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January 16, 2006

Krauthammer jumps the shark, again

From Wikipedia:


Jumping the shark is a metaphor used by US television critics and fans since the 1990s to denote the moment when a pop culture icon is (in retrospect) deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has "jumped the shark," fans sense a noticeable decline in quality, or feel their show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm.

The phrase was popularized by Jon Hein on his website, jumptheshark.com. It alludes to a goofy scene in the TV series Happy Days when its popular character, Fonzie, is on water skis and literally jumps over a shark.

Maybe goes off the deep end is a better analogy, but bear with me.

If you have seen the movie Munich, you know how the movie starts out completely sympathetic to the Mossad. You are practically cheering when they kill the first few terrorists in retaliation. Then something goes wrong. That woman you were kissing at the bar turns out to be a prostitute soliciting, instead. Suddenly, things start to spin. In fact, there is a similar scene that is a key to Munich's disorienting effect. You walk out of the theater feeling like you might be sick.

You are left wondering why. The answer is, you know you were wrong.

Which is clearly not where Krauthammer wanted to go. He would much rather have this preview to the war on terror played out in clear black or white. They must all die, we are superior to those animals, and so forth. What he is forgetting is the first rule of war and the streets. When you kill someone else in cold blood you are giving up your own life, too. Whether it's the nightmares, the payback, or prison - the price is always the same. Sane people do not go around killing other sane people in cold blood. If you set out to try to do that but want to maintain your humanity, you have already failed.

The two experiences are just not compatible. So, if you're like me, and you have trouble sleeping, or feel sick, after watching Munich? Don't worry. At some point, everyone has set out with the best intentions, only to see them perverted into something beyond recognition. It just makes you human. Krauthammer? He's a shark:


It takes a Hollywood ignoramus to give flesh to the argument of a radical anti-Semitic Iranian. Jewish history did not begin with Kristallnacht. The first Zionist Congress occurred in 1897. The Jews fought for and received recognition for the right to establish a "Jewish national home in Palestine" from Britain in 1917 and from the League of Nations in 1922, two decades before the Holocaust.

But the Jewish claim is far more ancient. If the Jews were just seeking a nice refuge, why did they choose the malarial swamps and barren sand dunes of 19th-century Palestine? Because Israel was their ancestral home, site of the first two Jewish commonwealths for a thousand years -- long before Arabs, long before Islam, long before the Holocaust. The Roman destructions of 70 A.D and 135 A.D. extinguished Jewish independence but never the Jewish claim and vow to return home. The Jews' miraculous return 2,000 years later was tragic because others had settled in the land and had a legitimate competing claim. Which is why Jews have for three generations offered to partition the house. The Arab response in every generation has been rejection, war and terrorism.

And Munich. Munich, the massacre, had only modest success in launching the Palestinian cause with the blood of 11 Jews. "Munich," the movie, has now made that success complete 33 years later. No longer is it crude, grainy TV propaganda. "Munich" now enjoys high cinematic production values and the imprimatur of Steven Spielberg, no less, carrying the original terrorists' intended message to every theater in the world.

This is hardly surprising, considering that "Munich's" case for the moral bankruptcy of the Israeli cause -- not just the campaign to assassinate Munich's planners but the entire enterprise of Israel itself -- is so thorough that the movie concludes with the lead Mossad assassin, seared by his experience, abandoning Israel forever. Where does the hero resettle? In the only true home for the Jew of conscience, sensitivity and authenticity: Brooklyn.

If anything, the theme of Munich is that humanity means compromise. The whole point of the film is that absolutism corrupts everything. It sounds like Kraut got sick but then puked all over his keyboard.

As an interesting footnote, I got home from the movie just in time to watch the first reports that the US had bombed another family home in Pakistan, killing at least seventeen people in an attempt to kill one.

That gave me some pause.

Posted by Mike at January 16, 2006 11:28 PM

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