seems to be
famous for being rich, acting stupid and
starring in a sex show on the Internet.
Things are so bad with Britney Spears
that we are told we musn't make fun of
her anymore. To top it all off, there is the
late, ubiquitous and repulsive Anna Nicole

Smith.
This isn't good, friends and neighbors.
America must do better.
Is there any wonder we are losing inter-
national respect? We're even letting some
British guy on "American Idol" define
talent, when it's obvious the man can't tell
an original presence from Rex the Wonder
Horse.
It's all the fault of those 24-hour news
channels. They have so many hours in
which to broadcast, it's inevitable that gar-
bage fills the void.
Crime and justice stories that would
have run two or three days at most in a
local newspaper now are magnified into
national carnivals; analyzed endlessly by
people who seem to be able to suspend
their disbelief and disgust and pretend
that any of it matters.
So the victim becomes a celebrity, the
perp becomes a celebrity and the news
channel analysts become celebrities, too.

I think we need to ask more from our
celebrities.
At least, the contestants on "Dancing
with the Stars" know how to dance,
although the only "stars" I have recognized
on that show were a couple of retired foot-
ball players. Even "Hollywood Squares"
used to have a higher recognition factor
than that.
It's all coming to pass just as Paddy
Chayefsky foretold in his classic script for
"Network," more than 20 years ago. It's
news filled with gimmicks and someone
becoming a national political figure for no
other reason than, "You're on television,
stupid."
I say let's just surrender to it and elect
Oprah president. If we're going down in
the celebrity wars, we might as well fire
the biggest gun we've got. J

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com.

March 8 2007

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