By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO―Benjamin Netanyahu had an audience with Pope Francis this week and gave him an autographed copy of his father’s book on the Spanish Inquisition. This has sparked a new fad among world leaders. The Japanese Prime Minister sent Present Obama John Hersey’s Hiroshima. The Dalai Lama brought a copy of his autobiography Freedom in Exile to a Chinese Embassy. And, of course, Mahmoud Abbas emulated Netanyahu by handing a book on the Nakba to one of the Israeli negotiators involved in the peace talks.
According to the latest results of the Program for International Assessment tests, the scores of American high-school students continued to lag behind those of their peers in many other countries The good news is that most American students are unable to read the PISA report or understand its statistical analysis.
Fast food workers around the United States have been striking this week to raise the minimum wage they are paid. Their signs differ from restaurant to restaurant. Burger King’s workers call their strike a “Whopper stopper.”McDonald’s employees carry pickets emblazoned with the slogan, “Big Mac, small salary.” Carl Junior workers hold up banners proclaiming, “We’ll bother you; we’re starving.” In a related story doctors throughout the country have noticed a drop in the cholesterol rates of their patients.
The California Republican Party has set up a website that looks like the state’s official website for enrolling in Obama Care, but which warns its users of all the reasons not to enroll in Obama Care. Democrats lodged a protest, but also indicated that the flipside of this deception is that many Republicans may become too sick to vote and too impoverished by medical bills to donate to their party.
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Nelson Mandela died this week. Although there is nothing funny about that, I smiled in appreciation of his remarkable courage and political leadership.
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com