2. Longtime viewers of New York public access television will know about Victor Vancier's Jewish Task Force (formerly the Jewish Task Force on Media Bias). Mr. Vancier (who goes by the Hebrew name Chaim Ben Pesach) has spent most of the 1990s broadcasting a monotonous but hypnotic blend of extreme Kahane Chai invective, eugenicist propaganda and reports on what he views as his own embattled civil rights. Vancier's show has been shut down at least once, on the argument that involvement in an extremist organization violates his parole agreement (he was jailed in the eighties for involvement in bombing campaigns against Soviet property in New York), and he has been denied entry to Israel (where the Kahane Chai party is outlawed). We have no opinion on the legitimacy of his legal claims, but the JTF has migrated, inevitably, to the web, where you can find his weekly screeds in text form (the "no frills" site contains no links, email or archives, but you can contact Mr. Vancier at mishmaat@AOL.COM or at 212 802 5240).

Vancier's rhetorical devices have not aged, or in fact changed at all, since last I saw his show in 1995: There's the cascade of adjectives ("white-hating, Jew-hating, police-hating human excrement like Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields,"); the parade of nicknames ("Senator Schmuck Schumer" supports "First Dyke" Hillary Clinton as that "Arafatan whore" runs for the Senate, where she will push for a "PLO terrorist state"); and a wealth undisguised racist paranoia ("Black police officers are really criminals in uniform who will surely destroy New York City."). Anybody who differs, intentionally or not, from the JTF's razor-thin idealogy is immediately declared a Nazi: The New York Times becomes the "New York Nazi Times," CNN is "CNN Nazi News," New York State Comptroller Carl McCall is a "Farrakhan-supporting black Nazi;" even poor Amadou Diallo, whose political beliefs we can safely say are not known, becomes "black Muslim Nazi Amadou Diallo." At the same time, "the noble people of Serbia," and others involved for any reason in combating Arabs, Muslims or black people, get unqualified praise. Strangely, Chaim Ben Pesach's most voluptuous racist descriptions are reserved for Jews: Revlon CEO Ronald Perelman is an "ugly, bald, self-hating kike cockroach;" the Park East Synagogue at East 67th Street is a "temple of Baalist idolatry." In text form, this language may lose some of the effect it has when given Vancier's speedy delivery.

Even if you don't appreciate extremism for its own sake, the JTF site is worth looking at, not least for its demonstration of the circular nature of extreme ideaology. Chaim Ben Pesach's proposal to depopulate and annex all of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River is what everybody in Lebanon assumes is Israel's real aim anyway; his calls for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin - which he made every time I watched him in the early nineties - seemed outlandish until Rabin was in fact assassinated. And more people follow this stuff than you might think. Vancier claims to have 300,000 viewers for his show, and the JTF seems to be completely contributor-funded (not that it costs much to produce). The show was prominent enough in the early part of the decade to warrant coverage in The New Yorker and the Village Voice, and his unusual ideas continue to play to a wide audience.

3. Rivaling Katz in the ingratitude department is one "Theo Develegas" of a web design company called, for the sake of this discussion, "Abject Failure Web Design Inc." The image of a melted clock used at the head of yesterday's issue was made from a picture of a clock found on the Abject Failure web site. Even though I did all the cool melting effects myself, and thus can claim the new creation as my own, I gave their company (which according to its "projects" page does not have a single paying customer) a link in the hope of boosting their potential sales. Did they appreciate all the point-of-purchase redirection I gave them? Far from it. This message of non-appreciation came in from Theo today:

Dear Sir,

It came to my notice that on the current front page of your website, Simpleton.com, you are using a graphic image derived from the entry page of our website, TimeChange.com, depicting a composition that includes a clock.

While I appreciate the content of your website, I kindly ask you to remove the graphic of the clock from the article.

Sincerely,
Theo Develegas
Abject Failure Web Design Inc.

Notice that he says "derived from." And no wonder, because, he knows that the Simpleton art department took his crude, primitive picture of a clock and transformed it into a Daliesque masterwork. The new image is not even recognizable from its original form; Theo only saw the image because simpleton drove so much traffic to his site, and he wanted to find out where this windfall was coming from. I'd include compare-and-contrast links to both pictures, but I'll be damned if I'm going to send this ingrate anymore potential customers (we have an all-new melted clock picture, which you will surely enjoy even more than the first one). I no longer recommend Mr. Develegas' web services, though I still urge you to buy Katz's book.

4. Alan Kornheiser sends in the following recommendation:

Dreamlife of Angels Have you seen this flick yet? It's getting the damndest press coverage I can recall. There have been rave--and we do mean rave--review articles in The New Republic and The New Yorker. Reviewers in the Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even Salon have fallen over themselves to praise it. It won lots of Gold Palms at Cannes. I don't read the cinema press, but I assume much the same is happening there. But there doesn't seem to be a true marketing campaign. Here in New York, it opened at the Quad and the Lincoln Plaza; the latter is where every art film in the world goes to die, but the Quad specializes in odd quirky things: Steambath (good film, by the way: Italian film about Istanbul), Iranian movies, gay themes, like that. Cutting edge hip opens at the Angelika, which didn't open it. Nor were there more than minimal ads, although this may be changing. Not surprisingly, since this is New York where movies cost $9.50 and hipness is a religion--and the houses the movie is playing in are small--the film is sold out at all performances. I waited on line 30 minutes at 3:00 Easter Sunday to see it and almost didn't get in. But even so, it's still playing to tiny audiences. You follow this stuff: is this some new kind of anti-marketing campaign or did it not occur to anyone that people would like the movie? Has it become impossible to imagine a French movie reaching an audience here in the US? The disconnect between the reviews and the venues is very odd indeed. Oh, the movie? It's good; you should see it. Marvelous understated camera work, great acting. Also, kindness: the director is kind toward the type of people so often reduced to background noise or caricature. Incredibly richly textured. A fine start after a dull period of movies. But incredible? No; compared to - say - The Sweet Hereafter or Prisoner of the Mountains, it's just a very good movie.

For the record, I believe this thing with the venues is a mixup rather than an anti-marketing campaign. Or more accurately, it seems to be an anti-marketing campaign in the truest sense, since its only possible result is that it doesn't sell the product. While the phenomenon of self-deconstructing advertising still gets attention, an actual anti-ad campaign would entail not advertising at all, which is what seems to be going on here. Kornheiser's review is published here for your edification; though I must note that he should have called it The Wall Street Nazi Journal.

So now you know....