TOCS – Wednesday 2pm PST – Norman Podhoretz On Why Jews Are Liberals (Plus: New Features!)

Norman Podhoretz On One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show

Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for the fourth installment of One Jerusalem Radio’s Omri Ceren Show. I wrapped up the interview with Norman Podhoretz this morning and will play you some highlights on the air, split about 66/33 between Podhoretz’s new book Why Are Jews Liberals? and his previous work World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. There just wasn’t enough depressing material packed into the discussion of how American Jews are unshakably, myopically, religiously committed to an anti-Israel Democratic Party and an antisemitic liberal community, so we meandered between the two books. Nothing like the prospect of an apocalyptic nuclear war triggered by a downward deterrence spiral to darken the mood.

As always, to hear TOCS live you have to click over to the Blog Talk Radio show page while the programs is on between 2pm and 2:45pm. Once there you’ll be able to stream the show, call in to get on the air, and – starting tomorrow – participate with other listeners in the chat room (more on that below). After the show ends you can download it as a podcast, plus we’ll post the full 30 minute interview – the highlights plus what got cut for time – on the One Jerualem audio page.

Above and beyond the interview, two new features are debuting tomorrow on their way to becoming regular TOCS features:

(1) Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel for weekly discussions on two or three geopolitical issues of the day. In between being the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs and a foreign policy anaalyst at The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dan gets asked with not infrequent consistency to unpack Israeli thinking on CNN, BBC, ABC, FOX, al Hurra, and Arabic al Jazeera. I’d say he’s forgotten more about Israeli sentiment and strategy than most people know, but I haven’t seen any evidence he forgets stuff. Tomorrow’s topics: Turkey’s swing away from the West and what Israeli leaders are saying about the P5+1 deal behind closed doors.

(2) I’m going to open up the chatroom on the show page, allowing you guys to complain about the segments in realtime. Anyone who’s tuned in – which is to say, anyone who’s streaming live from show page – will be able to log in and participate. I obviously won’t be able to monitor the discussion so I’m going to have to trust the listeners to be on their best behavior. When that doesn’t work I’ll have to think of something else, like a script that randomly bans one third of the room whenever someone uses the words “Hope” or “Change.” I’ve got a good feeling about this.

References:
* Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz [Amazon]
* World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Vintage) [Amazon]
* Obama Complains: It’s A Media-Fueled “Misperception” That I’m Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship [MR]
* Collective Nutroots Wisdom: Lieberman Blocking Public Option So Israel Can Attack Iran Or Something [MR]
* Norman Podhoretz – Why Jews Are Liberals [TOCS]
* One Jerualem Audio [Official Site]