21/9/01

Been Reading the Paper Lately?

If you want the really funny stuff, don't look in the humor column.

    It's been years since we went through my Old Green File; let's see what's new:
    We used to run an advice column on our economics page, because there are some brilliant people who have a lot to teach us simpletons about high finance. Only once did I read something that made sense to me -- these profound words by the vice president of a bank: "The bottom line to a financier is the financial bottom line. People invest to make money."
    I always find great stuff on the economics page. This gem might have set a record for mixed metaphors: "At the moment people are market hopping. They are pumping one up and then jumping ship to the next one. It is a game of pass-the-parcel where the loser is the one left holding the baby when the liquidity bubble bursts."
    I don't know why people always complain that foreign correspondents don't have a good grasp of the situation here. This AP reporter got it right:
    JERUSALEM (AP) - Thousands of Jews named Cohen held Passover prayers Monday at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, while a small group of extremists named Levy tried to push their way into a Muslim holy site.
    I was completely fooled by this heading on a recent music review: Organ Inauguration Ceremony. I thought it was about a circumcision.
    Reader Elias Katz caught this in the Post classifieds: "CLEANING WOMAN, 5 days, ... (Mazal)." What's funny is that it was mistakenly listed under MATRIMONIAL. Elias comments: "I know they are hard to get ... but this?!"
    We once had this listing in In Jerusalem: "Celebrate Breastfeeding Day at Misgav Ladach Hospital. Activities for the whole family..."
    Headline: "Journalist wins suit against Jeruslam Post." (The Post shoulda sued the journalist who wrote that headline.)
    The next headline -- which ran over the main story on Page One -- is vernacularly called a two-headed monster:

US seeks Barak,
Arafat replies to
peace deal draft

    Its meaning is altogether different, and oddly wrong, when "replies" is read as a verb.
    Back when Al Gore was in the news a lot, we ran an opinion piece by Dore Gold. Unfortunately, the byline read

    DORE GORE   

    Funny, but we didn't have any trouble with this byline:

    MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI

    Not only did we manage to spell that correctly, but for the same story, we succeeded in fitting "Shevardnadze" on a one column headline. I wouldn't want to be a newspaper deskman in Tbilisi.
    Some typos rise above the rest to earn a place in the Old Green File:
    "Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei, when asked whether the negations would continue if Ariel Sharon is elected prime minister..."
    Daoud Kuttab, the arch Palestinian apologist, must have winced when he read this typo in his Post column: "... including Jewish settlers who are fragrantly breaking the law..."

SOMETIMES THE humor column can't compete with the news pages for wacky satire.
    Notorious underworld criminal Nissim Alperon was given early release from prison. The state petitioned against the Gush Dan parole board's decision. Our story explained that "Alperon had gotten early releases from prison twice before and gone straight back to committing crimes, the state noted, and there is even evidence that he has been organizing criminal activity from prison." Now, the clincher: "The parole board released him on the grounds that his children should get to know their father."
    On my list of the top 10,000 reasons this country is a mess is that there's no respect for authority, and authority is so laughable it doesn't deserve respect.   
    For instance, what happened recently in Eilat. Health inspectors tell the Caesar Hotel it must completely renovate the kitchen and dining facilities. Predictably, the hotel management ignores the order. Some time later, 136 of its guests -- including children and babies -- are hospitalized with food poisoning. Do the authorities close the hotel? Arrest the managers? Sue them? Fine them? Nah. The authorities in effect reward them. According to our report, the inspectors "felt that this time there was no need to close the entire kitchen, but set restrictions on what could be served."
    The hotel is caught red-handed (but surely not red-faced, because shame and embarrassment are unheard of in this country), and 136 people suffer the consequences of their scofflaw arrogance, and the bottom line is, the hotel actually saves money because the authorities compromise their earlier orders.
    Why haven't these fools in charge of our safety learned a lesson from the series of calamities they were empowered to prevent?
    Next thing you know, we'll be reading that the perpetrator of the Versailles disaster is still in business.
    Next thing: He is.
    "Dangerous Pal-Kal method being used on Modi'in country club," was the startling headline. Hardly repentant, not exactly laying low in the wake of national shock and outrage, the perpetrator of the worst civilian disaster in Israeli history is at it again. (Remember what I said about shame and embarrassment?)
    Someone actually hired him!
    According to our report: "Less than three months after Jerusalem's Versailles banquet hall collapse, the inventor of the hazardous Pal-Kal construction method used in the hall continues to work unabated...
    "Despite being under police investigation ... Channel 2 filmed the inventor, Eli Ron, constructing the rooftop of a country club in Modi'in with the very same hazardous materials."
    At a time of widespread panic about unsafe flooring, with buildings being evacuated and condemned, and engineers saying it's not even safe to test Pal-Kal floors -- the Modi'in local council, plus an assortment of contractors, engineers, inspectors and authorities, blithely acquiesce to this new disaster-in-the-making, utterly oblivious to prevailing sense and sensitivity.
    (Yeah, I know this is supposed to be a humor column, but I had to get it off my chest.)

IN THE "I don't know whether to laugh or cry" department, I give you, ladies and gentlemen ... our government:
    The lead-all story of August 20 began with this revelation by our PM: "The IDF is conducting secret 'commando operations' against Palestinian terrorists."
    Immediately, the question begs: if it's secret, why tell?
    The very next sentence:
    "Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, meanwhile, confirmed that his staff is conducting secret talks with Palestinian officials to bring about a cease-fire."
    So this is what I figure: Sharon's commando operations were kept secret from Peres, and Peres's cease-fire talks were kept secret from Sharon, and God forbid they should tell each other, but to the rest of the world, that's OK.
    Besides, wouldn't the secret cease-fire talks be somewhat hampered by revelations of secret commando operations?
    Someday, I'd like to fill a page of But Seriously with stuff from the front page, and see if anyone notices they're all real news stories. Like this item:
    Three Israeli generals meet in the middle of a war. (This sounds like a joke, but it really happened.) All of them -- PM Sharon, Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, and CGS Mofaz -- agree to send tanks into Beit Jala. Sharon wants the invasion completed by lunchtime, before his meeting with a US envoy. Mofaz wants the invasion carried out under cover of darkness. Ben-Eliezer wants the invasion timed to "look good on the evening news." All three top generals in the land, as I said, agree, yet no tanks enter Beit Jala (until a couple of weeks later).
    Funny, eh? No wonder the Palestinians are laughing at us.