Cheap shots and a side of matzoh brei

Giant Head in Window.

Via Driftglass, a detail not reported at his place: David Brooks did a book-promo interview with The Forward, in the Times offices on West 42nd Street. On the third day of Passover, America's noted Jewish thought leader offered the representative of America's preeminent Jewish newspaper a toasted bagel.

Informed that it was Passover and the reporter, Jane Eisner, was not eating leavened bread during the holy period, Brooks apologized profusely and ran to throw both bagels, his and hers, into the trash on the other side of the room. Eisner is super-nice about it, says he was unaffectedly kind and honest, and to tell the truth I could have done the same thing, but then, unlike Brooks, I've never claimed that Judaism's powerful laws, customs, and rituals—the understructure of life—are embedded in my mind:

Calling on his interest in the workings of the mind and the unconscious, he muses that Judaism’s powerful laws, customs and rituals — the understructure of life — get embedded in the mind, which explains his own particular journey. “Even though my Jewish life was not consciously willed, I could so easily fall into it.”

“I identify as a Conservative Jew, in the political and religious sense.”

I mean you'd think at that rate he could have known what day it was. I wouldn't have thrown the bagels out either. Mom may have been a gentile but she raised me not to waste food.

Enter the Cartoon Utopia #10, by Ron Regé, Jr.

Rumors abound, in fact, that Brooks is heading toward conversion to one of those post-Jewish resurrectionist cults:

Three people interviewed who know Brooks personally say he has taken steps to do just that. “I don’t know that he’s converting, but I know he’s gone to church,” one conservative associate said of Brooks. “No one knows where it’s going to go, but he’s not in the same spot as he was two years ago.”

A second person familiar with Brooks’ thinking would only confirm that Brooks is interested in becoming a Christian. According to a third source, Brooks has received instruction in the Catholic faith from Arthur Brooks and Ross Douthat, both converts.

Heh. Catholic, huh? You could have read it here first last May. And I was just making it up.

Der Doten Dantz. Heinrich Knoblochzer, before 1488.

Just because God made it doesn't mean it's not fragile:

During an appearance on John Hagee Ministries’ Global Evangelism Television (GETV) network on Wednesday, host Matt Hagee asked the Texas Republican where the country had gone wrong.

“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay explained. “When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”

“Governments like we have are very easy to destroy,” Hagee later noted.

I mean he used to build a lot sturdier, but he's had to skimp on materials lately, like everybody else.