Fergie’s Fall

The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson (a.k.a “Fergie”) was just caught in a mortifying tabloid trap. Fergie met with a reporter posing as a businessman who said he was willing to pay handsomely for precious access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew (who happens to be the fourth in line for the throne).

Alas, evidence captured on hidden video reveals that the Duchess was more than willing to cooperate — if she was paid $40,000 up front, in cash, and £500,000 more later.

To us “commoners,” the situation is baffling. Hasn’t the high profile Duchess made millions of dollars as a Weight Watchers spokesperson and popular children’s author, to name just one of her business ventures?

Stranger still, we’ve learned that, while Prince Andrew is a member of one of the world’s richest families, Fergie’s divorce settlement reportedly nets her only $21,000 a year.

The Duchess’s public life hasn’t been entirely free of public stumbles. The British media is particularly keen to mock her unpaid debts, her latest charity fads, and her every attempt to forge yet another “career.”

Less attention is paid to the efforts made by the Duke and Duchess to create a somewhat “normal” upbringing (in aristocratic terms, at least) for their two children. After a fire destroyed Fergies’s manor home in 2008, she and the children moved into the Royal Lodge with her ex-prince. (Andrew has reportedly assured Fergie that he has no intention of kicking her out, post-scandal.)

The Duchess may still have a roof over her head, but her attempt to make a quick buck may have cost her even more than she’d hoped to “earn.” She’d landed recently landed a £300,000 deal for three television documentaries, but now “a TV source” told the media that, “She’s an embarrassment and has been axed. It’s not clear whether she’ll be able to work again.” No doubt the fallout from Fergie’s lapse in judgment will continue to grow.

The Duchess has thrown away more than most people ever get, and now she has behaved foolishly once again. However, some blame must also lie with the devious undercover tabloid reporter who conducted a sting operation on a woman with notoriously poor judgment who is thought to be drowning in debt.

The Torah states (Leviticus 19:14): “You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God — I am your Lord.”

Now, the word “blind” can be seen a metaphor, representing someone who is ignorant, foolish or, shall we say, “morally blind.” Thus we are admonished not to take advantage of such people, no matter how tempting it may be. We sometimes assure ourselves that we are merely “teaching the other person a lesson” when we do so, but isn’t that just a rationalization we use because we want to look superior?

On this verse in Leviticus, Nemaha Leibowitz the renowned Bible teacher once noted that:

“The Torah teaches us that even by sitting at home doing nothing, by complete passivity and divorcement from society, one cannot shake off responsibility for what is transpiring in the world at large… By not protesting… danger spots, you have become responsible for any harm arising therefrom, and have violated the prohibition: ‘Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind…’”

So we cannot shrug off mean-spirited attacks on anyone, no matter their position in society. Placing temptation in the path of a weak person is wrong, no matter the excuse or the target. Sadly, our tabloid culture has played a part in breaking our moral compass.

In the wake of the scandal, Fergie stoically appeared at BookExpo in New York, to promote her new series.

Her forthcoming “Helping Hand Books” are intended to “help children understand personal and social issues that affect them growing up, including starting school, coping with bullying and learning about strangers.”

Clearly, Fergie herself needs to learn a few lessons about avoiding “strangers.” My advice to her is to take some time for introspection and rejuvenation. Now that would be a story worth reading about.

Simcha Weinstein is an internationally known, best-selling author. His first book Up, Up and Oy Vey!, received the Benjamin Franklin Award for the best book of 2007. He has appeared on CNN Showbiz Tonight and NPR, and has been profiled in leading publications, including The New York Times, The Miami Herald and The London Guardian. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), and other publications. He chairs the Religious Affairs Committee at the renowned New York art school, Pratt Institute. His latest book Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st century (Barricade Books: 2008) is out now.

In case you have spent your Passover vacation on another planet, you have not heard that the wedding of Prince William of Wales and Catherine (Kate) Middleton is scheduled to take place at Westminster Abbey on Friday.

As an Englishman in New York, I’m obviously interested in the nuptials of Prince William, who is second in the line of succession to Queen Elizabeth II. Like everybody, I remember where I was when his mother was tragically killed (Jerusalem), and I’ve grown up with him. Yet, I do not intend watching the royal wedding, and that has nothing to do with the fact that my invitation must have gotten lost somewhere over the pond.

While Prince William and Kate have personally approved a list of memorabilia, including official mugs, plates, biscuit tins and porcelain pill pots, tea-towels and, of course, the official china, I’m not buying into it, literally.

