If our first Jewish president isn't Episcopalian (like Goldwater), it's equally fitting that they be "not particularly religious".
Previously, presumably, Jewish parents have held back on this front because they worry about their children turning into Henry Kissinger.
Mel Brooks Bernie Sanders is Jewish?!?!?!
Trump gets a lot of credit for breaking new ground, but the truth is, a lot of our presidents have been assholes.
This is all wrong isn't it? For one thing, this stereotypical Jewish parent is a thing of the past. Moreover, the stereotypical Jewish parent of yore wouldn't push their kid to be President. It's too dangerous! Also, it doesn't require good grades.
I think it should be OK - I'm not aware of Disraeli having a similar effect over here. But then I wasn't blessed with a Jewish mother, so I wouldn't know, I suppose.
It's best to fail really hard early on and then Jewish parents lighten up.
I'm just going to take this opportunity to say again that I have been aware of Bernie Sanders for at least 15 and probably 20 years (I remember writing him a letter early in the 200s for sure), and I had no idea he was Jewish until quite recently.
And I don't think I'm unusual. It's just not salient in the political conversations that I've been part of.
(My best yardstick for gauging the person-on-the-street is the number of crazy patron calls I've gotten demanding to *officially* know a person's religion. Bernie Sanders = zero. Neither elderly Jews nor elderly anti-Semitic people seem to be aware of his heritage to the extent that they call up their local library demanding proof. Paul Newman on the other hand? Still popular.)
Can you all tell I now own a smartphone?
If I were an elderly Jew I would take it as read that "Bernie Sanders" is Jewish.
Also, I mean, I admit I haven't been aware of Sanders for very long, and I the only political conversations I've had in which his religion has been a factor have been of the "but could a Jew really be elected?", and yet … his yiddishkeit shone through.
Also also, the average person on the street might be different from the average crazy patron who calls a library with questions about Paul Newman's religion, just a thought.
13: for serious. The reason the question doesn't come up so much might instead be that it is not very mysterious.
I will provide you a coke at the earliest possibility.
Sorry, tone is hard to read. My tongue was firmly in my cheek regarding patron calls. I am confident in saying that patrons who are obsessed with knowing someone else's "real" religion are pretty far on one side of the bell curve of the "general public."
That said, I was serious about the comparison of Sanders to other celebrities about whom I've gotten queries. Paul Newman is arguably not stereotypically Jewish, but I've gotten plenty of calls over the years about celebrities that I thought were laughably obvious (of whatever faith) -- and yet people still wanted official confirmation.
It's charming as all get-out that people still call the local library for information about these things.
Why, I remember the day when I trained with the Reference Librarian at our local municipal library about how it's all about knowing where to find the information. You don't have to have (know) the information, see, you have to know how/where to find it, and therein lies the value and the genius .... Etc. That man, the Reference Librarian, was very serious about his work. I certainly felt that I was being handed the keys. To the information. I swear he may even have winked at me a couple of times.*
(/reverie) Anyway, I'd have thought that people just, you know, google nowadays.
I just tested it. In google, typing "is bernie sanders" gives me these autofill options: married, rich, left handed, democrat. Huh. No Jewish.
* This was pre-internet, obviously.
Left handed? People wonder about this? What's going on there?
21: Southpaws have been president at a rate disproportionate to their share of general population. Maybe the Googlers are thinking that being left-handed would make Bernie Sanders extra qualified to be president. Or maybe they're tired of all these lefties taking more than their share of the presidencies, and they want to make sure Bernie Sanders isn't left-handed.
I remember writing him a letter early in the 200s for sure
Supporting his principled opposition to Septimius Severus's invasion of Caledonia?
19: Well technically, half of a fine looking Jew.
It's funny, because I actually know several Jews who won't vote for him because they fear if he runs in the general/gets elected he'll usher in a giant anti-Semitic backlash once people realize we have a Jewish socialist for president.
It's definitely a concern in some quarters, especially since we also have Trump in the race stoking the latent xenophobia of the electorate.
Trump loves the Jews. Great negotiators!
True, but I'm less sure about his followers.
What harm could possibly come from pitting right-wing populism against Jewish socialism?
6: there was a great Dizzy line from when the antisemitic Irish MP Daniel O'Connell was giving him grief in the House about being Jewish and he replied "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the honourable gentleman's ancestors were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon."
Up there in ancestry related retorts in the Commons with "I suppose Mr Wilson is the fourteenth Mr Wilson".
What harm could possibly come from pitting right-wing populism against Jewish socialism?
UGH, DON'T GET ME STARTED.
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I have a bleg. I have to go to Cornell for a few days. I don't think i'd quite realised how shite it is to get there.
But, any tips? Fly into Newark and catch the local flight to Ithaca? Something else? I'm coming from London.
How long a layover would I need in Newark? One flight option only gives me an hour or so in Newark, is that asking for a disaster to happen?
>
You know who else discovered quite how shite it can be to travel to Ithaca?
You have to do customs in Newark, right?
re: 36
Good point. Urgh. So, London to Ithaca looks about the same as London to SF, worse even.
Although come to think of it, the short changeover is on the flight back, so maybe no customs.
Look up Aer Lingus. It involves changing in Dublin but apparently you do customs there and I'm told it's quicker and less hassle.
