If you’re cheering the decline of the Unites States, who are you going to turn to if there’s trouble – Sweden?
Some big shot politician over there says that Jews must relinquish their Jewishness in order to be proper Swedes. So naturally, as you might have guessed, the most popular name for male newborn Swedes is not Bjorn, but Mohammed. So forget Sweden.
But in America, did you ever have one of those days when nothing goes right? Well that’s how it’s been here for the past six years. We woke up one morning to find that we put the wrong man in the White House. Then four years later, oops, we did it again, only to prove Jonathan Gruber’s point that “American voters are stupid.”
Sony Pictures – No Guts, No Glory.
Despite that, America is still the elephant in the room, any room; the world’s last hope. Mark it as fact that America is the greatest nation on earth. Israel is the holiest nation on earth. Our common heritage and shared values are to be celebrated. However when one of us falters, and this time it’s America, both sides of the family share the pain.
Around here in the United States we’re in freefall. It’s been one damned thing after another.
Seven out of 10 Americans are unhappy about how the country is being run. Make that eight out of 10 since now I have a say.
Well we certainly are not thrilled about Hollywood, which is our picture to the world, and which is now cloudy. A cyber attack, linked to North Korea, has hacked open the files of Sony Pictures, leaving reputations in ruin and prompting fear and trembling all around town, from tycoon to tycoon. The FBI calls the cyber hacking “a grave danger to our national security.”
At the threat of physical and further digital harm, Sony immediately caved in to a North Korean demand that it cancel the showing of “The Interview,” a movie that lampoons that country’s supreme leader. The film was promptly withdrawn. People are denouncing Sony’s retreat as cowardly and as a breach of our First Amendment.
If America is afraid, is anybody safe, anywhere in the world?
If Hollywood shows itself so craven, say critics like George Clooney, who’s next? After all, Sony is a Hollywood powerhouse and thus a cultural institution.
Except for the fact – a fact everybody else has forgotten – that Sony is not a Hollywood company, nor is it an American company.
Sony is a Japanese company. So did Tokyo pull the plug? This illustrates another reason for our decline. Outsiders own many of our largest corporations.
We did it to ourselves, and we keep doing it, like bowing to autocrats and pretty tyrants. This brings us to top Sony exec Amy Pascal. She’s been blushing ever since “racially insensitive” e-mails she sent around to fellow tycoons got hacked and exposed. She panicked, begged to be forgiven, and ran to race-hustler Al Sharpton for absolution. Ridiculous.
These days every remark is racially insensitive. Ask Michelle Obama.
Smart lady, Pascal. Successful. Jewish. But what a dumb move! Jewish guilt? Enough maybe? Let them feel guilty for a change.
How quickly all that Hollywood power comes to nothing at the first sign of aggrieving the grievance industry.
Pascal did what we all do. In private she spoke foolishly. But she said nothing so terrible. She’s a macher, a mogul.
Where is the American spirit and where is the Jewish chutzpah to tell them both to go to hell, Sharpton and North Korea?
When either of those tyrants serve as our editors and judges and dictate what we can or cannot say, brother, we are in deep jeopardy. Thanks to Pascal’s groveling, Sharpton is already setting terms on how to run Pascal and Sony and Hollywood. Pathetic.
What’s happening to America?
When rabble-rousers like Sharpton run our most precious cultural assets, and when cop-hating Mayor Bill de Blasio runs our biggest city, New York, it’s tough luck all around. But we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have made some awful choices. Now we walk streets where mobs rule and where the police refuse to go.
Need help? Call a hippie.
At this rate the world risks losing the only cop on the beat, America, and this cannot be what anybody really wants.
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the inside-the-newsroom tell-all thriller, The Bathsheba Deadline. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com