The Greeks had a way of constructing the character of a person on stage in a dramatic presentation: Ethical Habit of Action. You learn to understand a person based not on what they say, but rather on how they behave. Don’t believe what you’re told. Believe only what you see. It is the bundled experience of the form — the habit of action — that defines us… and not the brittle persona many believe is the true and ethical morality of the person.
Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.
Stick with the winners. That’s a powerful lesson as taught to me by none other than my dear friend, Joe Rich. What I am referring to is not the people who are necessarily successful in life, but the people who have positive, successful attitudes. By surrounding yourself with people that have such attitudes and avoiding people who are mired in negativity and a lack of motivation, he told me, you can be pushed to do better and rise above your own expectations. Here are some examples from my own life; they are of course exquisitely disguised as I am not too keen on libel lawsuits. You can judge for yourself which ones are the winners and which are the ones to be avoided and excised from your life.
Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.
One day last week as I was waiting to go to the synagogue where I regularly go to services. I noticed a young woman standing across 96th street holding a cup of, what I assumed to be, coffee. I remember thinking to myself that because it was a Jewish holiday on that day, I was not able to buy myself my own cup of coffee and would have to accept a cup of instant coffee instead. I briefly looked at the cup of coffee cup and then looked back down at the street.
Ron Paul wants to be a republican president. Is he a misunderstood genius? Or is he simply a madman feigning lucidity?
Continue reading → Is Ron Paul a Madman or a Misunderstood Genius?
Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.
Sunday morning, December 30th, 2007 seemed like just about any other morning. It was to be the next to last day of the year. How could I have known that it would have been one of the saddest days for me? I suppose the first thing that should have alerted me that something was wrong was that I noticed that my father had called – rather early, actually. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but the first though I had was that my grandmother had passed away. Then again, I had previously had this thought when either my father or mother had called in unusual circumstances and I was wrong then.
I suppose it was inevitable: Don Imus of “Rutgers Nappy Headed-Hos” fame is back on radio as of Monday and one can only begin to wonder about the why of his return.
Continue reading → Return of the Racist: Don Imus on ABC Radio
Handguns are made to kill people. We know this in our bones because of murders in Far Rockaway and Fulham and Orange and now, once again, in Newark. The bloodshed in New Jersey, spewed Gangland style, killed three kids and injured another on an abandoned schoolyard in a tonier part of Newark — where this sort of thing doesn’t happen — called Ivy Hill.
I thought the whole reason we are slogging through the war in Iraq is to keep the Terrorists “there” and not “here?” That, at least, is the war drum President Bush has been beating and still beats. In a 2003 interview — published on the White House website — Bush makes it clear the Terrorists will remain “over there” as long as we stay there engaging them in Iraq (emphasis added):
Q: Well, what about the suggestion from your critics that while you won the war, the peace is being bungled? THE PRESIDENT: They’re wrong. We’re making great progress in Iraq. We’ve got a pretty steep hill to climb. After all, one, we’re facing a bunch of terrorists who can’t stand freedom. These thugs were in power for awhile, and now they’re not going to be in power anymore, and they don’t like it. And they’re willing to kill innocent people. Their terrorist activities — we’d rather fight them there than here.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day in 
America and while the day is intended to celebrate Saint Patrick, it is really a day for celebrating the Irish and getting drunk.
There are all kinds of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
We have parades. We have pints of green beer selling for a nickel a glass. We wear green or live in fear of getting pinched.
Beyond the laughter, the bawdiness and the ubiquitous curse of The Green Beer — I wonder about a deeper cultural and ethnic issue bothering the whole idea of getting drunk in the name of a Saint in celebration of cultural icons.
If there another national holiday dedicated to one culture — where the overarching idea of the day is to get blasted and bleary-eyed?
Is there a reason people live to get drunk on St. Patty’s Day?
Do we honor the Irish by getting falling-down drunk?
Is there a genetic predisposition in the Irish population for alcoholism and, if there is, what does that say about our need to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by imbibing?
We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:
I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.
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