{"id":7127,"date":"2015-05-28T11:52:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T11:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/05\/28\/like-being-the-chief-rabbi-in-mecca\/"},"modified":"2015-05-28T11:52:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T11:52:04","slug":"like-being-the-chief-rabbi-in-mecca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/05\/28\/like-being-the-chief-rabbi-in-mecca\/","title":{"rendered":"Like Being the Chief Rabbi in Mecca"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard David Brooks on C-Span 2 last night.  He uncorked a very funny line. "I am the conservative at The New York Times<\/em>, which is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca."<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, it was a mention by Brooks in his latest book that got my friend Lupu onto Soloveitchik.  Now I am reading the good rabbi.  I have finished The Lonely Man of Faith<\/em> and I've started on Halakhic Man<\/em>.  Impressive and important for those of us exercised by the Athenian-Hierosolymanic dialectic.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other humor news, Heather Wilhelm reports<\/a>, via Chelsea Clinton, that the Clinton family motto is, wait for it:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a saying in my family\u2014it\u2019s always better to get caught trying (rather than not try at all).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilhelm comments:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Full disclosure: When I first read that sentence, I laughed out loud. Next, I read it two more times, just to make sure it was not some glorious figment of my imagination. \u201cGet caught trying?\u201d Who makes this their family motto? Concerned that I was missing the popular resurgence of this wise old adage\u2014a saying that ranks right up there with \u201cThere\u2019s more than one way to obliterate an old email server\u201d and \u201cIf the silverware is missing, Sandy Berger\u2019s pants are a-jangling\u201d\u2014I decided to Google \u201cget caught trying.\u201d If you\u2019re looking for lots of advice on how to do things like hide an affair from your spouse, illegally sneak over the border, or fight off a wild crow that is trying to eat your lunch, I suggest you do the same. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: If you \u201cget caught\u201d doing something, it implies that you are doing something secretive, underhanded, or out-and-out bad. What kind of family, outside of the Corleone crime syndicate, instinctively associates \u201ctrying\u201d with doing something surreptitious, or an action where one can get \u201ccaught\u201d? Moreover, is there any one-liner in the history of the world\u2014with the exception, of course, of \u201cIt depends what the meaning of \u2018is\u2019 is\u201d\u2014that better sums up the Clinton ethos?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What Miss Wilhelm fails to realize, however, is the signal impetus Bill Cinton gave to a renewed assault upon the question of the meaning of Being, die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein<\/em>, a question occluded and forgotten (Seinsvergessenheit<\/em>!) in political precincts until Bubba re-ignited it with his penetrating inquiry into the manifold meanings of 'is.'<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard David Brooks on C-Span 2 last night.  He uncorked a very funny line. "I am the conservative at The New York Times, which is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca." By the way, it was a mention by Brooks in his latest book that got my friend Lupu onto Soloveitchik.  Now I … Continue reading “Like Being the Chief Rabbi in Mecca”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,242,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athens-and-jerusalem","category-humor","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}