So how do you figure this? Martha Stewart, perhaps the smartest businesswoman in America, is off to (possibly) jail for being so dumb. She lied to investigators about some badly-timed stock sale and was found guilty of obstructing justice. Thus, the woman who got rich upon the business that living well is the best revenge finds herself convicted of being clueless. On the legal front, she did everything wrong.
Goes to show that the people we rely on for leadership and wisdom are just people, like you and me, and sometimes even less so.
The rest of us survive despite the poor judgment of our leadership. We persist by the virtues of divine intervention, or dumb luck.
More often than not, our decision-makers make the wrong decisions and it's for us to live with their mistakes. Robert McNamara was among our Best and Brightest, and what was the result? Vietnam. Richard Nixon was smart enough to get himself elected president of the United States, but got himself splattered all over Watergate. He also did everything wrong.
It's a wonder that anything works.
In baseball, the manager usually lifts the pitcher too late.
In news, our minds are shaped by comedians like Peter Jennings, Geraldo Rivera and Tom Friedman. (Friedman is a laugh a minute.)
In war, Abraham Lincoln was triumphant, despite a succession of bad generals, namely McClellan and Burnside, whose folly at Antietam still astonishes.
By divine intervention or dumb luck, we survive and thrive. Of 43 presidents of these United States, about half a dozen may qualify as great. Most were mediocre.
But here we are, bigger and richer than ever.
So how do we explain Israel, except to say that it remains a (democratic) glory unto the nations (tops in science, technology, engineering, culture and anything else worth mentioning) despite a parade of disastrous leaders? Divine intervention? Dumb luck? Take your pick. How - speaking of Ariel Sharon - does a man go from hero to wimp along the way from general to prime minister? (That is the trend.)
At this moment, Sharon is hatching a plan to pull out of Biblical Gaza, and asking permission to do so from the Bush Administration.
The cowardice and stupidity of this is mind-boggling.
But despite that, and despite a war that Sharon refuses to fight at a cost of more than a thousand Israeli lives, Israel persists, vibrantly, somehow.
Did Sharon learn strength from Jabotinsky? No, he learned fear, weakness and boot-licking from Ehud Barak. Did even Menachem Begin learn from Jabotinsky? Hardly. About Begin, the Egyptians are still laughing over the Sinai capitulation obtained for a piece of paper. Esau at least got a bowl of soup for trading in his birthright.
Tradition (Midrash) has it that Moses and Aaron did not go it alone the first time they went before Pharaoh to "let my people go." No, following behind were the elders. Onward they marched and when they approached the palace gates, Moses and Aaron turned, and found the rest of them gone, absconded.
That's been the mark of Jewish "leadership" since almost the beginning. (Exceptions, of course.)
So it's us, "the little people", that keep it going, like an orchestra without a conductor, or rather, like an orchestra that gets it right against a conductor that's got it all wrong. Yehudi Menuhin, while always off-key when it came to his own people, did make the point that an orchestra needs only someone to keep the beat; no conductor. There is something to be learned from this.
Recently, a group of traditional Jewish women (Women In Green) presented themselves to Israel's top leadership to argue against the plan that calls for the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Their source? The Bible. Imagine, Jewish leaders needing to be educated or reminded of their Jewish roots.
Jews, of course, have always been expelled - but in their very own land, by their very own ministers? Which brings us to Shimon Peres.
No, actually it brings us to Jason Alexander. This second-banana American television actor has a plan, a peace plan (yes, another one), and he's took it on the road to Jerusalem, where he was being greeted with respect, instead of the yuks and derision he'd get over here if he had the chutzpah to present a plan to President Bush. Imagine what Jay Leno would do with this farcical material. But in Israel, so hungry for leadership, this minor Seinfeld character gets headlines.
Due to the leadership vacuum, has Israel become Tryout City for has-been actors seeking to recoup their careers? Is this where they go to audition for Return of the Oslo Accords? All right, then, bring your script, do your dance? Thank you? Next! Don't call us, we'll call you.
Peres? Better not. For that is a story too long and too sad. But if we in America survived Jimmy Carter, Israel can (and must) outlast Ariel Sharon.