The wedding hysteria and celebrity publicity hoopla surrounding the wedding is at a boiling point, and as the world agonizes over the dress, cake and honeymoon, I will be serving my own Queen, as we prepare Shabbat Dinner for 50 guests in our Jewish community center.

I vaguely remember the royal wedding of Charles and Diana and not so vaguely remember how Camelot fell in the intervening years. With respect to the House of Windsor, they do have a disastrous record when it comes to nuptials.

Let’s face it—what does one expect in a world of texts and tweets, celebrity fascination has been magnified more than ever? I would dare to ponder, ‘what would the world think if the fashion police were to analyze my every clothing choice?’

Judaism places special respect on government and royalty. The 14th century sage, Rabbi Dovid Abudraham, first included a special prayer, writing that it is the “custom to bless the King, and to pray to G-d that He may give him victory.” Being that when there is peace in the palace, there is peace in the kingdom.

Interestingly, in a few weeks, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. The Talmud describes Shavuot, the day marking the giving of the Torah, as resembling a wedding between the Almighty and the Jewish people. The Almighty as the groom and the Jewish people as the bride; Mount Sinai represents the wedding canopy and the Torah the ring on His bride’s finger. Each year on Shavuot we renew our nuptial vows to our Beloved Creator as the word “Shavuot” has the same root as the Hebrew word “shevuah”—an oath.

In a Jewish wedding, after the ceremony, the bride and groom adjourn to a private room called the “yichud” (private) room. The few minutes the couple share alone allude to their new intimate relationship and emphasizes that their absolute privacy be respected.

This is something our dear young royals so badly need. In the words of the prayer, “May the supreme King of kings, in His mercy, sustain them and deliver them from all distress and misfortune.”

Mazel tov, Prince William and Kate! I’m going to give you the one gift you need most—the gift of freedom.

Simcha Weinstein is an internationally known best-selling author. His first book, Up, Up and Oy Vey! received the Benjamin Franklin Award for the best book of 2007. He has appeared on CNN “Showbiz Tonight,” and NPR, and has been profiled in leading publications including The New York Times, The Miami Herald and the London Guardian. He is a regular contributor to the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). He chairs the Religious Affairs Committee at the renowned New York art school, Pratt Institute. His latest book Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st century (Barricade Books: 2008) is on sale now.

Barack Obama deadpanned: “Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the Planet Earth.”

John McCain’s monologue even had Hilary Clinton throwing back her head with laughter: “When Larry King asked President Clinton a couple weeks ago what was the delay and why wasn’t he out there on the trail for Barack, Bill said his hands were tied until the end of the Jewish high holidays.

“I just know Bill would like to be out there now,” McCain continued. “Unfortunately, he is constrained by his respect for voters who might be observing the Zoroastrian new year.”

Americans of all political stripes laughed along, then asked ruefully, “Why can’t the whole Presidential campaign be like that?”

Yet comedy does play a major role in every national campaign. It’s just that, on the other 364 days of the year, professional comedians are the ones cracking the jokes. And in this particular year, comedy may play a deciding role as never before.

My latest book, Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in 21st Century, chronicles how political comedy has replaced traditional news media as many voters’ main source of information about issues and candidates.

As the Rabbi at New York’s prestigious art school, the Pratt Institute, I can assure you that, for better or worse, countless young people look to The Daily Show as their main (and sometimes only) source of news.

Given the program’s fourteen seasons of popularity, it’s no surprise that the line between entertainment and journalism is increasingly blurred in the average American’s mind. In a 2007 Pew Center report, people under 30 chose Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly as their favorite journalists. The problem is, neither one of them are journalists, they’re commentators — one comedic, and the other comically angry. Young people are turning off the Dan Rathers, Wolf Blitzers and Anderson Coopers in favor of jokes and righteous indignation masked as news.

And in the ratings race, real news sources are losing. Radio host Rush Limbaugh, whose show features irreverent song parodies and comic impersonations, has over 20 million daily listeners. That’s a larger audience than the Big Three network evening news broadcasts combined.

Now that entertainment has become “fact-tetiousness”, the traditional news media has warped into info-tainment. Cable news giant CNN just handed a young stand-up comedian his very own Saturday night show: D.L. Hughley Breaks the News will “include interviews with newsmakers and reporters,” as well as the host’s outspoken comic stylings.

It’s all a vicious circle. Real news gets shallower, The Daily Show mocks that shallowness and earns great ratings, so real news desperately responds with… more slick, superficial “reportage.”

