Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 885

Bush's Jews for Jesus Speaking Gig Troubles his Pro-Israel Friends

Weeks ago, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Fund gave George W. Bush a standing ovation. But ever since news broke that the former president would address an evangelical group dedicated to converting Jews to Christianity in preparation for the End Times, some Jewish leaders and groups have responded with rather strong criticism. That includes at least one of the umbrella group's member organizations — the Anti-Defamation League — which expressed its "disappointment" with the former president's decision to address an evangelical group in a statement on Monday. 

Bush is booked to speak on November 14 in front of the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, as Sarah Posner first reported in Mother Jones last week. He's the featured speaker at a fundraiser that was headlined last year by Glenn Beck. The organization, in case you're not familiar, is probably best known as part of the "Jews for Jesus" movement. While some evangelical groups (particularly those with an End Times-focused mission), along with members of the Messianic Jewish movement insist that "Jews for Jesus" is simply a sect of Judaism, most Jewish people and leaders strongly disagree, and consider the group to be Christian. It's a very contentious debate. 

The Messianic Jewish Bible Institute has since removed all reference to the event from its site, though organizers have confirmed to Mother Jones that it's still happening, with tickets ranging from $100 to $100,000. It's not clear whether Bush is receiving a speaking fee for his time. Notably, news of Bush's commitment to the Texas-based group was immediately condemned by David Wolpe, an extremely influential conservative (the branch of Judaism, not the political category) Rabbi. In an op-ed published at the Forward on Monday, Wolpe elaborated on the reason why Bush's association with so-called "Messianic Jewish" groups will trouble many American Jews: 

What is so bothersome about the group that President Bush has chosen to address is that to speak of “Jews for Jesus” makes as much sense as saying “Christians for Muhammad.” A Jew who accepts Jesus has cut himself off from the faith community of Jews, and that has been so for 2,000 years. When the first Christians left the Jewish community, and all the billions of Christians who followed recognized that their belief in Jesus made them a distinct religion, were they all deluded? Only today people have realized that division was a mistake after all? The sudden rise of ‘Messianic Jews’ owes more to a clever way of misleading untutored Jews than to making theological sense. It should not receive the imprimatur of a former President of the United States.

Criticism of Bush's speaking gig includes groups and individuals who would see Bush as a political and ideological ally, too. Take the short, contextual criticism of Bush's decision in Commentary, a conservative magazine founded by the American Jewish Committee. Jonathan Tobin noted that Rick Santorum faced similar criticism for his 2010 speech at a conference hosted by the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America. Speaking on the conservative, particularly Jewish, reaction to news of Santorum's decision, Tobin wrote, "the lesson was lost on a far more important member of the GOP who also has a sterling record of friendship for the Jews: former President George W. Bush." 

The ADL, in their Monday statement, called Messianic Jewish Bible Institute's assertion that Jewish individuals who accept Jesus as their messiah are still Jewish "false and offensive." Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, added: 

We were disappointed to learn that former President George W. Bush has decided to move ahead with his plan to speak at a fundraising event for an evangelical proselytizing group whose stated goal is to convert Jews to Christianity.

President Bush is a friend who has an abiding love and respect for Israel and the Jewish people.  I know that he does not represent or embrace the purpose or the mission of this group, and therefore I wish he would not speak there. 

Foxman's assertion that Bush is a "friend," both of the organization, and of Israel, is not off the mark. Politically, Bush fits comfortably among the pro-Israel neoconservative wing of the GOP, and has continued to do so even after leaving office. In October, he expressed skepticism, for instance, in Iran's recent willingness to negotiate with the international community over its nuclear program. “The United States’ foreign policy must be clear eyed; and understand that until the form of government changes in Iran, it is unlikely that their intentions toward Israel will change,” he told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Fund. That more or less matches with Israel's reaction to the new rounds of negotiations, along with American legislative hawks (see also: Lindsey Graham right now). 

As Tablet pointed out, Bush will have a hard time pleading ignorance here if the criticism becomes too much. Bush's chief of staff Josh Bolten previously told the magazine that the Bush family is  "very open to and respectful of faiths of all kind, but particularly Judaism." This decision, to say the least, complicates that reputation. 

