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Email Luke Essays Profiles Archives Search LF.net Luke Ford Profile Dennis Prager Oct 2 I Feel Your Pain I took this quiz to figure out how male or female was my brain and I found out Chaim Amalek was right - I think like a girl. My empathy score was high - 49 - and my systemizing quotient was tiny - 18. Nicholas writes to me on Cathy Seipp's Blog: SQ 18! Only 18!! That can't even be humanly possible. How do you manage to operate your computer? Your house/hovel must be a complete mess. At least you have a big heart and you're probably good with pets and children. You'll make a great hovelhusband when you get married--if you can afford to hire a maid. Fight Breaks Out In My Shul On Yom Kippur Naked, I stood in the shower and felt the approach of Yom Kippur. It was 4:45PM Sunday and I'd spent the afternoon with two producers from the TV show 60 Minutes, driving around the San Fernando Valley. One producer says I'd have achieved my goal of marriage and kids by now if I lived in a better place. They think my hovel scares girls. I slip into my non-leather best (prohibited on the Day of Atonement) and walk to shul in my plastic sandals. It's locked. It's 5:10PM. I'm over an hour early. Every year I get to shul before Yom Kippur way early. I'd rushed around all day to finish my worldly business and then I spend an hour outside of shul reading my book on Esther by Yoram Hazony. During Kol Nidre (when we pray for God to forgive us for not living up to our ideals), a young man in the balcony fights with an old man over a seat. The young man hits the old man with a maxor (High Holiday prayer book). I hear gasps all around me. I turn and see another old man join in, whipping the young man with his tallis and yelling "Leave him alone." This is a ghostly old man, with white hair and a mean face. None of the fighters look pleasant. The president of the shul and the administrator rush up the stairs and separate the warring parties. An old man on crutches is in the middle of the fracas. Several doctors approach him to make sure he's ok. He is. I spend Monday in bed sick. Too much excitement the night before. On Tuesday, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft (my friends are big fans of his and wanted to sit in, no way I say) showed no interest in my spiritual journey and directed our conversation towards more worldly matters. When the crew came over to my hovel in the afternoon (six persons is the most I've ever had in my place), they showed a similar lack of regard for my Torah commentaries and instead incited me towards more provocative behavior with my computer. I begged them to film me with my piece, or meditating in the back of my van, behind the steel netting, but they declined. For prayer warriors like myself, Generals of the soul, it's discouraging how little regard the atheistic media has for the things of Heaven. I say - get higher, get higher! Ethical monotheism rules. I voted for the recall, for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and for both propositions. At least I think I did. I wasn't listed on the voting rolls. I was in the middle of doing a wash at the laundromat and I was confused and feverish when I went to the polls. First question Steve Kroft had for me Tuesday morning - "Do you always dress like that?" I'm wearing my undertaker-style black suit, white dress shirt and my snazziest tie (gift from ex-girlfriend I met at Friday Night Live). I replied to Steve: "Only when I'm talking to ten million people." My videotaped musings on the entertainment industry should appear on TV one Sunday night November. When Steve arrives in Iraq Wednesday, he won't notice much difference in the living conditions of Baghdad residents and those of the Luke Ford residence. Avi writes Luke:
Luke Won't Blog On Yom Kippur The Sandy Koufax of blogging, Luke Ford will not write on the Day of Atonement, which begins Sunday night. In a gesture of sympathy, Shaun Green, a Jewish member of the Los Angeles Dodgers will not play baseball on the same day. David writes: Luke, religious holidays should not take precedence over duty (i..e., your role as blogger extraordinaire). Arnold Schwarzenegger Touched Me Inappropriately After reading in the LA Times the heart-rending accounts of 15 women who say they were touched inappropriately by the Terminator, I've found the courage to tell my story. I was working out at Gold's Gym in Venice in 1977. I was eleven years old. Arnold came up behind me and lifted my shirt so everybody in the gym could see my scrawny muscles. I felt humiliated and ashamed. I just wanted the voters to know this. Arnold Schwarzenegger brings me new meaning to the term "hands-on governor." If you too have been fondled by Arnold, live in fear no longer. Email Luke Heather MacDonald writes:
Rush Limbaugh Was Right Donovan McNabb isn't a great quarterback, and the media do overrate him because he is black. Allen Barra writes on Slate.com:
Dennis Prager says: The liberals are lying about what Rush said and the non-liberals are not. There is nothing Rush said that was racist. Limbaugh's comment was about the news media who do over-rate McNabb because he is black. About 99% of the sports columns fulminate again Limbaugh. These sportswriters think alike, talk alike, write alike. Do you know why the two black guys on with Limbaugh on ESPN didn't react? Because they didn't have a problem with it. They probably thought it was true. Boy, are these two black guys (Michael Irvin, ) getting flack for not being tribal enough. For not thinking the same way because of their skin color. Warning: Blogging May Be Dangerous To Your Sex Life I want to step up to the plate and knock out two babies as required by Jewish Law. I want to be a man yet my Net foolishness gets in the way. This is not the first time my blogging has obstructed my loving. How easily a misplaced phrase, a misspelled word, a lack of punctuation, causes heartbreak between lovers. Who knew that "sex on the beach" meant the cocktail "Sex on the Beach?" I lost out on another opportunity today to replenish the Jewish people when a prospective date read my website and was not impressed. She'd been wounded by a blogger before me. It discourages me that our online literary community contains the cruel who spoil it for the rest of us. I think my writing flows with the milk of human kindness. I have so much love to give, yet the only receptacle I can find for my emotions is this tawdry website. My art is my sublimated desire. Maybe I'm not opening up enough, and diving deep into my juicy emotions and shooting them all over the page with great aplomb? Oh, what could've been. A date at Starbucks. Arrive ten minutes late so she buys her own capuccino. Saddened, I turn to drink - a veinte hot cocoa at Starbucks. Sitting in the corner, I drown my sorrows in sugar. Intoxicated by the chocolate, I stagger to shul for the afternoon and evening prayers, seeking spiritual respite from the despair that afflicts my soul. I walk in to the House of Study and see there's no mehitza (separation). I'm overwhelmed with moral confusion. Let not humans put together what God has put asunder. My anxiety deepens, when, heavens, a woman walks in. She's about 60 years old, and wears pants and a baseball cat. She sees the situation at once and is as flummoxed as the rest of us. Deciding for a dramatic gesture, she sits down in the men's section, directly behind me! Sheesh, what's next? Mixed dancing? The rabbi walks in. He's no accomodating liberal. He directs us into the main sanctuary where there's a firm mehitza and men are men and women are women and there's no mingling during prayer. As my moral bearings return to their groove, I find my seat and put down my Museum of Tolerance tote bag. Midway through the Afternoon prayers, I share my pain with my friend. He suggests that Lukeford.net is not putting my best foot forward. Best to save it for the second date. It's too ambiguous. Maybe I should just show off some other websites I've worked on? The rabbi talks about lighting candles before the Sabbath. Even if the woman demands to light candles after the forbidden time, the man must not allow it to happen, even though peace in the house is a premium Jewish value, especially on holy occasions. Unfortunately, the rabbi did not throw in the mussar dictum about "even if she washes the floor with her tears." LA Times’ Cohn called Premiere article author for help Nikki Finke writes on the LA Weekly website:
Centerfold Babylon On VH1 Sunday night, 9PM, October 12 I'm in the October issue of Britain's Arena magazine (a brief inaccurate paragraph, I sold lukeford.com over two years ago and have nothing to do with it) and I appear on the following show.