But the fact remains that watching The Daily Show informs thousands of viewers who might otherwise remain ignorant of the day’s complex, pressing (not to mention depressing) issues. Indeed, another 2007 poll found that regular viewers of The Daily Show scored higher in tests of political knowledge than CNN watchers. Apparently, the program’s humor is the sugar that helps the current affairs medicine go down.

Along with the satirical newspaper The Onion, The Daily Show blurs the line between fact and fiction, and offers analysis through satire. Favorite targets include the conventions of modern journalism, such as the faux seriousness of wall-to-wall reports about the death of some minor celebrity, or the pointless coverage of each hurricane season, when hyperventilating reporters spew as much hot air as a tropical storm. Young people just as easily grab a free paper like The Onion instead of the New York Times to read during their commute. Given the Times’ recent credibility problems, maybe readers figure there isn’t much difference.

In other words, we now have a greater breadth of news media, but far less depth. Young people have little experience with the in-depth investigative reporting their parents once demanded from major networks and newspapers. To them, “Watergate” might as well be the Teapot Dome scandal. The investigative reporting glamorized in All The President’s Men is increasingly rare. Shrinking attention spans combined with a proliferation of choice would make such reporting hard for younger viewers to digest anyway.

The wall between news and entertainment began to erode after President Ronald Reagan deregulated the media in the early 1980′s, and radio stations no longer had to maintain expensive news departments to retain their broadcasting licenses. Then came the demise of the unworkable “Fairness Doctrine;” suddenly the dying AM band was reborn as the home of unabashedly biased conservative talk radio, whose hosts regaled listeners with outrageous takes on current events. Listeners became accustomed to being able to call in and talk back. Suddenly the nightly “one way lecture” from the evening newscaster seemed old fashioned, elitist and undemocratic.

Meanwhile, newspapers and TV networks began shutting down expensive and often danger-rife foreign bureaus. When it comes to securing precious advertising dollars, amusement generally beats information, so news started chasing entertainment to satisfy bottom-line shareholders. The first Gulf War began the trend, when CNN turned its coverage into a prime time drama-turned-video game. The OJ Simpson slow-speed chase of 1994 may have been the breaking point; news outlets found that OJ was as good as the still-nascent reality television – the “story” wrote itself, no expensive talent required. If millions of viewers will happily watch a white van doing the speed limit for hours on end, producers figured, they’d sit through pretty much anything.

While all this was going on, today’s college freshman was an impressionable child. No wonder only old timers blinked when Katie Couric was awarded the coveted evening anchor chair at CBS News. Only in our mixed up century could the most prestigious news bureau in television history end up being fronted by a woman who just months earlier had been giggling during cooking segments on a morning show.

Expect more of such overlap as “the YouTube generation” becomes the main demographic.

We’ve come a long way from the 1960s, when stand up comic Mort Sahl carried a lowly newspaper out on stage as a prop. Such low-tech conceits now seem quaint. Yet Jon Stewart belongs to that long tradition of Jewish political satirists that includes Sahl and Lenny Bruce. (The Daily Show host was born Jonathan Stewart Leibowitz but changed his name because – get this nod to the whole history of American Jewish comedy — “it sounded too Hollywood.”)

Let’s face it: there is something very Jewish about grappling with the discrepancies of power, which is exactly what satire is all about. Jews have a history of wrestling with higher authorities. Ever since Jacob wrestled with the angel, battling with earthly and heavenly power has been at the core of Jewish identity. The Talmud itself is more an anthology of arguments than a handbook of answers, in which sages dissect every aspect of Jewish law, belief, philosophy and tradition.

Many debates in the Talmud take strange, wonderful segues with a humor all their own – some of which is intentional. For example, we read that Rabba, the eminent sage of his generation, began his classes with humorous observations. His purpose was not just to entertain, but to open his students’ minds and make them into eager receptacles for wisdom.

OK, it’s not that Jon Stewart or his writers study Talmud between shows. But this tradition of intellectual inquiry has clearly filtered down to Jewish comedians, as has the habit of greeting adversity with bitter humor. Back in the “old country,” Jewish humor (surreptitiously) critiqued the shortcomings and absurdities of Russian rulers, first the czar and then the Soviet government. In Fiddler On The Roof, the rabbi jokingly prays, “May God bless and keep the czar… far away from us.” As perennial “outsiders.” Jews possessed a unique perspective that made them natural born comedians.

As the 2008 election approached, media watchers, politicos and cultural theorists wondered if The Daily Show’s influence would remain as great as it supposedly was in 2004 – when, for all the program’s widely hyped popularity with a younger demographic, a Republican incumbent was re-elected nevertheless, by a much larger and older voting block. Then again, study after study shows that most young people would rather watch a show about electoral politics (or do just about anything else) than actually vote.

