I was a TV actor for twenty years. Not a big name, but I worked in series and soaps. It was fun, but when I had kids and hit 40, and still had to go on interviews with my hat in my hand to explain to increasingly young producers that in fact, I had been working for 20 years in the medium, I knew it was time to stop. At a certain point, if you're not the guy they're sending offers to, who doesn't have scripts showing up unbidden on his agent's desk...it's just too damn hard. I quit acting for my 40th birthday and started writing. Now, I've been writing for TV for 16 years and I live in a house behind ornate electric gates and my kids go to swanky private schools.

Continuing to "go for the shot" after a certain age is like staying in the NFL after your knees have already started to go bad. You might still have one great season left in you, but it's more likely that you'll push it too far and have a pronounced limp for the rest of your life. There are only so many times in a lifetime that a soul can take that special kind of rejection experienced by a hungry actor who knows he could've done the job if only he'd been given the chance.

Go for the writing, Peter. You've obviously got the "one percent inspiration" part down. If you can produce the requisite perspiration, you'll do great. Good luck.

Xanthro states: "The 59th UN Assembly (2004-2005) passed 19 resolutions condemning Israeli treatment of Palestinians and none condemning Sudan. Are we to believe that this is somehow a balanced working view of the World and not a form of Jew Hatred?"

I suspect the reason for this is that the UN sees Israel as a modern, educated, democratic and powerful state that can regulate itself. Thus, a resolution regarding Israel's behavior is a slap on the wrist to an adult who knows better and can do something about it. A resolution condemning Sudan, a broken place with no government to speak of, guided only by primitive tribal claims and hatreds, would immediately raise the issue: "These people can't respond to a resolution, they can't find their own ass with a map and a mirror." And this, in turn, raises the question of what, exactly, the UN plans to do about it. Emphasis on "do." The UN does not want to DO anything about Sudan, so it doesn't want the question asked. So, back to issuing resolutions about Israel. It's not about Jew Hatred, Xanthro. Just about action-aversion.

"Then I spent an hour or so reading the screeds over Juan Cole's opinion piece."

Come on, ahansen, that's not fair. There have been a lot of very reasoned responses here. There will always be irrational posts, but don't throw everyone out with the same bathwater.

Jew-hating is not a by-product of a viral infection or something in the DNA -- unless you admit that it's in the DNA of every human. Tolerance is a learned skill, hatred of the Other is the norm. As regrettable as it is, there are historical, explainable reasons why Jews as a people have a target painted on their backs.

There's the diaspora, which means Jews have often been, to some extent, the new kid in town. They stick together and look out for one another. Despite their charitable works and status as employers and sources of capital and housing, they form a group and thus are easy to resent for elements of any society who are looking for someone to resent -- and especially in bad times, there are always plenty of those. There is a separateness to the Jews, the Chosen People (which predates but isn't completely dissimilar to the "Left Behind" born-again claim of specialness in God's eyes) that makes them easy to lump together for purposes of hating, for that element of society (not always the bottom rung) that needs someone to hate, to blame or to carry away its sins. Latching onto particular attributes that set them apart, be it noses or circumcision or whatever, is just a by-product of the human need to resent someone else, to place one's own dissatisfactions with life on someone else's head.

I am not enough of a scholar to make my point lofty and air-tight. I am tired, though, of hearing Jew-hatred described as something unexplainable, diabolical, mysterious and supernaturally evil--when in fact, demonization of the Other has been a fact of life since the first Cro-magnon threw a rock at the last Neanderthal. Maybe, just maybe, looking at it this way would facilitate discussion of the matter. But then again, maybe not.

Ducking...

That was a very predictable response. Really a light-shedder.

GLRockwell is exactly the kind of person I mean, who uses people's innate tendency to be wary of the Other to drum up a political base. Most of the demagoguery in this world has been built on this. Just as Madison Ave. uses our sexual urge and our insecurities to sell us cigs and soap, Hitlers and George Wallaces use our fear of the Other.

All I was saying is that perhaps -- and please, I mean perhaps, I'm not a social scientist -- we identified this part of our makeup, recognized it for what it is, people, states and even cultures could have a more realistic dialogue about how to PREVENT it from being used for political purposes.