Photo: George W. Bush, touring the historic fortress of Masada in Israel, 2008. 

       

Jason Statham to Kill Some More People

Today in movie and TV casting news: Jason Statham takes over for Daniel Craig, Rachel Griffiths will play one of Australia's most famous political women, and another Australian begins his takeoff.

Remember Layer Cake, the stylish little British crime flick that kicked the careers of star Daniel Craig and director Matthew Vaughn into high-gear? Well, the guy who wrote the novel that that movie is based on has written a follow-up, called Viva La Madness, which Jason Statham is eying as a starring vehicle. Same character, different actor. I won't spoil the ending of Layer Cake in case you haven't seen it yet, but let's just say this is a somewhat surprising development. But, no matter, this should be fine. Statham is not the actor that Craig is, but does this kind of movie really require nuanced, classically trained acting? It doesn't hurt, sure, but it's not necessary. This is just British toughs being tough and British, which Jason Statham knows how to do. You could say he's made a career out of it. In fact, you should say he has made a career out of it, because it is true and you should always speak the truth. So, barring the producers orchestrating an unlikely Craig/Vaughn reunion, this new version of the story should do fine. They all look alike anyway, those Brits. Sorry, that's just me. [Deadline]

You hear "movie" and "Julia Gillard" and think about what she looks like, and you assume that Australia's first female Prime Minister would be played by Tilda Swinton. Or at least by Tilda Swinton's character in Michael Clayton. But nope. That is not what's happening, at least not in an upcoming Australian TV movie. Daughter of Oz Rachel Griffiths will be playing the PM in Stalking Julia, about Gillard's clash with politician Kevin Rudd, which ended with her being ousted from office in September of this year. I doubt this movie will make it to the States — not a ton of interest in Australian domestic politics here in America — but maybe it will pop up online or something somewhere at some point. Or Tilda will do a feature film version of the same story that'll get some little indie release. One of those two things is bound to happen, right? [The Hollywood Reporter]

Australian teen actor Callan McAuliffe, who played a young Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's lurid The Great Gatsby earlier this year, has been cast in a movie called Hacker. Not Hackers, plural. This is not some remake with McAuliffe in the Jonny Lee Miller role or anything (and Matthew Lillard sadly still playing the Matthew Lillard part). This is singular, this is different. McAuliffe will play "an intelligent and amoral computer genius" who gets in league with some shady folks with a plan to unmask their organization's leader. Seems thrilling. Anonymous ought to love this one. Me, I'm gonna stick with Angelina Jolie and Jesse Bradford walking around Manhattan like they own the place. [Variety]

Remember Elisabeth Rohm? She played the Law & Order ADA who famously said "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" after getting fired in her last episode, shocking a nation, or at least those who watched Law & Order at the time. Well, that was some time ago, and now she will be playing an FBI agent, not a lawyer, in a recurring role on the second season of The CW's Beauty and the Beast. "I'm a recurring actor on The CW's Beauty and the Beast" is maybe not the most graceful sentence an actor has ever had to say, but you know what? Work is work is work. So, good for you, Elisabeth Rohm. But, still do call up Warren Leight to see if he can get you on SVU. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Rumor has it that Adam Driver, best known as Hannah's lovable lout of an on-again off-again boyfriend on Girls, is a "serious contender" to play Dick Grayson in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie. Dick Grayson is also known as Robin aka Nightwing. Robin was (2012 spoiler alert, but seriously guys, you should know this by now) sorta played by Joseph Gordon Levitt in Christopher Nolan's last Batman film (he wasn't named Dick Grayson, though), but this new franchise isn't really fussing with that movie, so here's this new thing. Ben Affleck will play an older Batman while Driver would be his estranged buddy. So that would be kind of odd. Might work, though. It's really hard to tell with this movie. Or maybe not that hard. Man of Steel was a mess, after all, wasn't it? [The Wrap]

       

The New York Times Wants to Talk About College Girls Having Sex Again

It's been four months (almost to the day!) since The New York Times published a trend piece about young women's sex lives. Thank goodness Natalie Kitroeff was willing to delve into the topic again, this time focusing on orgasms (or lack thereof). In "Women Find Orgasms Elusive in Hookups," we discover many things about college girls having sex, some of which are true.