Sure enough, as the 2008 Presidential race entered its final month, The Daily Show’s ratings shot up. Its October 1 episode drew 2.4 million viewers, making it the most watched night in the history of the show, which has averaged 1.8 million viewers per episode all this year. That’s up almost 30% over 2007.

(For some perspective, the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden drew an astonishing 70 million viewers. It seems grown ups prefer the real news to the fake stuff.)

Inevitably, The Daily Show spawned a popular spin-off, hosted by the show’s fake conservative commentator Stephen Colbert, a bombastic, self-assured pundit in the Bill O’Reilly mode. Colbert and his on-screen persona are nominally Catholic, so Jewish jokes (written by a staff of mostly Jewish writers, naturally) often play up the character’s earnest ignorance. During Yom Kippur, Colbert unveiled his special “Atonement Hotline,” a white rotary phone with a Star of David on it, through which he granted forgiveness to callers – an awfully “Catholic” interpretation of the High Holiday’s true meaning.

Both programs assume that viewers will “get” all the Yiddishisms and Jewish jokes, which give each show a distinctive “Borscht Belt Meets Ivy League” sensibility that accounts in large part for their originality.

Colbert’s character launched a short lived make-believe campaign for President early in the 2008 election cycle, but the fake candidate was soon outdone by reality. This year, a very real liberal commentator is staging an honest-to-goodness campaign for a Minnesota senate seat, and he’s made some inroads (and plenty of enemies). Former Saturday Night Live writer turned Democratic candidate Al Franken has been dogged by controversy regarding his personal finances and his explosive temper. Some of his most tasteless old SNL skits are being used by opponents to call his character into question. At a particular low point that sounds like a sketch he might have written, only one voter showed up for Franken’s roundtable on veterans’ issues. (To his credit, Franken gamely sat down for a one-on-one chat with the fellow.) Polls show the unlikely candidate now running neck and neck with the Republican incumbent.

Speaking of Saturday Night Live, that show, now in its 34th season, is enjoying its best ratings in years thanks to Tina Fey’s eerily accurate impersonations of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Fey simply parlayed a natural resemblance to Palin and an easy to imitate Fargo-type accent into a role that’s made the young actress (and the woman she’s mocking) a household name. (A Montreal newspaper even ran a serious story about Palin accompanied by a photo of Fey in full makeup, without realizing its mistake.) The result of all the buzz? Saturday Night Live’s ratings are up almost 50% over this time last year.

It will be difficult for the show’s writers and producers to top Sarah Palin’s appearance as herself on Saturday Night Live’s October 18 episode. Few incidents demonstrate the non-existent line between news and entertainment as that very “meta,” post-modern ninety minutes. At one point, host Alec Baldwin called Palin “that horrible woman” without realizing the candidate, rather than Tina Fey, was the woman standing beside him. Palin responded that her “favorite Baldwin brother” was Alec’s conservative Christian sibling, Stephen. Even the rabidly partisan Baldwin (Alec, that is) praised Palin after the show as a gracious good sport (“unlike many of the so-called professional actors we get on here sometimes.”)

Saturday Night Live discovered the power of the internet this year, making all those popular Tina Fey/Sarah Palin routines available on YouTube, where they quickly went viral – and, paradoxically, boosted the show’s ratings the following week.

The great thing about the web is that you don’t have to be a billion dollar corporation like SNL’s NBC to make your own popular videos. Making full use of all the advantages the web has to offer, Barack Obama activists launched a funny online support site for Jewish Obama supporters – complete with logo covered merchandise — called The Great Schlep. According to the website:

“The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. Don’t have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schlepper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama.”

In no time, a Facebook “Great Schlep” group chalked up more than 23,000 members.

Not everyone was amused. John McCain supporter and veteran stand-up comic Jackie Mason countered with an angry video of his own in response to the “Schlep” campaign.

Mason, of all people, didn’t seem to “get” that “The Great Schlep” is a mockery of Jewish voting habits and familial relations, not just an amateur ad for the Democratic candidate. Mason also didn’t seem to see the irony of a man his age scolding youngsters for telling their grandparents how to vote.

So in future, Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates will be expected to take their turn on SNL, just as they are now obliged to show up on staid Sunday political talk shows like the Meet The Press. And prepare yourself for more “duelling videos,” then mainstream news reports on those videos — and other post-modern media permutations we can’t imagine.

All these developments seem like satire come to life, but that’s 21st century comedy – and politics – for you.