Most media attention is focused on Iraq these days, and there’s been a lot of activity in Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian territories that’s gone unreported—or, to be fair, it’s been reported (spottily) by the MSM here and there, but it’s been mostly not remarked upon in the blogosphere.

I’ve been reading the Israeli papers and the Lebanese bloggers and Michael Totten and Sandmonkey and the Big Pharaoh and Abu Aardvark, among others, as I try to make sense of things. Which is impossible: the on again, off again truces; on again, off again prisoner swaps; the on again, off again “unity government” negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and among the Palestinians—it’s not for the faint of heart. Or for someone for whom blogging is a hobby.

Therefore, I was pleased to come upon this unusual, original piece by Shalom Lappin about Ehud Olmert’s strange resistance to engaging Assad (at a time when he seems to be tripping over himself to negotiate a separate peace with Fatah and Abbas—which, I believe, is going to be a cornerstone of the new Bush plan for the Middle East).

For the past several weeks the Israeli press has featured numerous reports on Syrian peace feelers and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s insistence that these overtures are neither sincere nor worth pursuing (see, for example, Roni Sofer’s recent Ynet article, and the analysis by Shmuel Rosner and Aluf Benn in Haaretz). As is invariably the case with informal diplomatic tremors of this kind in the Middle East, the real intentions behind the statements emanating from both sides remain shrouded in equivocation and unclarity. It may well be true that even if President Bashar Assad is genuinely seeking a renewal of negotiations with Israel, he may not be prepared to reach an agreement on terms that Israel can afford. It is, however, remarkable that Olmert has chosen simply to dismiss Assad’s public announcements as not deserving of consideration.

Read the whole thing. (It helps to have been following events up to this point, and to know how very unpopular Olmert is in Israel.)

James Lileks gets to the core of media “bias”—and it’s got nothing to do with politics:

Entertainment Weekly [recently] ran the annual list of up-and-comers. For Morgan Spurlock, the wonderfully named filmmaker who did the “Supersize Me” doc, they used this photo:

[this is a close-up of the photo on Lileks's site --ed.]

He’s bare-chested, arms out in a crucifixion posture, a hamburger in each hand. It’s funny ‘cause he, like, ate Big Macs for our sins! Apparently it never occurred to anyone at EW how this image might strike someone who doesn’t look at religious iconography as a handy source of photo-shot ideas.

The person who came up with the idea didn’t know this would be offensive, or didn’t care. The photographer didn’t know, or didn’t care. The person who chose the photo didn’t know, or didn’t care. The editor who approved the section didn’t know, or didn’t care.

Actually, I think it there’s a likelier explanation: it was done deliberately, for that frisson of “transgressiveness.” Only, the folks who thought it up haven’t gotten the message yet: that “transgressive” is so 20th century.
Read the whole thing, including the backstory.

(via the extremely entertaining American Digest,

Wolcott’s been sinking lower on the NY Scribbler Food Chain for years. To revive his slumping significance, Wolcott has latched onto blogdom — probably because the initial plan of changing his first name to “Alexander” didn’t land him a lot of lunches at Michaels.

And how do you “rise” in blogdom? Pretty much in the same way you rise in the Lit’ry World of New York City — you get the attention of the Alphas.

Wolcott’s an old hand at sucking-up in the magazine canyons. His smarm is so well known, in fact, that it is rumored Graydon Carter dons a wet suit before taking even a phone call from Wolcott. But sucking-up is a mug’s game in the blogosphere where men like Lileks save the email for their columns and men like Reynolds are really in the realm of finite posts vs. infinite email stacks. For the Alphas of the Blogosphere, the Suckupathon never stops.

and originally linked by Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit, who directed me there with the irresistible link title “reverse suckupathon”)

Another independent bookstore folds. While copping to the fact that “Independent bookstores, of course, have been under siege for nearly two decades by the megachains and the Web retailers, and have been steadily dropping away, one by one,” the New York Times can’t help but mourn, yet again, the tragic death of culture now that Logan Fox, owner of Princeton’s Micawber Books, is giving up his downtown store:

Logan Fox can’t quite pinpoint the moment when movies and television shows replaced books as the cultural topics people liked to talk about over dinner, at cocktail parties, at work.

{{Let’s see… Could it have been in the 1970s, when all those lib’rul book lovers on the Upper West Side couldn’t get enough of Kojak; or the 1980s, when they couldn’t get enough of Hill Street Blues; or perhaps the 2000s, when they couldn’t get enough of The West Wing and The Sopranos? Just asking. –ed}}

Mr. Fox, son of the late great Random House editor Joe Fox (who, famously, died in his office), just cannot get over the fact that the wonderful world of literature and culture he grew up with is gone, gone, gone.