Kitroeff begins the piece with the shadowy suggestion of "regret," an important theme when you're talking about women having sex. Unfortunately, she couldn't get any woman on record expressing regret for a hookup, so she had to write this: "Natasha Gadinsky, 23, says she doesn’t have any regrets from her years in college. But the time she hooked up with a guy at Brown University does come close." (Ivy League mention: check.)

Then Kitroeff invokes "hookup culture," which, as we've noted before, isn't real. According to Martin A. Monto's study published in August by the American Sociological Association, there's “no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive 'hookup culture' among contemporary college students." Still, Kitroeff writes, "Researchers say that young women are becoming equal partners in the hookup culture, often just as willing as young men to venture into sexual relationships without emotional ties." Researchers say!

The actual research part of the piece: Kitroeff notes a few studies showing that women are more likely to have an orgasm with a boyfriend than with a casual hookup. To really drive the point home, we get a quote from "Duvan Giraldo, 26, a software technician in Elmhurst, Queens," who admits he doesn't perform as well when he's with a one-night stand.

And so "hookup culture" hurts women once again. Kitroeff does suggest that sometimes people have sex for reasons other than having an orgasm. Vanessa Martini, a 23-year-old from California, notes:

"You have to balance a lot of things in your brain, like what’s more important to me — just getting off, or do I actually want to have a connection with this person?"

So as not to end the piece on the weird, shame-y note that is the signature of most of these trend pieces, Kitroeff throws out a quote from 29-year-old Kim Huynh, who says something about something being ... "empowering."

"To sort of know yourself to be sort of skilled in a way or to be able to see someone else’s pleasure that was your own doing, I think there’s definitely something very empowering about that."

See you all again in four months. 

Photo by Michael Jung via Shutterstock. 

       

Amazon Is Delivering On Sundays Now

The sinking U.S. Postal Service has struck a deal with Amazon to deliver the site's packages on Sunday. The deal has advantages for both sides. While the postal service operated at a loss of $16 billion last year, package deliveries are still a profitable sector of their business, and for Amazon, quicker deliveries mean happier customers. The USPS's main competitors, UPS and FedEx, do not currently deliver on Sundays.

The new policy takes effect immediately, clearly timed to coincide with the holiday shopping rush, although the service is only available to the New York and Los Angeles areas at this time. The plan is to expand to more areas next year. While Amazon may be the first company, the postal service said that it expects to strike similar deals with other retailers. The Wall Street Journal notes that the company is utilizing "a little-known offering available to any shipper."

The USPS has been trying to stymie its revenue problems. The number of pieces of first class mail sent in 2012 was down 25 percent from four years prior in 2008. Earlier this year, the postal service tried to stop Saturday delivery, but Congress put a stop to that effort.

       

Syrian National Coalition Agrees to Participate in Geneva Talks

The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition to Bashar al-Assad's regime, has agreed to participate in talks in Geneva concerning the ongoing civil war in the country. Since its formation a year ago, the coalition is currently the opposition group with most prominent backing from Western countries, including the United States.

The group agreed to attend the talks, sponsored by the U.S. and Russia, if certain conditions are met.

On Monday, the coalition's statement said there must be a guarantee that relief agencies would be allowed access to besieged areas, the release of political prisoners and any political conference should result in a political transition, the statement said.

Other rebel groups agreed that the talks must result in the end of Assad's reign, while other said that "they would charge anyone who attended the planned international talks with treason."

The coalition's statement made clear that, "Bashar Assad will have no role in the transitional period and the future of Syria."

The talks are hopefully aiming to happen by the end of November, but various factors may impede them, including a lack of cohesion between American and Russian diplomats and internal conflict in Syrian rebel groups. Back in October, the Syrian National Council said that it would leave the coalition if they attended the talks.

