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Jewish Journal

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June 19, 2009

Super-elongated C———

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

So yesterday I posted my first Stern blog, put my computer to sleep, went down to my car and turned it on.  The first words I heard out of the radio were: “Super elongated [female body part].”

I had to laugh. Here I was trying to describe Stern in the most elevated terms, dedicating a whole blog to understanding his critical impact on culture—and then he smacks me in the face with a super-elongated….

Turns out I tuned in at the exact moment he was discussing the sex change operation that Chastity Bono, Cher’s daughter, is about to undergo.

Here’s where Stern differs from the rest of the media pack that has covered the lurid story.  First, he stakes out a position. He’s a Jew and he has an opinion. I’ve listened to the show long enough to know that he has a knee-jerk rant against sex change operations. “The doctors who do these things should be locked up,” he says. He calls it mutilation. He says the same about circumcision (he has three daughters, so he never had to face the choice).

Then, after giving his opinion, Stern demanded details.  Exact details.  How do they form her organs into his.  A skin graft?  A bone transplant?  Does it have sensation? Can it be used like an authentic one.

Keep in mind Stern’s on Sirius now, so there’s no FCC regulation.  This is adults speaking to adults, using adult words.  Stern is unafraid to be graphic in the pursuit of information, and as difficult as it is to hear, it is fascinating.  That’s one Stern attribute: He doesn’t look away.  Most of the media draws us in to a topic especially for its lurid value, but then takes a polite step back.  If Stern has a transsexual on the show, he has the woman pull down her pants and has someone describe, in detail, what’s doing.  “Nothing human is strange to me,” the Roman poet Terence wrote.  The truth is, almost everything human is strange to us, and Stern forces us to look.

And laugh.

I get in the car this morning and Stern is still talking Chastity.  This time he is getting a report from one of his reporters, Lisa G (née Glasberg), who he sent out to investigate how exactly a sex change operation works. She reports back that it involves clipping a ligament, freeing up a woman’s sexual part, adding a kind of prostheses, creating a sort of robo-penis. The gang on the show cracks some jokes about it.

It’s so awful, Stern concludes, you gotta believe no one would choose to go through this if they didn’t have to.  Same with choosing to be gay, he says.

And here is where Stern’s talent really impresses me, and where society underestimates him: by going deep on Chastity Bono, he has just educated his audience, brought a hidden and shamed world into the light, laughed about it—used humor and information to foster tolerance.  We fear what we don’t know, we hate what we don’t understand.  Stern’s show goes a long way, among a wide demographic, to reducing that ignorance.

 

Super-elongated C——— Read More »

HUC-JIR’s School of Jewish Communal Service in crosshairs

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The School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is on the chopping block.

When the four-campus university’s board of governors meet Tuesday, June 23, to close a $3 million budget deficit, they are expected to adopt a proposal that would suspend admissions to the School of Communal Service for the 2010-2011 school year. Critics fear the proposal, part of a deeper re-organization of the Reform movement’s university system, would inevitably lead to the permanent closure of the 40-year-old School of Communal Service, a jewel of the Los Angeles campus.

In an email to alumni, interim director Richard Siegel wrote that the move “is tantamount to closing the school.”

“And yet,” he continued:

1. “This has nothing to do with the fiscal crisis in which HUC finds itself.  In fact, the SJCS projects net operating revenues in the 2010-11 academic year. The Board of Governors is unaware of this.
2. “The SJCS is not taking any money from HUC’s General Scholarship Funds. All SJCS scholarships are covered by specific endowed or restricted funds. The SJCS is therefore no longer a drain on HUC’s General Scholarship Funds. The Board of Governors is unaware of this.
3. “The new strategic plan that was mandated by the Board of Governors has yet to be presented to the full board. They are unaware that the new strategic plan outlines a creative, entrepreneurial and financially sustainable program for the future. (In particular, the plan includes new programs for the professional development of Reform rabbis and executive directors of Reform synagogues in the areas of or ganizational management, fundraising, and professional leadership.)”

Siegel encouraged alumni to directly petition members of the board of governors to support an amendment to the resolution that would keep the school open.

Reached by The Journal, Siegel declined to comment further, citing a university policy that all communication with media come from headquarters in New York. HUC-JIR President David Ellenson and spokeswoman Jeanie Rosensaft did not return calls for comment.

Stanley Gold, a member of the HUC-JIR board and chairman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said he plans to vote against the proposed suspension of the school.

“I think it is extreme shortsightedness, inserted there by people who don’t understand the importance of the School of Communal Service,” he said. “It hurts the college institution, the Southern California Jewish population and the LA campus.”

