Posted on 05/13/2003 5:39:06 AM PDT by SJackson
Frankly I was relieved to hear from Tam Dalyell, the venerable British MP who serves as Father of the House of Commons, that Tony Blair is secretly controlled by a cabal of Jewish advisers.
Cabal-wise, that takes the heat off George W. Bush, who's secretly controlled by so many cabals he must be juggling his schedule as frantically as Jack Lemmon in a 1960s sex comedy.
The president is apparently simultaneously secretly controlled by a cabal of sinister Jews, a cabal of fundamentalist Christians, a cabal of Texas oil barons, and a cabal of devious neoconservatives who are also Jews, but, demonstrating the cunning one traditionally associates with the Hebrew, have taken to going around under a new name to confuse those not as eagle-eyed as Tam.
But if I had to name my all-time favourite cabal to which Bush is in thrall it would have to be the one revealed in a long think-piece in The Boston Globe the other week. The Globe identified the various murky figures who've been the most assiduous promoters of the new American imperium: David Frum, the Bush speechwriter who coined two-thirds of the phrase axis of evil (his original version was axis of hate); Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post; Michael Ignatieff of Harvard; and Mark Steyn, some loser columnist.
And what do all these unsavory characters have in common? Circumcision? Gefilte fish? No; as the Globe noted, "Frum, Steyn, Krauthammer, and Ignatieff all hail from Canada." A cabal of sinister Canadians? Oh, sure, go ahead, scoff. But if Tony Blair is under the control of a cabal of sinister Jews, what you really need to ask yourself is what cabal is the cabal of sinister Jews under the control of? That's where poor Tam's conspiracy theories are so old hat (a homburg). At least in the club of sinister Canadians we operate a restricted membership: Only Canadians need apply.
By contrast, invited to name names in his cabal of Jews, the best Tam could come up with was a troika of Blairites Lord Levy, Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw that includes only one bona fide Jew, and he has to make up the numbers with guys who've got a Jewish grandparent and a couple of Mel Brooks videos: Depending on how you look at it, Tam's conspiracy has either revived the generous Third Reich definition of Jewishness or it's the Irish World Cup team of cabals.
(The soccer authorities in the auld sod have magnificently elastic rules of qualification: If you've got a second cousin who once changed planes at Shannon, you're Irish enough for the national team.)
BUT THE real question the Father of the House ought to ponder is, if Tony Blair is so unimportant that the cabal secretly controlling him can be left to a bunch of ersatz Jews, what are all the real Jews up to? Who are they secretly controlling?
When the distinguished Hampstead novelist Margaret Drabble let rip last week about how America was driving her mad "I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld I detest Coca-Cola. I detest burgers one's first suspicion was: CIA psyops? No, too sophisticated. Could it be a cabal of North London Jews freaking Margaret out via radio waves emitted from secret antennae implanted in their hooked noses? Just a thought.
And back at the White House it's cabal gridlock. You turn up and say, "Hi, it's the cabal of sinister Canadians. We've got an appointment at 10 with the president." And the secretary says, "Sorry, his 9.30 cabal is running late."And you begin to wonder why, if George Bush has such a small brain, so many cabals are required to secretly control it. Do we need a central administrative cabal to coordinate all the other cabals? A cabal secretariat maybe, headed up by Boutros-Boutros Ghali. A cabal of cabals.
And you sit in the ante room twiddling your thumbs and the clock ticks on and the cabal of Big Oil arrives, all wearing their ten-gallon hats. In Texas, they used to have a saying: He's all hat and no cattle. Now they say he's all hat and no cabal, a dismissive reference to the only three hassidic Jews in the Lone Star State who aren't controlling a coalition-of-the-willing head of government.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, the editor of The Spectator, has uncovered an even more artful cabal. As I mentioned the other day, Boris suggested that the president, if only in terms of the fine art and antiquities section of his brain, was being secretly controlled by a lobby group called the American Council for Cultural Policy, who'd leaned on Bush to facilitate the looting of the Baghdad Museum in order to deliver the Iraqi people's birthright to "the guest washrooms of Floridian real estate kings."
Boris's Dalyell-like conjuring of a cabal of sinister Sunshine State realtors all singing Rosemary Clooney's classic "Cabal-a My House" in a potshard-crammed Tampa powder room breaks new ground in cabal scholarship.
The fact that the catastrophic destruction of the Iraqi National Museum is as mythical as the great Jenin massacre is no reason why this one shouldn't run and run. But it does make one wonder whether the media aren't being secretly controlled by a cabal of Catskill comics who enjoy making 'em look like idiots every spring.
It was ever thus. "The Jew is everywhere," observes Scudder in The 39 Steps, John Buchan's ripping tale of pre-Great War intrigue. "If you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake." But, of course, Buchan went on to become governor-general of Canada. If you get my drift.
The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.
(But we've been elevated to the status of a cabal. What an honor!)
The Three Cabal-yeros?
If you figure it out, let me know, will ya? :-D
Unfortunately for the conspiracists, "kabballah" and "cabal" have nothing to do with each other. Quick . . . who were the five Scottish politicians whose initials form the word "CABAL"? (give you a hint, one of them is Lauderdale.)
wheels within wheels, guys, wheels within wheels. This conspiracy has been going on at LEAST since 1667.
Sheer brilliance.
L
You can't just sign up. The CabalTM will come to you, if you are deemed worthy.
Besides, I would look good in a Cabal hat...
And don't think you're getting Miramax or Touchstone right away, either - you gotta make your bones and prove yourself before you get choice property like that. You'll be repping second tier actors and actresses, and won't get to schtup Sarah Michelle Gellar just yet.
A number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in church or state by intrigue; a secret association composed of a few designing persons; a junto.
Note: It so happend, by a whimsical coincidence, that in 1671 the cabinet consisted of five persons, the initial letters of whose names made up the word cabal; Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. --Macaulay.
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