[Pictured: Ahmad Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition, on Nov. 2, 2013]

       

MTV Censored Miley Cyrus Smoking Onstage, Now You'll Never Know About It

On Sunday, MTV held the European Music Awards and, big surprise, Miley did a thing and now people are talking about (and yes, that includes us somewhat begrudgingly). Specifically, while on stage to accept an award for her music video for "Wrecking Ball," she pulled out what Deadline calls "a suspicious-looking cigarette that many have identified as a joint" and proceeded to smoke it on stage. The awards were held in Amsterdam, so, you know, nudge nudge wink wink.

The story would end there, except that a pop star publicly using drugs at a televised, MTV-sanctioned event aimed at a teen audience isn't going to go over well with advertisers and advocacy groups. The FCC does not define smoking as indecent behavior (obviously; see: Mad Men), so MTV faces more of a publicity problem than an indecency one.

In the time between when the awards were handed out in Europe and when they were broadcast in America, MTV edited out the moment. So now nobody will ever know about it. If things don't happen on television, they might as well have never happened at all.

TMZ has video of the unedited version, and Deadline has its awkwardly abridged counterpart. MTV parent company Viacom is currently performing its post-award show ritual of yanking clips off YouTube. Here's a video taken by someone in the crowd.

The network can't have been caught completely off guard, though. Leading up to the show, they specifically asked, in promos, “How Wild Will Miley Get At The EMAs?” Guess they got their answer.

       

Photos Show Super Typhoon Haiyan's Devastation in the Philippines

Days after Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the central Philippines, everyone's still getting a handle on the extent of the storm's damage. But as photos emerge, particularly from the hard-hit city of Tacloban, it's clear that Haiyan completely devastated large parts of the country. Officials have estimated that as many as 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban alone, with hundreds more deaths likely from around the nation. Because phone service is down in many areas, it's difficult for relief workers and other officials to get out the word on how badly hit other regions of the country might be. 

 Reports and images of just how badly some regions of the country were hit didn't emerge until Sunday. A video, at left, shows the scene from above Tacloban. The footage comes from Erel Cabatbat of TV 5 in the Philippines. Tacloban was reportedly hit by a storm surge that reached 13 feet as a result of the typhoon. But the destruction wasn't limited to that city. In Guiuan, for instance 100 percent of the structures have suffered some sort of damage. There will likely be even more of reports other devastated communities emerging as travel and communication between cities becomes easier. The Associated Press's lede on Sunday evening describes the scene that awaited survivors in the Tacloban: "Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings," the AP wrote, adding, "Even in a nation regularly beset by earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical storms, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record." Officials know so little at this point about the extent of the storm's toll that Filipino media are publishing lists of known survivors. 

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(Photo: AP. Residents gathering water at the edges of Tacloban City) 

people desperately trying to get out of a chaotic airport today in Tacloban pic.twitter.com/DJwebYbIho

— Jim Edds (@ExtremeStorms) November 10, 2013

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(Photo: AP. Tacloban city) 

toy for baby-abigail castinos has been looking for her 2 missing kids, including her 2-year-old bunso since yestrday pic.twitter.com/xhFFJqFAuI

— erel cabatbat (@erelcabatbat) November 10, 2013

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(Photo: Reuters. Survivors hang a sign in front of a Catholic church in Tacloban city.) 

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(Photo: Reuters. Tacloban city) 

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(Photo: Reuters. Empty coffins in the street of Tacloban city)

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(Photo: Reuters. Tacloban city) 

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(Photo: AP. Tacloban city)

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(Photo: AP. Survivors carrying supplies, Tacloban city.) 

leaving tacloban--what has become a familiar sight... pic.twitter.com/tvzyRuhdH8

— erel cabatbat (@erelcabatbat) November 10, 2013

       

There Will Be More 'Downton Abbey'

There's officially going to be a season 5 of Downton Abbey. On Sunday, the British network ITV announced that the show would return with its creator Julian Fellowes continuing as a writer. The fourth season has nearly finished airing in the U.K., while the U.S. is a bit behind. Season four of the show starts up for American audiences on PBS in January. The renewal will keep the show on both ITV and PBS's Masterpiece Classics. 

In a statement, ITV said of the renewal: 

"With Julian writing and Gareth (Neame) and Liz (Trubridge) producing, we know it will be as warm, witty, romantic and dramatic as previous series and we can't wait to catch up with our favourite characters again." 