Gold, a former Disney board member who also sits on the board of USC, added: “I don’t think that the resolution addresses the systemic problems that the college institution faces. It’s not really a plan. It’s a wish list and hopes, not a strategy.”

The school is a rare resource for the Jewish communal world and has trained 650 Jewish professionals since its inception, with alumni spread across Los Angeles and the country. A nondenominational program that educates Orthodox and Conservative Jews alongside members of the Reform movement, the school’s closure would not go unnoticed.

“It would mean the deprivation of an important source of Jewish communal workers,” said Gerald Bubis, the school’s founding director and now professor emeritus. “They are a spine in this town, in almost every setting you can think of, from the Home [for the Aging] to Jewish Family Service to the Federation. You just go through and it’s almost impossible to name an organization where there isn’t someone there, or hasn’t been someone there, who came through the school.”

HUC-JIR’s School of Jewish Communal Service in crosshairs Read More »

HUC to close School of Communal Service?

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The saga of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s budget woes may come to a painful close Tuesday. The Reform university’s board of governors is voting on a major reorganization that includes a plan to suspend admissions to the L.A. campus’ School of Jewish Communal Service.

“I think it is extreme shortsightedness, inserted there by people who don’t understand the importance of the School of Communal Service,“ Stanley Gold, a member of the HUC-JIR board and chairman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, told me. “It hurts the college institution, the Southern California Jewish population and the LA campus.“

Gold, who said he will vote against the resolution if suspension of the School of Communal Service is included, added: “I don’t think that the resolution addresses the systemic problems that the college institution faces. It’s not really a plan. It’s a wish list and hopes, not a strategy.“

Gold’s comments are included in a story I just wrote for JewishJournal.com. Check it out here.

HUC to close School of Communal Service? Read More »

Khamenei: Elections were fair, ‘Zionist’ media to blame

Leave a Comment / Iran, Worldwide /

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied that the country’s recent elections were fixed, called on protesters to stop and blamed the “Zionist” media.

In his first public address since the June 12 elections, Iran’s highest ranking political and religious authority accused the opposition of “challenging democracy after the elections.”

Khamenei delivered a nearly two-hour sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, reportedly attended by tens of thousands of worshipers. He called on the opposition to take their protests off of the streets and to instead use legal channels to register their complaints about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory.

Turnout at the ballot box has been officially set at 85 percent, or 40 million voters, with Ahmadinejad winning by a margin of 11 million votes, or 60 percent of the vote. “How one can rig 11 million votes?” he asked. “The Islamic republic state would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”

Khamenei blamed the “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for fomenting the demonstrations.

He also warned that if street demonstrations don’t end, then “leading politicians will be held accountable for the chaos.”

Hundreds of thousands of protestors again on Thursday night demonstrated in the streets of Tehran, the sixth day of ever-increasing protests in the Islamic Republic’s capital.

“This election was a political earthquake for our enemies and a celebration for its friends,” Khamenei said. “This election showed religious democracy for the whole world to see.”

Reporters representing media from around the world have been barred from covering the demonstrations or opposition news conferences, and have been restricted to one transmission of news per day.

Iran’s Guardian Council, the main oversight body of the country’s constitution, was reportedly planning to convene a meeting of the three losing candidates to discuss their accusations, reportedly as early as Saturday.

Khamenei: Elections were fair, ‘Zionist’ media to blame Read More »

The Healthcare Meltdown – Part III

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Medicare

” target=”_blank”><< Back to Part II:  How Medical Insurance Was Broken

Thanks for sticking with the series so far.  I know the last section was long and technical and I appreciate you slogging through it.  The next parts should be a breeze in comparison.

In part II we saw how the employer tax deduction for health insurance tied insurance to jobs, transformed insurance from a protection against disaster to a way to obtain all care at a discount, and led to overutilization of care by shifting costs away from patient payments to premiums taken out of paychecks.  Tying health insurance to patients’ jobs created another problem.  It left retirees out of the tax subsidy that employees enjoyed.  As healthcare became more and more expensive there was increased political pressure to extend affordable coverage to retirees.

(Note again how after World War II the language changed from getting patients high quality affordable care to getting them insurance coverage.  Insurance became essentially the only way to access care.)

A simple way to even the playing field for retirees and to undo the myriad problems detailed in the last post would have been to eliminate the employer tax deduction.  But doctors and hospitals were not keen on giving up their enormous subsidy.  So in 1965 the Social Security Act created Medicare (and Medicaid).  Medicare provides health insurance to Americans 65 and older and is funded by a payroll tax.