Is Luke Ford a Jewish Sissy? Chaim Amalek writes: Luke, are you taking estrogen pills? Have you purchased a cat? I cannot help but wonder if there isn't a biological basis to your writing of late. North Korea says it is on the verge of mass producing atomic weapons, Islam continues to build a 5th column here in the West, and all you can bring yourself to write about is lashon hora - idle gossip - concerning this or that female blogger. Also, no mentally healthy human being is concerned with what you had for lunch the other day, any more than he cares to read about the inevitable bowel movement that followed. If you want to be a big(ger) man, stop writing about such small things and take up the task of looking at the big world out there. History is not at an end, even though the Hollywood Juden want it to be. The world is changing; why not write about it? RABBI AMALEK AT THE MOVIES I saw yet another movie the other day - "Matchstick Men" - set in a parallel universe in which the White Man is a lot more demographically secure in his domination of the world than the facts suggest. Although this movie, like most others, is set and filmed in LA, a city that now has many more Mexicans than Anglos, I don't think I saw even one Mexican actor in the whole 132 minutes of the film, not even as an extra. The world is changing, but Hollywood refuses to acknowledge it. William Morris Drops John Connolly's Arnold Book Nikki Finke writes for the LA Weekly: As the L.A. Weekly first reported, New York–based freelance journalist John Connolly was planning to shop his book proposal about Ah-nuld right after the October 7 election. Connolly, author of that infamous Premiere magazine profile of Schwarzenegger that alleged moral turpitude and sexual harassment, said that William Morris’ Mel Berger was his agent for the project. On Tuesday evening, Connolly said he’d just received a panicky call from Berger who seemed alarmed that the project was suddenly receiving premature publicity. That day, not only had Connolly told Berger he’d talked about the book to the Weekly, but a blogger had written that the William Morris Agency (WMA) was representing it. However, Connolly maintains that when he went to bed on Tuesday night, Berger was still the book’s agent. What a difference 12 hours can make. On Wednesday morning, the Weekly received a call from Chris Petrikin, spokesman for WMA, saying Berger was not representing Connolly’s Arnold book. Quoting Berger, Petrikin said the agent who had represented Connolly years ago passed on the current project between 4 and 6 p.m. EST on Tuesday and had delivered the bad news to Connolly during the same time frame. Nikki Finke writes further here LAT's investigation of Arnold turns up six women who say he groped and humiliated them Dennis Prager reacted with retching to the Times investigation: In the arena in which Arnold moved, this behavior is the norm. Four of the women did not give their names. They were afraid of coming forward because there might be retribution in Hollywood. Does anyone believe that if you come out in Hollywood against a Republican, there will be retribution against you? Who's going to be hard on you? Barbra Streisand? Robert Alter? If you say Republicans have talk radio, that's fair. We admit it. The Democrats have the national newspapers like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and TV news. It's so transparent that the Times does not want Schwarzenegger elected. Now they give it a three-column headline. That women come forward a few days before the election, makes it all suspicious. Did the LA Times put on the front page that Cruz Bustamente said "nigger" in a public speech? And I've said that disqualifies him. And I think that is worse [than what Arnold purportedly did]. The LA Times looks like a Democratic party rag sheet. You're stupid. It's so predictable. You look like another wing of the Democratic party. Three columns on a breast was touched in 1975. Look at the headline: "Women Say Schwarzenegger Groped, Humiliated Them" It's the worst possible headline they could think of. One woman said Arnold humiliated her. There's infinitely more forgiveness in the news media for what liberals do than what conservatives do. I hope more than ever that Arnold wins big. If he wins, the Times loses. The public says, take your dirt stories and shove them up your anal cavities. It reminds me of what the news media and the Democracts did to Bruce Herschonsen in 1992 - that he attended strip shows and bought skin magazines. Six women say they were touched. I don't defend that conduct. I've never done it ever. But in that context, in that world, it's normal. The LA Times looks much worse than does Arnold. A vote for Schwarzenegger is a vote against the politics of filth. The attempts to destroy Rush Limbaugh and Arnold Schwarzenegger are fascinating and nauseating to watch. I don't know which is most contemptible. What Rush Limbaugh said may have been stupid, but the press crucified him out of proportion. When Jesse Jackson said "hymie-town," people like me said it was no big deal. "I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL,'' Limbaugh said. "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well ... McNabb got a lot of the credit for the performance of the team that he really didn't deserve.'' The press do want to see a black quarterback succeed. The press talks constantly about the lack of black coaches in the NFL. It's a constant desire in the press to see blacks succeed at positions where they have not succeeded historically. I have wanted black quarterbacks to succeed. Rush Limbaugh's attack was on the press, not on blacks. I read the comment five times. I thought about it all night. He doesn't believe that black achievement in sports is over-rated. Does he think Barry Bonds is over-rated? Democrats and liberals often said that the only reason for Clarence Thomas's (conservative US Supreme Court justice) success was because he was black. Dennis wonders why the press does not report on candidates not honoring their parents or taking God's name in vein? Well, the press certainly crucified Dr. Laura Schlesinger over her lack of relationship with her mother. Buff writes:
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