Israelis are not as whiny as CBS and Matt Drudge want you to believe

I’m not really sure who CBS News’s Howard Arenstein is, or why the network has him writing Matt Drudge link bait – you know, the shallow kind of news story with no real basis in truth like ‘Obama’s ’stache.’ It looks funny and will drive some crazy bloggers and perhaps make it onto Hannity and Limbaugh’s show because it’s better than covering some real news.

There’s really no other good explanation for Arenstein’s latest, which is linked atop the Drudge Report right now where you’ll see that absurd image linking to his even more ridiculous CBS ‘World Watch’ blog post which says the following:

Israeli TV newscasters Tuesday night interpreted a photo taken Monday in the Oval Office of President Obama talking on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “insult” to Israel.

They saw the incident as somewhat akin to an incident last year, when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush in Baghdad.

It is considered an insult in the Arab world to show the sole of your shoe to someone. It is not a Jewish custom necessarily, but Israel feels enough a part of the Middle East after 60 years to be insulted too.

Was there a subliminal message intended from the White House to Netanyahu in Jerusalem, who is publicly resisting attempts by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to force Israel to stop any kind of settlement activity in occupied territories once and forever?

Whether or not it is true, it shows the mood in Israel. They feel cornered. The reactions out of Israel reflect that feeling.

Apparently these are the fruits of Arenstein spending 7 years in Israel and winning an award named after Edward Murrow! Goodnight and good luck, indeed!

So, let’s deconstruct this junior year of high school rhetoric class style:

• Which Israeli TV newscaster took issue with Obama’s feet on the desk?
• Is Israel really so much a part of the Middle East that it shares Arab cultural sensibilities about the soles of ones feet/shoes?
• Why would a mystery Israeli newscasters’s spoutings on Obama’s shoes stand for the whole of Israel’s mood?
• Does Obama usually show ’subliminal messages’ with the soles of his shoes?
• And last, but most importantly, does the White House facilities maintenance staff really like that Obama is putting his feet on the furniture?

OK, that last part is just me. But I don’t even need to try and answer any of these questions because the absence of their answers in the original shows what crap this post is. That CBS let this get published shows how craven they’ve become  – is it any wonder no one watches Katie Couric anymore? At least we’ve got Autotune the News to make her seem fun again.

But hey, conservative bloggers, let’s make a deal: If you’ll agree that Arenstein is the journalistic equivalent of a horse poop shoveling stable hand, I will concede that the drunken idiot racists that Max Blumenthal found in Jerusalem don’t stand for the entire nation. Pinky swear?