As we've explained before, some British fans and critics have already dubbed the fourth season of the show as boring, but people are still watching it, anyway. Lots and lots of people. Downton Abbey averaged weekly viewing figures in the U.K. of 11.8 million for its fourth season. That makes it the highest-rated show this year in the country. Downton Abbey is also PBS's highest-rated show, ever, based on its third season viewing figures. Unusually, the show is more or less just as popular in its home country as it is across the pond. In all, the show has been sold to over 220 territories. 

Will Lady Mary continue to be insufferable? Will bad things continue to happen to members of the wealthy Crawley family (probably, if more members of the current cast decide to leave the show)? Will the questions not yet asked by American viewers of the season four plot points be answered? Downton Abbey fans now know that the answers to those questions will arrive, eventually. 

       

'60 Minutes' Corrects Its Benghazi Story: 'We Are Very Sorry'

CBS's "60 Minutes" aired a much-anticipated correction to its flawed Benghazi story on Sunday. "We are very sorry," correspondent Lara Logan said in a short statement on air. Speaking of the story's main source Dylan Davies, Logan added that after new information surfaced, "we realized we had been misled, and it was a mistake to include him in our report." The apology aired at the end of the program's weekly broadcast, delayed this week thanks to a football game that ran long. 

The correction and apology came days after the network, citing "new information," concluded that it could no longer stand by the story of their main source. Dylan Davies, known as Morgan Jones in the CBS piece, told the network that he'd scaled the walls of the Benghazi compound during the attack to rescue Americans, and viewed the body of slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens after the attack. But Davies gave a completely different account to both his employer and to the FBI, in which he did neither of those things. After both conflicting reports emerged, CBS stopped defending "60 Minutes's" work, and Davies himself, against mounting evidence that he didn't witness the Benghazi attack. The Embassy House, Davies's book on the attacks, was pulled from the shelves and "suspended" on Friday. That decision came from the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, a company owned by the CBS Corporation.

The report added little new information to what went wrong at "60 Minutes," only that the show was "misled," and that they were really sorry for the whole mess in the first place. There's also no word yet on whether CBS will investigate the incident, as they did after the infamous 2004 report on George W. Bush's National Guard service.

Earlier on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham said he would continue to hold up the Obama administration's nominees in the Senate until he gets to speak to Benghazi witnesses. That's even though the CBS story that inspired the threat in the first place is the one the network just corrected. 

       

A 900-Page Novel About '70's New York Snagged a Nearly $2 Million Book Deal

Garth Risk Hallberg's debut novel City on Fire, an unpublished opus set in 1970's New York, was purchased for nearly $2 million after a massive bidding war between publishers. Hallberg is a writing teacher at Sarah Lawrence college, and has contributed to The New York Times Book Review and The Millions. Apparently, the bidding war won by Knopf began after publishers flew through the nearly 900-page manuscript, attracting at least 10 bids over a million dollars in just two days. Oh, and Scott Rudin purchased the unpublished book's movie rights in late October. That deal, at the very least, could not have hurt the book's winning bid. 

The New York Times broke the news of the incredible deal. There's not a ton known about the plot, but it's apparently an ensemble piece. According to Hallberg's agent Chris Parris-Lamb, here's the outline of the plot provided to the Times and to publishers interested in purchasing it: 

"[the events] revolve around a central mystery: what exactly is going on behind the locked steel doors of a derelict townhouse in the East Village, and what might it have to do with the shooting in Central Park in the novel’s opening act?”

A book deal in the neighborhood of $2 million, it should be noted, is approaching celebrity memoir territory. Dick Cheney's deal was a little over that figure (about the same as that signed by Demi Moore), while Lena Dunham's much-discussed deal was over 3 million dollars. But City on Fire is not by a famous writer. It's 900 pages long, its ambitious, and its not something people will pick up because of the familiar face on the cover — unless James Franco stars in its film adaptation, of course. 

Hallberg, 34, is a first-time novelist, though he has published a book before: A Field Guide to the North American Family, an illustrated novella. There is not a set publishing date for City on Fire.