Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Michael Oren: There Are No Settlements in Jerusalem

He's excellent, is Michael.


perat said...

First of all, why does spitzer get a show if he's supposed to be a disgraced governor?

Second, the fact that both interviewers kept harping the point of the announcement of settlement building to be an issue when oren kept saying that jerusalem is not a settlement showed how dense these two are. Hello, he told you ten times that building in those places was not a problem because it's part of the CAPITAL of israel.

I think the more and more the media and the obama administration insists that settlements are the problem actually makes an internal israeli issue into a needless obstacle that wasn't really an obstacle.

Anonymous said...

Oren is just great ...
What a reare treat to see a politician talking whose eyes are alive.

he should maybe talk a bit slower*) and have said more often neighborhood but those are just minute quibblings by an adoring fan.
*) slower talking people i.e. taking their time seem to me to come across as more serious, whether he can do that and still seem so attractively lively is another thing.

I read Spitzer's column at Slate regularly. He shouldn't remain disgraced. I got a glimpse of his smile during Oren's first answer. He seemed to look like a pro admiring another one.

Isn't it a pity that in these shows they have to harp on "the American public thinks" this or that again and again. Doesn't anybody do real talking on TV?

i.e. why didn't they make Oren repeat the stuff about Palestinian martyr adoration?


marek said...

And what exactly has redeemed the esteemed Spitzer? His column in Slate or his claim that he defended in past the Jewish settlements in Jerusalem?

To me he was and still is a lying and cheating piece of a dirty opportunist.
And that's not counting his support for Obama's politics.

Anonymous said...


being a European I can't understand the US habit of focusing on what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. For me that's a matter between Spitzer and his wife.

If I'd get told the story on his prosecuting prostitution while being a client himself for once with all the moralising cut out so that I can understand what exactly was going on I might think different about it, until then it is benefit of the doubt for me.

As to Obama his latest in Slate reads as coming from a member of the same party as very unsupportive. BTW I don't find Spitzer attractive ;-).

I don't know, if he at one point fell for Obama like so many others have done, who should have known better, but who wanted a dream to come true so badly that they lost their head.


PS: there are no settlements in Jerusalem, there are neighborhoods.

Caligula P. Johnsonstein said...

I just hope when Spitzer used high priced prostitutes, he used a credit card so he could get frequent flier miles. Better yet, hope he was able to clip coupons from the NYT to get valuable discounts for her services

Anonymous said...

there's a movie coming on Spitzer, here's one of the makers promoting it

according to him Spitzer was meticulous on using his private money for his private doings but of course the frequent flier miles issue could open the interesting question: would it be damnable if he used up such benefits on official business?
Misappropriation of private means?
is that punishable?


Sérgio said...

Gosh, this guy is great! Clear, straightforward, to the point, demolishing that barrage of crap that passes unchallenged all the time.

The amazing thing is that this Spitzer seems to be a moron or deaf.

Bryan said...

I love Dr. Oren. He's my hero.

Anonymous said...

Spitzer has for what reason eludes me decided on the strategy of cringing his way back into politics.

here's a talk on "The Art of the Public Grovel" with lots of examples on people who did it before him

of course I don't claim to understand what makes an apparently smart man who by all accounts seems to have been a really good prosecutor threatening the rich and the mighty effectively want to go through these humiliating procedures of speaking "for the American public" on TV just to be allowed "in" again

on the other hand I have witnessed the good works presidents of local fire brigades etc do for a village while having to tolerate getting slandered and slandered and slandered.

And thus a part of me remains baffled and undecided.

the Spitzer case intrigues me especially because the accusation that he frequented an escort service while having previously prosecuted them remains always intriguingly vague while the point that he didn't take of his socks during the act gets highlighted. He may have chosen a moronic path to give it back to whoever he is after but I'd like to witness him successfully prosecuting again (I missed the first round)


Anonymous said...

for Oren Fans:
here's the talk which made me first fall for him (the site even has transcript) - its January 2007 and I've caught some more after that one, he was equally great in all of them.


I am also glad to notice that he is working on his appearance i.e. letting his (beautiful) eyes show more, looking expensively groomed etc. etc. i.e. he behaves like a prof thru and thru


Anonymous said...

especially for Sergio and Yaacov - enjoy!
vastly off topic
but since it deals with Sergio's hobby horse and gives credit to Yaacov's profession
and is not online but only in the NL for this program which doesn't mention anything of what's in the NL I put it here


It was during my postgraduate studies in sociology that I first became aware of the serious difference in status which existed between sociologists who busied themselves with the collection and analysis of data and those who liked to describe themselves as theorists.

There wasn’t much doubt about the relative prestige of the two groups. Whereas the data collectors were variously referred to as ‘crass empiricists’ or ‘number crunchers’, the so-called theorists, who liked to talk about ‘keeping their hands clean’, were accorded the sort of respect traditionally reserved to minor deities.

They even shared certain physical and behavioural characteristics which set them apart from their colleagues. For a start they were almost invariably male and favoured masculine metaphors whenever they chose to participate in any academic debate. They were very keen, for example, on making ‘theoretical interventions’ and asking ‘probing questions’.

Their disdain for basic facts was also evident in their posture. Whereas data collectors were necessarily required to glance down at their figures from time to time, the theorists talked with their eyes almost permanently fixed upon some imaginary horizon. As time went by I came to recognise that there was also a status order among the theorists. Whereas some confined themselves to existing theories about the nature of society and its institutions – theories developed by such ‘founding fathers’ of the discipline as Durkheim, Weber and Marx – others chose to move to what they described as the meta-theoretical level. From this vantage point they claimed to be able to theorise about the nature of theorising itself, to show, for example, that Marxism was not revolutionary at all but thoroughly compatible with the epistemology of the 19th century.

I only became aware of the manner in which this dedication to theory riled other academics during a series of joint seminars involving the history and sociology departments. Even from the first seminar it was plain that the historians had little or no time at all for big theories about the essential stages of civilization, or the future of capitalism, or the decline of the West. This was a part of their disciplinary tradition which they were anxious to shed. The truth, they insisted, was to be found in the details.

Ian Morris, Professor of History at Stanford University fundamentally disagrees. His new book – Why the West Rules - for Now is unashamedly subtitled the Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future.

Sérgio said...


Who cares if Spizter-spatzer hired expensive hookers? It´s his private business. What is disgusting is his playing dumb, making Oren repeat his view repeatedly. In the enb, Spritzer really seemed to be a moron.

Anonymous said...

his hiring prostitutes is his personal business 1000 %

but when he was still prosecutor before becoming governor he went after Wall Street big ones and, that one is never really clearly spelled out, the prostitution business also. Now if there is something substantial to that part of the story then that IMHO would be a conflict of interest which I would very much hold against him.

And yes I agree the way he does his public grovelling/atonement/pardon-me-please i.e. evidently parrotting strictly the script the TV-station wants him to use is very disgusting and off-putting. Spitzer strikes me as intelligent he couldn't think up such low stuff on his own.

On the other hand in his Slate columns he is still very much after the banksters and is not willing to take their drivel for an answer and that's why he continues to interest me. And as he himself is the rare bird who was meticulous with keeping his public and private finances well separated I am into wait and see. My personal interest being that I would cherish a banksters or two calves to get chewed up a bit.