38. That could work. There won't be any passport control or customs at least. Odd that the US doesn't have exit controls with all of the concern about those who overstay, etc. But it doesn't.
A lot of people fly to Syracuse and then get on a bus (or could do rental car I suppose) - service to Ithaca airport itself is infrequent and expensive, as I recall.
I'm assuming several hours on a bus from NY Port Authority, the most economical way, is more economy than you can afford.
So, London to Ithaca looks about the same as London to SF, worse even.
Yep, it's a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, I knew it wasn't central. I think I just assumed there'd be a train.
Congress has prohibited the placement of train lines more than 200 miles from the east coast.
34 -- there's no easy way, and it's rural, but there are regular flights from Philadelphia, Newark, and Detroit to Ithaca. If you can spare the time and someone is willing to pay for it, you can fly into NYC and spend a night on either end, and it's either a 4 hour rental car drive or the same distance on a Cornell-sponsored bus, which is comfortable enough and your hosts will give you access to.
Syracuse, a crappy mid-size city, is about 1-1/2 hours away, and often nets out to more total time than driving from NYC once you include time to change planes.
If you're going any time but winter and have any free time it can be nice to have a car b/c the main attractions are pretty rural/natural things in the area. If you're going in Winter just stay inside.
45 -- again, check out the Cornell campus-to-campus bus, which goes 3x/day. And I think the Short Line bus now has a direct nonstop NYC-Ithaca bus now.
48: There was such a bus in my time, which is now up to fourteen years since!
Oops, sorry, it wasn't nonstop, but the stops took up almost no time.
There are some nonstop economy buses from Manhattan, I saw them when I was taking one of the many nonstop economy buses from NY to Boston.
Ithaca doesn't even get an interstate, so a train is unimaginable. Even if the US had a robust passenger train system, it would run along the old "water level route" through Utica and Syracuse (note, that's where the interstate goes too) and you'd still have to get from Syracuse to Ithaca somehow.
On the other hand, if it weren't for federal subsidies Ithaca wouldn't have an airport at all.
Yeah, passenger train service from Ithaca was dead by the early 1950s, and would probably be one of the last lines to come back. But the bus service isn't too bad. I think you can still take Amtrak to Syracuse, if you wanted to for some reason.
Even when it did exist it was an 8 hour trip from NYC.
Went through Philly:
http://www.american-rails.com/black-diamond.html
I don't think I realized how remote Ithaca is until I stopped at the turn-off from the interstate to Ithaca driving back from Syracuse, the one time I went to Syracuse. I think there was a piano in the McDonald's at that exit, though. Very classy.
Oops, misread, the Philly one is a different route. Route split in Bethlehem. Lots of towns I haven't heard of.
South Carolina/Nevada predictions or desires:
In SC, my dream out come is something along these lines with this outcome:
Trump 35%
Jeb! 25%
Carson 14%
Cruz - 10%
Kasich 8%
Rubio - 5%
My prediction is that instead we'll get:
Trump
Cruz
Rubio
Carson
Jeb!
Kasich
In Nevada, I predict Hillary will win by a small amount,
the final part was HRC will win by a small amount, less than 5%
Winning by a small amount seems like the most likely result, though to be honest I have no idea what is going to happen there. My guess is that it's somewhere between decisive/significant win for HRC or a narrow win (basically a tie) for Sanders. But it could just as easily be something else - I don't put much credit in the very recent polls, but the Clinton campaign's nervous attempt to shift people's attention away from Nevada after New Hampshire makes me think that it might be close.
What I'd like to see in SC is: Trump in the thirties with five to seven districts; Jeb! in the twenties followed quickly by Cruz; Rubio a more distant fourth; Kasich a bit below him - well into single digits; and Carson almost entirely absent.
I don't think any of those except for maybe the Trump one is likely though. I suspect Trump and Cruz might underperform in this one, and Rubio and Kasich overperform. I don't know if it'll be enough to prevent Trump from sweeping across and snapping up all the delegates though - I hope not. Jeb! will probably beat out Carson by a little but not by too much and they'll both be between five and ten percent.
34: If it isn't prohibitively expensive, your best bet is probably just to fly into Ithaca. These other options are mostly coming at the problem from the broke-student perspective; they work fine, but they're very time-consuming and still pretty expensive.
There's truth there, especially if you're in a rush, though honestly as a non-student what I usually do to get to Ithaca from LA unless I'm in a super rush is fly to NYC, rent a car and drive up immediately, and then on the way back leave midday and plan on a morning flight from NYC the next morning. This is a little cheaper plus you're not at mercy of the flight schedule plus you get a night in NYC. From London I guess just fly, and leave more than 1 hr to change planes.
Oh also Ttam if you're there May-Sept drop me a note on FB, especially if you're there for more than a day.
Expense isn't the issue. The institution in Ithaca are paying for me to come. Obviously, I don't want to choose the most expensive option for the sake of it, but any convenient, quick, and reliable method is going to be fine.
There aren't really any convenient, quick, and reliable methods, but flying is definitely going to be better than the other options on at least two out of three.
61. That's a pretty accurate prediction; perhaps you should work at 538?
Oooooops, aside from Jeb!
Poor Jeb. It's almost like a Shakespearian tragedy.
Comedy?