Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, is a darling of the Left. And he has been a fairly responsible leader, for a darling of the Left. But he is not above some easy racism. Speaking of the recent worldwide financial collapse, he said, “This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by the irrational behavior of people who were white and blue-eyed.”

Um, for the record, some of those people had brown or hazel eyes, or even green ones. (Green-eyed monsters?) Some of them even had dark skin. And if a leader not a darling of the Left had made so racist a statement as Lula’s, he would never be able to show his face in public again.

Don’t you think?

‐President Obama, as book author, has an ability that other writers must envy: He makes the cash register ring. He has earned many millions from his books — $8.6 million. And just five days before taking the oath of office as president, Obama signed another deal: this one for a modest $500,000. (But that does not count royalties.)

Look, I don’t begrudge Obama his millions — I favor an open economy (unlike some other people I could name). But a book deal five days before you become president? That is what some people, in other circumstances, might call “cashing in.” And those other circumstances would be: when a Republican is involved.

You may recall the Newt Gingrich book-deal controversy. Shortly after he became speaker, Gingrich signed a big book deal with Rupert Murdoch. And the world came down on Gingrich’s head. Republicans and Democrats alike. “Cashing in, cashing in!” “Unsavory, unsavory.” “May be legal, but still stinks,” etc., etc. Gingrich had to give up his book deal to save his speakership.

Before he surrendered, he quipped, “Conservative books sell. I can’t help it if liberal books don’t sell.” Well, when they’re from Obama, they sell better than most, I’m afraid.

‐How go things in South Africa? Well, let me answer that, in part, by quoting a single headline: “South Africa Rejects Dalai Lama, Rewards Castro.” And the article under the headline begins,

While rejecting an invitation sent by three Nobel Peace Prize laureates — including Nelson Mandela — to the Dalai Lama, a man who has struggled to bring a measure of freedom to his Tibetan people since Communist China completed its occupation in 1959, this country’s African National Congress (ANC) government has granted its highest honour to an accused mass murderer, Fidel Castro.

More than accused, I’m afraid. To see the complete article, go here.

A country that will ban the Dalai Lama while granting its highest honor to Fidel Castro: That is a country that is suffering from a grave moral sickness. And do you remember when South Africa — the new South Africa — was supposed to show us the way, morally? Seems like a long time ago . . .

‐Do you know the name of Khaled Abu Toameh? Some of us refer to him as “KAT” — and we do so reverentially. He is the Palestinian journalist who writes for the Jerusalem Post. And he is as clear on Palestinian society as anybody. He knows the history, the players, every in and out. Some of us wonder why he can keep writing as honestly as he does: why the more excitable members of Palestinian society don’t silence him. Is it because he comes from a prominent Palestinian family? Is he an untouchable?

Let us hope so.

Anyway, he wrote something fantastically depressing the other day — not about the Palestinians, but about us. About us Americans. For the website Hudson New York, he wrote,

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.
Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.
I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

Etc. For the full article, go here. Here is my opinion — and I imagine many readers will share it: If this country is to prevail in what used to be known as “the War on Terror” — until the Obama administration deep-sixed that as too belligerent — we must understand the world as it is. And American universities, sad to say — or maddening to say — aren’t helping. ‐Every now and then, I think of the status of Arabs in Israel, contrasted with the status of non-Arabs in Arab countries. And years ago, I was arrested by a news story. I read — I am going from memory — “Prime Minister Sharon’s speech in the Knesset on Thursday was interrupted by heckling from Arab legislators.” And I tried to imagine parallel reports: “President Assad’s speech to the Syrian legislature was interrupted by heckling from Jewish legislators.” “President Mubarak’s speech to the Egyptian parliament was interrupted by heckling from Jewish legislators.” “King Abdullah’s speech to the Saudi parliament was interrupted by Jewish members.” Etc., etc. Those men couldn’t even be interrupted by Arab and Muslim legislators! Well, here is an article in the Jerusalem Post: “New Balad party MK Haneen Zuabi, the first woman to be elected to the Knesset as a representative of an Arab party, has welcomed Iran’s growing influence on Palestinian affairs and praised Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon as a means of offsetting Israel’s regional military edge.” (Complete story, go here.)

Lovely, just lovely.

No matter how you slice it, Israel is an extraordinary country — with legislators like that, rooting on the regime pledged to the destruction of Israel. An extraordinary country: for good or ill (and let us root for “good”).

‐The world likes to dump on Madonna, and there is much to dump on. I’ve dumped a bit on Madonna myself. My fellow Michigander has appalled me, same as she has appalled many others, and not all of them hopeless fuddy-duddies (I think).

I remember once, years ago, when she appeared on the David Letterman show. (Been many, many years since I watched it.) She was in her full London mode by then. And Letterman (who’s from Indiana) used some good old-fashioned American locution. And Madonna said, “That sounds so . . . Midwest.” And she said “Midwest” the way she might say “cancerous.”

And I thought, “Well, where do you think you’re from, you homely scrawny jerk? Knightsbridge?”

I also remember something fantastic that Bill Bennett said, during the so-called Bush recession — and that refers to Bush 41, not the more recent one. Madonna’s book entitled Sex was number one on the bestseller list. And Bennett said, “A country that will make a $50 book about sex the number-one bestseller is not a country with economic problems. It is a country with other problems.”