If it's by divine intervention, terrific, but dumb luck will do just as well.
P.S. Memo to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. You won! You helped make that movie a big hit. Please take your triumph graciously and quit your bashing and whining.
Goes to show that the people we rely on for leadership and wisdom are just people, like you and me, and sometimes even less so.
The rest of us survive despite the poor judgment of our leadership. We persist by the virtues of divine intervention, or dumb luck.
More often than not, our decision-makers make the wrong decisions and it's for us to live with their mistakes. Robert McNamara was among our Best and Brightest, and what was the result? Vietnam. Richard Nixon was smart enough to get himself elected president of the United States, but got himself splattered all over Watergate. He also did everything wrong.
It's a wonder that anything works.
In baseball, the manager usually lifts the pitcher too late.
In news, our minds are shaped by comedians like Peter Jennings, Geraldo Rivera and Tom Friedman. (Friedman is a laugh a minute.)
In war, Abraham Lincoln was triumphant, despite a succession of bad generals, namely McClellan and Burnside, whose folly at Antietam still astonishes.
By divine intervention or dumb luck, we survive and thrive. Of 43 presidents of these United States, about half a dozen may qualify as great. Most were mediocre.
But here we are, bigger and richer than ever.
So how do we explain Israel, except to say that it remains a (democratic) glory unto the nations (tops in science, technology, engineering, culture and anything else worth mentioning) despite a parade of disastrous leaders? Divine intervention? Dumb luck? Take your pick. How - speaking of Ariel Sharon - does a man go from hero to wimp along the way from general to prime minister? (That is the trend.)
At this moment, Sharon is hatching a plan to pull out of Biblical Gaza, and asking permission to do so from the Bush Administration.
The cowardice and stupidity of this is mind-boggling.
But despite that, and despite a war that Sharon refuses to fight at a cost of more than a thousand Israeli lives, Israel persists, vibrantly, somehow.
Did Sharon learn strength from Jabotinsky? No, he learned fear, weakness and boot-licking from Ehud Barak. Did even Menachem Begin learn from Jabotinsky? Hardly. About Begin, the Egyptians are still laughing over the Sinai capitulation obtained for a piece of paper. Esau at least got a bowl of soup for trading in his birthright.
Tradition (Midrash) has it that Moses and Aaron did not go it alone the first time they went before Pharaoh to "let my people go." No, following behind were the elders. Onward they marched and when they approached the palace gates, Moses and Aaron turned, and found the rest of them gone, absconded.
That's been the mark of Jewish "leadership" since almost the beginning. (Exceptions, of course.)
So it's us, "the little people", that keep it going, like an orchestra without a conductor, or rather, like an orchestra that gets it right against a conductor that's got it all wrong. Yehudi Menuhin, while always off-key when it came to his own people, did make the point that an orchestra needs only someone to keep the beat; no conductor. There is something to be learned from this.
Recently, a group of traditional Jewish women (Women In Green) presented themselves to Israel's top leadership to argue against the plan that calls for the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Their source? The Bible. Imagine, Jewish leaders needing to be educated or reminded of their Jewish roots.
Jews, of course, have always been expelled - but in their very own land, by their very own ministers? Which brings us to Shimon Peres.
No, actually it brings us to Jason Alexander. This second-banana American television actor has a plan, a peace plan (yes, another one), and he's took it on the road to Jerusalem, where he was being greeted with respect, instead of the yuks and derision he'd get over here if he had the chutzpah to present a plan to President Bush. Imagine what Jay Leno would do with this farcical material. But in Israel, so hungry for leadership, this minor Seinfeld character gets headlines.
Due to the leadership vacuum, has Israel become Tryout City for has-been actors seeking to recoup their careers? Is this where they go to audition for Return of the Oslo Accords? All right, then, bring your script, do your dance? Thank you? Next! Don't call us, we'll call you.
Peres? Better not. For that is a story too long and too sad. But if we in America survived Jimmy Carter, Israel can (and must) outlast Ariel Sharon.
If it's by divine intervention, terrific, but dumb luck will do just as well.
P.S. Memo to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. You won! You helped make that movie a big hit. Please take your triumph graciously and quit your bashing and whining.