I read Dan Savage’s column in The Stranger this week. The premise is thinking up different meanings for “Rick” and “Santorum”– ultimately giving way to “to remove the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex with the tongue.” Lovely, no?

The column was hilarious, mixing biting quips with genuinely intelligent responses to political news and events. It brought to light some inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the words of candidates and their constituencies, while still making the point accessible to any audience.

Okay, so here’s the thing. I love that snarky leftist journalists are making light of these ridiculous right-wing politicians. I think it needs to be done. But at some point, someone needs to get real with this situation. The fact of the matter is that if any of these candidates are elected, we’re fucked. We have much bigger problems on our hands than “ha-ha, what else is funny about Newt’s name?!”

Personally, I don’t feel confident enough to write such a scathing exposé. But someone needs to get serious with this– and I’m not talking about the already dry newspaper writers (*ahem*). Please?

So I found this cover of it by The Big Pink, and I’m pretty impressed.

(It’s the first song on this video.)

I forgot to ask him why it’s not INCREDIBLE.

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I’m going to start with some background:

I just got back from a week long trip to Israel put on by a group called Project Interchange, which is a division of the American Jewish Committee. The trip was offered to two groups: students of campus media studies, and California student leaders (who may be in student government or coordinators of student groups). I went as part of the Campus Media group.

This was an all-expenses paid trip funded by AJC, which is in turn funded by private donors and organizations. For an editor of a news publication, taking the trip rose some questions about ethics and legality. I spoke to my former newspaper advisor, my current newspaper advisor, the Director of Student Activities at Evergreen, the Student Press Law Center, my friends and fellow editors, and of course, the entirety of the Cooper Point Journal staff. I vowed not to go on the trip if the entire group did not reach consensus on the decision. If one person strongly believed that it was unethical to take the free trip, I would not attend.

All members approved, however, and we all agreed that it would be an excellent learning opportunity, even if it was one-sided and propagandizing. It may even help me understand Evergreen’s divestment and BDS (Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions) movements. Other writers volunteered to cover stories for our paper that involved Israel or BDS, just in case my bias got in the way of accurate reporting in the future.

I was heartened by that response and accepted the invitation. Incidentally, the Student Press Law Center said that it was unethical to take a free trip to cover a specific story, but it was not unethical if the trip was for the purpose of learning, rather than reporting.

And with that, I embarked on this journey barely one month later. Coming soon: detailed accounts and analysis of experiences during the trip.

Also, I know this is totally incomplete and inadequate– I will post more retrospectively when I get home!

People are starting to get more comfortable with one another, which means that more dialogue is happening. Like, right now, up and down the hallway at the hotel. It’s amazing that people are talking about everything we’ve seen and that we seem to have similar impressions of the speakers and experiences. And yet, we’re all different people, so we still all have different interpretations and, of course, different ways of taking everything and applying it to life or our roles on campus.

That sounds really cheesy.
Anyway, photos.

Next we talked to a correspondent to the New York Times who is covering Israel and the Middle East. It was fascinating and a little less dramatic than I expected — in a good way.

Second was the interfaith relations talk about which I blogged just before this one.

We then had another talk, this time about Israel’s peace process. I learned a ton about the current relations between Israel and Iran and the Arab Spring… Though there are still so many gaps in history and my knowledge of it.

After that. The day got pretty sobering. We were taken to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, where we had lunch and went on a guided tour. The whole time we were eating, all I could think about was a part of the movie “The History Boys,” where they’re talking about Jews visiting Holocaust memorials. A teacher in the movie wonders, “what do they do when they go there? Do they have meals? Do they take pictures of one another? Are they smiling?”

They say there are 13 million Jews in the world today. Nearly half of that number died in the Holocaust. I did learn that though Germans and others did all they could to erase every trace of those Jews, historians and researchers have been able to learn the names of 5.2 million Jews of the 6 million who were killed. They are all represented in this museum’s Hall of Names.

The museum was really tough. I’m not sure about other people on the trip, but I found some parts nearly impossible to get through. And in some ways I couldn’t believe that Jews were walking through this with us. I wanted to tell them to leave and I wanted to shield this from them. Sometimes I am so ashamed of people.

It is no wonder, then, that every speaker so far has mentioned the word “victimization” on association with Israel and Israelis. A few have said that the victimization is outdated, that Israel is a strong country now that knows it is a strong country, and needs to move on from its fear. But all have said that this feeling of victimization has, at several times in Israel’s history, been justified.

We had another speaker at the museum who really stood out to me. With tears in his eyes, he left us with the words, “journalists and academics need to learn how to cry.” It’s probably true. I resisted crying in the Holocaust museum, even though I wanted to several times, but maybe I’d feel better if I had.

Then we had another speaker who works under Israel’s current president, Shimon Peres. I felt it was the most contrived talk we had had. Each speaker before had charisma and a genuine sense of spirit that s/he conveyed during the talk, by this man answered our questions like a man who had been prepped for a press conference (which he probably had). Still, I did learn a lot about the technicalities of the Israeli government, which is fascinating. The speaker reminded us that for all its problems, Israel is only 63 years old, and “think of where America was at 63.” He’s got a point.

Lastly, we had food (mon dieu, so much food) and a woman talked to us about emigrating to Israel from Ethiopia when she knew nothing about the country or life outside of her village. Very cool.

Now it is 9:30pm and I’m sitting in the hotel room contemplating a drink. My traveling companions are all fantastic and the time so far has been spectacular!

I’ll leave you with a couple pictures: tonight’s sunset, and tonight’s dinner.