I took this photo just a few minutes ago, of Israel Channel 10’s news coverage of our little war. It shows Zvi Yehezkeli, who covers Arab affairs and has been giving excellent summaries of the Arab media (Noorster and I have a huge crush on him). Al Manar TV, Hezbollah television, is showing Zvi live while he is in the Tel Aviv studio. They are broadcasting our broadcast in real time, from Beirut, translating from Hebrew into Arabic what Zvi is saying, and responding in real time. “We can see you!” said the Al Manar moderator, mockingly, as he smiled into the camera.

Zvi is listening to the whole thing via his earphone, and he even posed a question in Arabic.

This is just one example of how mad and complex this conflict is: We watch each other’s television broadcasts, we talk to one another, and then…we bomb each other.

The New York Times ($$) calls it an effort to “micromanage residents’ lives in mundane ways.”

I call it Extreme Political Correctness. And it drives me crazy:

Edward M. Burke, who has served on the Chicago City Council since 1969, when cooking oil was just cooking oil, is pressing his colleagues to make it illegal for restaurants to use oils that contain trans fats, which have been tied to a string of health problems, including clogged arteries and heart attacks.

If approved, nutrition experts say, the ban will be the first in a major city, following the lead of towns like Tiburon, Calif., just north of San Francisco, where restaurant owners have voluntarily given up the oils. In truth, while the proposal’s prospects are uncertain, Chicago officials have been on a bit of a banning binge these days in what critics mock as City Hall’s effort to micromanage residents’ lives in mundane ways.

The aldermen voted in April to forbid restaurants to sell foie gras. They have weighed a proposal to force cabbies to dress better. And there is talk of an ordinance to outlaw smoking at the beach.

I really wonder how long the American people are going to keep tolerating this assault by Moral Marauders on their freedoms in the public square.

Ali, at Free Iraqi, knows the price of freedom. And he longs for the war between Israel and Hezbollah to “go on an on” until the last Middle Eastern dictator is dead and he and his people can be free:

I only cared that much about life when I was given a chance to live a decent life. Now that this chance is slipping count me on the cheerleaders for death; death of dictators, their killing machine and the terrorists, and if it means our death too then so be it. Some of us (those who are not free yet) will live that life you (anti war people) are so protective of and will value it *just* like you do.
It’s a difficult equation, to value life and then to be prepared to die to protect it for others but also us if we survive. It’s still rather alien to most of us since we were always told that nothing worth dying for except a better life after death. This needs to change.

update: Welcome, BuzzMachine readers! Take a look here to see who I am and what this blog is about. Sorta. Thanks for the link, Jeff!

In a frontal assault on the literary establishment (and sounding just as enthusiastic about the digital future of books as Jeff Jarvis), longtime book publishing maven Joni Evans tells “large elite fish in a small pond” John Updike*** to get a grip and think of authors other than himself.

Here’s the text of her letter to the New York Times Book Review (July 16):

Whose Revolution?

To the Editor:

John Updike’s eloquent essay about digital publishing, ”The End of Authorship” (June 25), misses one fundamental point. Updike does not have to join the revolution. Digitization is optional. The Internet operates in the world of Also, Either/Or, Not One Way. Updike’s intentions of privacy and intimacy are safe; his copyright thoroughly protects his choice to remain nonenhanced, nondigitized, nonhyperlinked and nonsearchable.

But what is good for John Updike is not necessarily good for the millions of authors the current system has locked out. Creativity does not flourish when books can’t find publishers or when audiences cannot be sustained. Those authors whose works remain unpublished, out of print, out of stock or out of date will be the ones to march in the digital revolution. Updike is a large, elite fish in a small pond. The digital pond is primarily for other species — smaller, less recognized, exotic fish that need the oxygen this new world provides.
JONI EVANS
New York
The writer has worked for many years as an editor, publisher and literary agent.

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*** I grumbled about John Updike’s reactionary fears here and here. Search the “books” and “publishing” categories to see more of what I’ve written about this subject.