Mr. Fox is proudly from the old school of bookselling. He says he has only been inside a Barnes & Noble store three times. (“I can’t do it,” he said, grimacing.)

Maybe he’s losing his business because he hasn’t kept his eye on the competition? Nah.

[H]e blames a change in American culture, in the quickening pace of people’s lives, in the shrinking willingness to linger. During the 1980s, in the store’s early days, customers would come in and stay all afternoon, carefully inspecting the books that were packed tightly together, spine to spine.

No longer. “The driving force of all of this is the acceleration of our culture,” Mr. Fox said.

Oh yes: he blames publishers, too. They’ve stopped nurturing writers through their failed efforts and are too impatient for hits—all they care about is the bottom line, of course. And then there’s the terrible quality of the books.

What’s a poor middle-aged guy to do?

Get over yourself and your risible pretensions, you charmless asshole. That’s what.

In Commentary, Christian Delacampagne writes about France in the era of Islamism: a country seized by fear, which manifests itself as extreme political correctness and—more dangerously—as official denial.

Ostensibly, Delacampagne’s subject is his friend, high school teacher Robert Redeker, who was forced to go into hiding with his family after receiving death threats for a very strongly worded op-ed in Le Figaro titled “What Should the Free World Do in the Face of Islamist Intimidation?”. But Delacampagne is deeply concerned about the political climate that characterizes French academia and, consequently, French public opinion:

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was virtually the only public official who took an honorable position, declaring that this “fatwa” against a French intellectual was “unacceptable.” A group of centrist intellectuals, including Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, also issued an appeal on Redeker’s behalf and in defense of France’s “most fundamental liberties.”

But the vast majority of responses, even when couched as defenses of the right to free speech, were in fact hostile to the philosophy teacher. …France’s two largest teachers’ unions, both of them socialist, stressed that “they did not share Redeker’s convictions.” The leading leftist human-rights organizations went much farther, denouncing his “irresponsible declarations” and “putrid ideas.”

Among members of the media, Redeker was scolded for articulating his ideas so incautiously. On the radio channel Europe 1, Jean-Pierre Elkabach invited the beleaguered teacher to express his “regret.” The editorial board of Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting.” It went so far as to call his remarks about Muhammad “a blasphemy,”

Bottom line: in France, the birthplace of Voltaire, the homeland of engaged, brassy intellectuals, intellectuals are not allowed to criticize Islam, or even Islamism. Delacampagne believes one reason for this is the French academy’s long love affair with the Arab world and “Orientalism” (which in France, unlike in America after Edward Said, is apparently a good thing; I know—it’s awfully hard to keep track):

Today in France, research on the most contested issues of race and religion is taboo unless one exhibits the “right” politics. To speak at conferences or to be considered for important posts, a scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial era in French history as nothing less than an exercise in genocide and to denounce American policy in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty. Those who refuse to comply find themselves shut out.

Worse:

 The present generation of Orientalists is omnipresent in the French media, unavoidable on radio and television. They assure the country that the progressive Islamization of European suburbs, plain for all to see, poses no danger. They suggest that the problem with Israel is its very existence. They inspire the open sympathy with Hamas, Hizballah, and Iran that can be found in newspapers like Le Monde and Libération. And they encourage the use of the term “Islamophobia” (a coinage of Iranian clerics) in order to delegitimize all those who might be tempted to disagree with them—individuals like Redeker.

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s been going on in the blogosphere and commentariat right here in the good old “U.S. and A.” (thank you, Sacha Baron Cohen) for quite some time now.

Not coincidentally, I note that Andrew Sullivan posts his latest fence-sitting view on the war, and later refers to himself as having offered (to Bob Wright, on Bloggingheadstv) ”an abject apology for passionately supporting the Bush-run Iraq war.”

Thank you, Comrade Sullivan. We will take your nuanced self-criticism under advisement. 

Rudy’s camp is claiming dirty tricks (and McCain’s camp got off the best rejoinder: “I thought it was a security company“)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the race, Barack Obama is promoting his connubial bliss, with which a certain stern former First Lady cannot compete. Gawker, natch, has the best innuendo—along with some devastating supporting (photographic) evidence.   ———

*** The Times reports things rather differently:

Indeed, an adviser to one of his possible rivals in 2008, Senator John McCain of Arizona, half-joked yesterday that it was interesting that Mr. Giuliani’s businesses included security consulting.

“I’m surprised that something like that would ever leave the custody of a campaign, and that such raw and frank information would be around the countryside,” said the McCain adviser, John Weaver