The Wednesday Curator – 1/6/16

January 6, 2016

Happy New Year!

Janet Reitman has written Inside Gitmo: America’s Shame for Rolling Stone. Setting up a prisoner camp on U.S. property “not so much” was always about skirting treaties about torture and complying with international law. Shame on Congress for twisting the issue, and leaving a stain on our nation long after the prison should have been shut down.

The Clintons’ Secret Language by Frank Bruni, in the January 5 issue of the New York Times, nails much more than the marriage between Hillary and Bill. When people I knew casually were getting divorced, several years ago, I expressed surprise to a friend who knew them better. She said: “No one really knows anything about someone else’s marriage, do they?” Touché! The same goes for families, and the whole discussion mandates a reference to Leo Tolstoy’s famous observation: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And, as someone who touches elder law and whose network skews far in the direction of attorneys whose days (and nights, too often) are devoted to helping families deal with aging issues, happy, problem-free families are very rare.*

The Bundys are one tired story, for sure. (Ammon Bundy one of Cliven’s sons, rants about the federal government, but he was happy to use the Small Business Administration to help him be a job creating, self-sustaining real ‘Murican. Details here.) The best writing on this puss-filled pox on the hind side of our nation can be found in The Bundys and the Irony of American Vigilantism, written by Jedediah Purdy for the New Yorker on January 5.

Per my tattered copy of The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten, Oy vay means “Oh pain!” The Devastating Story of Washington’s Peeping-Tom Rabbi, written for Washingtonian by Harry Jaffe, reports on Rabbi Barry Freundel, formerly the rebbe  at Kesher Israel, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Washington. The article’s title tells you everything I can share, but read the piece for the sordid details … and the pain.

Good news for Tucsonans: Deborah Tenino will be reopening Contigo Cochina Latina, a fine Spanish restaurant, at La Paloma. And in other Tucson restaurant news Zona 78 has closed its River Rd. location. Stay tuned for Stray Dogs. Same owners; different concept.

*Many years ago, before he started running for POTUS, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said, about a predecessor and his wife:

Bill Clinton and Hillary went through some horrible experiences in their marriage, because of some of the reckless behavior that he has admitted he had. I’m not defending him on that–it’s indefensible. But they kept their marriage together. And a lot of the Republicans who have condemned them, and who talk about their platform of family values, interestingly didn’t keep their own families together.

 

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