Anyway, enough with Madonna-bashing. The world is now dumping on her for this African-adoption business. And I will not dump on her for that. She is plucking those kids out of some pretty miserable conditions, and the whole world cries, “Theft! Kidnapping! Colonialism! Imperialism! Racism! Ism, ism, ism!” Well, nuts to that.

She is doing a good turn, and I don’t much care what her motivations are: whether they’re egotistical. There’s always a bit of that. And, frankly, I think she’s rather brave to be going ahead with these adoptions in the midst of so much condemnation. I like her moxie. And I imagine her kids will appreciate it, too.

And, by the way, her critics on this? Let them look after an African child or two. Let them ameliorate someone’s life. Then they might have more standing to carp.

‐Before leaving Africa, I’d like to publish this interesting and unusual reader letter:

My husband is one of the last remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe. Thank you for your column of March 6 [in which I mention the breathtaking race-hatred directed against these farmers, by their own government]. In 1999, Zimbabwe was projecting to have 6,000 tonnes of coffee for export. This year there were 400 tonnes, and my husband produced 110 of them. Out of over 600 coffee farmers in 1999, there are now only five left in the country.

Five.

‐Last week, it was announced that the Ann Arbor News, my hometown newspaper, would fold — would cease publishing after 174 years in business. That is the way of the newspaper now: the way of the dodo.

But not quite: because newspapers, some of them, are going online. That opens up a whole new world. And that world may well be a better one. There will be something like the Ann Arbor News online — some approximation. But only that.

I have taken many shots at Ann Arbor, and many shots at its newspaper. Some of us used to call it Pravda West. For years, as I was growing up, it educated me, and miseducated me. But, lo, it was my hometown newspaper. And I may have felt a pang or two when its demise was announced. An old Ann Arborite said to me, “You gotta miss the sports pages, regardless.” And that is true.

I did some radio on this subject with my old friend Lucy Ann Lance, who is Ann Arbor’s number-one radio personality. (She is practically the town’s number-one personality altogether!) Her website is here, by the way.

And, on air, she related an interesting anecdote about being a student at the University of Michigan. For some reason, she had the audacity to write an English paper on abortion — taking a pro-life line. And the professor, or teaching assistant, gave her a C. This grader explained frankly that the problem with the paper was an unacceptable view of abortion.

Lucy Ann’s story gave me two shocks: first (again), that anybody would have the audacity to write against abortion at the University of Michigan; and second, that the teacher gave the paper as high a grade as C.

‐Impromptus via RSS? Go here.

#JAYBOOK#

‐Been a while since we had Fun with Inscriptions — fun with inscriptions requested in the above-advertised book. This week, a man wanted me to write, “Glad to know there’s at least one conservative in the State Department!” I am glad indeed. Another reader appreciated my pressing the distinction between “try to” and “try and.” “Try to be good” means “Attempt to be good.” “Try and be good” means “Try good, and be good too,” or something like that. Anyway, people are always saying “try and” instead of “try to.” Not that I give a rip. (I am not a language scold — I am a language noticer.)

So, in response to this reader, I wrote: “For Polly: who knows that we should try to — not try and — follow the rules!”

And there was a reader who requested, “Next year in Israel!” In an e-mail exchange, I asked him why he wanted that inscription. The usual expression is “Next year in Jerusalem!” He wrote,

Dear Jay,
I’ve read your articles long enough to know that you like a good yarn, so I hope this qualifies. My mother divorced my father when I was five and I grew up in our small, neighborhood grocery store in upstate New York. I was about seven or eight and the Korean War was under way — the guys who were there tell me it was a war [and not a “police action”] and I believe them — when a customer I hadn’t seen before came into the store. He started talking about the war and politics, and my mother, being the most gregarious person you can imagine, engaged him in banter.
Then he started talking about the Jews, and not in a positive tone: how they all sent their kids to college and owned businesses and apartment houses. I had one uncle who was already a doctor, two other uncles and an aunt who were in or on their way to med school, and another uncle who was studying to be an engineer. My mother owned the store, and my grandparents had apartment houses. I was about to open my mouth when my mother gave me one of those looks that said, “One word, and I’ll wring your neck.”
Then my mother backed away from the counter and stopped talking except for one-word responses. I had never seen this before with a customer and mistakenly thought she was scared. I knew a war was going on and had heard from my grandmother about the forced march she endured in Armenia in 1918, where she lost two sons, and I knew about the Holocaust of WWII. On the spot I put this all together and decided my mother was frightened for me because Armenians must be some kind of Jew and this guy didn’t like Jews.
Before long, the anti-Semite left the store. I never said anything to my mother. I was after all the man of the family (although she had other ideas) and I was there to protect her. After a few months, I figured out that Armenians and Jews were not the same, but for a while I was Jewish.
For years now at our Thanksgiving and Christmas parties I’ve made a toast as an inside joke to myself: “Next year in Israel!” My friends who have never heard my story look at me quizzically. This is my small Jewish toast during the holidays; my show of solidarity, if you will.

Nice.