Medicare magnified many of the problems of the employer tax exemption.  By creating a whole group of patients whose care was paid indirectly by all employees, costs were redistributed over even more people, further reducing any incentive to conserve.  Utilization and costs rose even faster.  The cost of Medicare doubled every four years between 1966 and 1980.  This explosion in costs further cemented the fallacy in the minds of most patients that care is something that can only be obtained through insurance.

Now, I take care of lots of Medicare beneficiaries, and I can hear some of you objecting: “I might be able to afford to buy insurance if I didn’t have Medicare, but lots of people couldn’t.  Have you seen how much medicines and doctor visits cost?  Most people just can’t afford that.”

But that’s just it. Medicines and healthcare are expensive because they’re covered by insurance and patients aren’t exposed to the actual cost. There’s no viable business that produces goods and services that no one can afford.  If patients paid directly, prices would plummet and patients (not insurance bureaucrats) would have to make the difficult decisions about how much they wanted to spend for the latest drug when a cheaper one is almost as good, or for the latest unproven surgery, or for the latest unproven scan.  The point is that different patients would make different decisions, but many would save a lot of money by consuming less care than they do now.  Catastrophic insurance would then be inexpensive and rarely used.

There would always be the truly indigent who can not afford any care at any price.  They would rely on Medicaid, county facilities and private charities.  But like in other marketplaces such as food, housing and transportation, that would be a tiny fraction of the population.  Most people could afford their own care.  The miscalculation that the insurance industry wants you to keep making is that insurance is what makes care affordable. Insurance, including Medicare, is what makes care unaffordable.

Next week, I’ll propose some changes that would actually help, though they are less likely to happen than that I am drafted by the Lakers.

The Healthcare Meltdown – Part III Read More »

Church Members Picket Outside Gay and Lesbian Synagogue

Leave a Comment / Community /

A man drove by and rolled down his window to say “I’m Jewish, did I kill Jesus? He was addressing a woman standing on the street corner holding four picket signs with a speaker blasting a song that repeats the words “God hates Jews.” She screamed back, “Yes you did!” 

This was the scene on the morning of Friday, June 19 in front of Beth Chayim Chadashim in West Los Angeles, a Reform congregation founded in 1972 as the world’s first lesbian and gay synagogue that currently serves Jews of all types. The picketer, Shirley Phelps-Roper, is the wife of Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kan. Phelps-Roper came to Los Angeles to specifically target BCC and a handful of other Jewish organizations, and she brought with her her sister and three girls, ages 11, 15 and 16, one of them her daughter and the others her nieces. 

Alerted to the protest in advance, BCC closed its offices Friday morning and had a guard standing at the synagogue’s front door. Felicia Park-Rogers, BCC executive director, and Rabbi Linda Berthenthal of the Union of Reform Judaism waited at a burger joint across the street for the WBC to arrive. Their response to the WBC protests has been to join a movement on the website Phelps-A-Thon.com. For every minute the WBC spends picketing an organization in any community, pledges to the web site raise money for the targeted group. 

“We believe all people are created equal and gay people are included in that,” Park-Rogers said. “It is sad that they have such a twisted vision of the world.” 
WBC issued a press release for today that read: “WBC will protest three of the fag-infested groups of Jews of Southern California.” The BBC was the first of three stops, which also include the Westside Jewish Community Center and the Los Angeles offices of the Anti-Defamation League. 

The five WBC members’ signs read: “God hates Jews,” “God hates Israel”, “Fags are beasts”, and “Jews stole the land.” Phelps-Roper wore an Israeli flag stained with blood around her waist. 

“These are the last hours. You killed Christ, and you have got to repent,” she told passers by.

The WBC stages protests around the country against institutions and individuals that support homosexuality and groups that threaten what they believe is God’s law. Over the last year they have incorporated anti-Semitism into their protest activities and were last seen in Los Angeles in April 2008 at the Israeli Consulate. 

A crowd gathered to watch the protest. Among them was Rene Johnson, who said, “this is pretty stunning and I’m wondering where there information comes from, because it is straight nonsense.” 

One car kept circling the area with the windows rolled down and Israeli music blaring, even as Phelps-Roper continued to sing their own personal message to the tune of the classic Beatles song, “Hey Jude.” 

Ana DelValla was out with her dog and some friends and stopped to watch the protest.

“Whether you are Jewish or Christian and you read your Bible, this isn’t what any doctrine says,” Del Valla said.

Coming so soon after the judicial decision to uphold Prop. 8’s prohibition of gay marriage, Park-Rogers said the response from the Los Angeles Jewish community has been gratifying.

Berthenthal said she was saddened by the messages of hate. 

“A mitzvah begets a mitzvah, a sin begets a sin and this is the nature of hatred,” Berthenthal said. “We are all eventually their targets.”

Church Members Picket Outside Gay and Lesbian Synagogue Read More »