I can just hear the “Hey Hesh how can you ignore one of the biggest news events to hit the Jewish world since the Tropper scandal?” and questions of a similar rote begging me for my brilliant take on the death of America’s enemy number one, unless you count obesity and cancer as part of the axis of evil. I honestly don’t have much to say about it, I was busy at work during a particularly busy Sunday night dinner service when one of the servers broke the news, my exact words as I entered the walk in to look for some parsley were “you sure?” and his response was “yeah the news is just coming in now” and then I gave no more thought to the matter, until some folks asked me to write about it.
For one of the biggest Jewish bloggers, my knowledge of current events and pop culture is like that of a conspiracy theorist holed up in the mountains of Idaho waiting for the world to end – if the rabbi wouldn’t have spoken of the Royal wedding during his shabbos drash – I would have no idea that the event even took place or that it was such a big deal. I glance at Vos Iz Neias and Failed Messiah for my news, but that’s really just for Jewish stuff, so I’m pretty clueless until I start getting dozens of emails that say “dude what do you think about…” and I start formulating some sort of idea or thoughts on said issue.
The best source for regular old Jewish opinion about things is my facebook news feed, naturally as can be expected, it was filled with a bunch of people celebrating Osama’s death, some wishing it were Obama and so on. There were a few smatterings of liberalism peaking in – the skeptics like myself, wondering if the thousands of lives lost, millions of dollars spent and our recession was worth the death of one man? Of course, I always have to take the road lesser traveled to piss people off, make myself and others think and just have a grand old time in the madness of it all.
Then I actually did start to think about the news of this past week and how it was all a conspiracy theorists playground. After years of trying to come up with a forgery good enough for the public, Obama’s birth certificate was released, then we had the royal wedding and finally Osama Bin Laden is killed – something seems fishy to me, is Cnn in on it for the ratings or is it some sort of Obama reelection thing? I’m not sure, but he definitely had to cover his bases with everyone bashing him on his birth certificate, but how does the royal wedding fit in. Unless he realized that he could release his birth certificate and then 2 billion people would be watching the royal wedding instead of caring about his little document – I mean why does he have to provide it anyway, I would say that it makes up for the recount hanging chad scandal that got Bush into office when Gore really won in 2000, right?
So I really don’t have any thoughts, Osama’s dead does it really mean anything to me? Nope, nothing! – maybe commenter Sergent J will have some insight for us, since he’s in the industry. Though on the way home from work I started thinking about Team America and their song America F%$^ Yeah and then the next day I got the song stuck in my head while mountain biking.
I did think about the differences between the way Americans celebrated Osama’s death and the way the Arab’s celebrated 9-11, but who are we to judge, we live in nice neighborhoods that aren’t made for shooting Ak 47’s in the air, because we don’t want to damage our manicured lawns, the desert environs of the Arab world are much better suited to rioting and flag burning.
Then for some reason I started thinking about the last time the Jews celebrated with such glee and that was on shabbos afternoon when the news came out that Bill Clinton was impeached, I was in shul at mincha and everyone was quite jubilant.
Some other interesting tidbits about May 1st:
Osama and Hitler’s deaths were both announced on the same day
Osama was killed on Yom Hashoah
In 1751 the first cricket match was played in America (never knew we played cricket did ya?)
The Empire State Building was dedicated
2003 – 2003 invasion of Iraq: In what becomes known as the “Mission Accomplished” speech, on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (off the coast of California), U.S. President George W. Bush declares that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”. (that’s definitely conspiracy theory material right there)
Oh and I’m not so sure about the burial at sea thing, I call BS!!!
Abandoning Eden has a really good post on the subject.