O God! O Cæsarea!

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O Mars! O Machpelah! What is seven hunded thirty-one (731) between e-friends? And why could they not post their e-property in advance?

Well, Mr. Bones, that Cæsarea won't have it does not mean that the Muses and thee must go without. This way I can stick in a couple of irrelevant goodies for print-challenged MacLuhanoids.

... the title of this op-ed, "Obama in Netanyahu’s Web" ... will necessarily enflame anti-Semitism on the web.

Well, of course no person of prudence dare dispute about such a claim until she gets well up to speed on GPCR peptide ligands. ("Who?")

Turning from future necessities to facts of observation immediately at hand, however, it looks as if the portion of the web immediately adjacent to the New York Times Company has minor inflammation problems already.

This keyboard was reading through the comments on Mr. Cohen’s op-ed in its accustomed way, top to bottom by "Reader Recommendations," and was surprised to find that this scribble, the first of a Hyperzionistical tenor to be encountered, came in no higher than twelfth. (As of 05/28/2009 12:41PM.)

The first eleven were all rooting for Team Cohen, some of them rather witlessly. The state of mind that finds it worthwhile to lift a finger to click approval of an analysis like "I agree with your editorial completely" -- item #3 by popularity, #7 by chronology, here reproduced in full -- eludes me. Enough to make you wonder about "Rochester Hills, Michigan" a little, that is!

Myself, I wonder more about Manhattan Island, New York.

After a certain amount of wondering, I have tentatively concluded that we have here no adequate evidence that the New York Times is not still the local Jewish fishwrap in those parts, only that the finger-click approval artists must be a different crowd almost entirely from hard-copy locals and natives [*].

UPDATE: as of 05/28/2009 02:47PM the NYTC management and staff announce "Comments are no longer being accepted." But an attempt to review the data points by "Editor's Selections" still yields "There are no comments in this view." Furthermore, when the race was called because of I-know-not-what, the "JG, Caesarea" effort, #5 chronologically, had risen to tenth place from twelfth.

Could the track management have been afraid the still pretty dark horse was going to sweep on to victory? It seems improbable.

Happy days.

(( Not to dodge the article’s substance altogether lest one look like a craven appeaser: is it really at all likely that Mr. Cohen was thinking of the electronic ‘web’ when he allegedly ventured into political entymology? Indeed, didn’t the arachnoid web come from some NYTC headline editor rather than from the author? Boo-boos of that type happen all the time nowadays. It must be really tough for the gentry to engage competent and reliable servants nowadays!

(( As an Eng. Dept. or Comp. Lit. conceit to toy with, ‘web’ is admirable and right up the present keyboard’s alley. Yet if I were to set up as toyer-with, Mr. Roger Cohen would get no more credit for my verbal plaything than he deserves -- none at all. ))


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[*] The NYTC flagship publication has recently started to divide like a peptide-crazed amœba

into a "Global Edition" and a "U. S. Edition." For a while it looked as if Mr. Cohen had been banished -- promoted? -- to the former exclusively. Neocomrade Herr Prof. Dr. M. Peretz of H*rv*rd even mistakenly inferred that he had got the boot altogether.

(( I’d supply the reference, except that the software over at The New Republican seems unable to find anything at all in the archives just now: "Thank you for coming to The New Republic! We are still trying to work out the kinks of our new website and ask for your patience while we move all of our content to the new location." Oh, well. ))

In fact, Mr. Roger is still around, and still around in the neighborhood as well as in the Gesamtganzweltall. The only distinction this keyboard can perceive is that he runs third in the Op-Ed Sweepstakes at the breakfast table of Joe Tweedledumbovitz and Archie Bunker, whereas Mynheer van Tweedledee and Mr. Tony Judt are implicitly solicited to read Roger Cohen first and foremost.

Whether or not that fine shade of difference means anything of any importance must await further research, but meanwhile it would be helpful to amateur social-scientisers like the present keyboard if the NYTC were to indicate which version of the corporate product each finger-clicker is clicking about. For all one knows with complete certainty, poor #7/#3 may be a resident of Beirut or the Bronx irrelevantly marooned in Rochester Hills MI when his one-hoss shay broke down.