The Ascension of Our Lord.*
Outrage Flares in Idyllic Upscale Suburb on the Lake.
Wealthy Highland Park, Illinois, …a suburb that fronts on Lake Michigan with median family income of $137,000…has resolved to punish Arizona for its immigration law by keeping its girls high school basketball team at home…the most dramatic outcry from wealthy trendy supporters of fashionable outrage since 1965 when Shirley McLaine and her brother Warren Beatty asked fellow liberals to stop eating grapes to show sympathy for farm workers led by Cesar Chavez.
Today for comfortable millionaire liberals, editorial boards and hyperbolic churchmen including some oracular Catholic bishops, reading the Arizona law is immaterial. One with a sense of history sees this as the modern equivalent of the furor against the Taft-Harley Act that stated the rights of employers to communicate with workers which was re-passed over the veto of Harry Truman in 1947. It was immaterial what was contained in the legislation: nobody bothered to read it anyhow. Sufficient to say union leaders as a “slave labor law” during the1948 presidential campaign. Now, sixty-three years later, it is non-controversial since three generations of Democratic presidents including one of the most oracular opponents, Hubert Humphrey who went to the Senate that year, decided privately it was equitable.
The facts concerning the Highland Park boycott of Arizona are these:The girls varsity basketball team of Highland Park High has just won its first conference title in 26 years. Members raised money through selling cookies for many months in order to go to the national finals to be held in Arizona. But District 113 Assistant Superintendent Suzan Hebson (yes, that’s how she spells her first name—with a “z”) has cancelled the trip because to go to Arizona is “not aligned with our beliefs ands values.”
She added smugly: “We would want to ensure that all of our students had the opportunity to be included and be safe and be able to enjoy the experience. We wouldn’t necessarily be able to guarantee that.”
The Superintendent, Geroge Forngro, a wimp of the first order evidently, is cowering behind his strongly-opinioned assistant superintendent and has nothing whatsoever to say to the media on the matter.
The decision by Ms. Hebson means this: that although the girls and their families have raised money to go which would not be paid by the school, the trip will still not be made because of the supposed “discriminatory” law in Arizona.
Assistant Superintendent Hebson hasn’t declared whether or not she has read the law as it passed in its present version, but it says that an immigration check can only be performed when someone is already involved in a “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” The law states clearly that then…and only then…when there is also“reasonable suspicion” that the person may be in the country illegally should “a reasonable effort be made to ascertain immigration status.”
Hebson or her boss who has escaped notoriety by figuratively hiding under his desk, has no comment on the fact that Arizona has 460,000 illegal aliens in the state and immigration-related crime has catapulted Phoenix second only to Mexico City as the kidnapping capital of the world.
Chuck Justice, a Highland Park blogger and editor of Habledash writes, “She’s sent students to Communist China which, by reading her statement on the situation, indicates that Communism aligns with the ideology of those running the school.” Justice continues: “…Highland Park has an extensive Jewish population”…and then gets a bit excited himself: “You know what that means—self-loathing Jews that voted and side with the undocumented President Obama and therefore think Arizona’s bill is racist and wrong.”
To which a contributor named Dina responded: “Oh no you don’t. I don’t know why you feel the need to generalize our entire community. I myself (lifetime HP’er) am disgusted by this decision [of the assistant superintendent of the school district] as are the girls and parents on the team…But to describe the entire community as self-loathing Jews. Ouch! I am a Jew and I love myself. I know many Jews and gentiles who are outraged and I’m working to get them to be vocal and stand up for what is right. Unfortunately, your opinion sounds anti-Semitic and this is what keeps Jewish people on the left and afraid of the right!”
Another contributor wrote: “I don’t see his [Justice’s] description of all of Highland Park as self-loathing Jews but rather the liberals in the community that are Jewish. I clearly saw the line when he wrote `the many self-loathing liberal Jews in the community.’ This site is far from anti-Semitic. I’m a big fan and Haabledashis a huge supporter of Israel. It’s the liberal, self-loathing Jews that the site always criticizes which is well deserved.”
Norman Podhoretz…a tad younger than I and a scholarly and deeply observant Jew, , author of What Makes Jews Liberals, would have a field day with the Highland Park outburst for it richly ratifies his thesis that contemporary wealthy Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans in the inner city. Highland Park, one of the richest suburbs on the North Shore, home to many multi-millionaire Jews with a solid record of supporting down-the-line every liberal Democrat who appeals for money and votes , is festooned with cultural repositories such as the Ravinia theatre which hosts summer festivals including performances by the Chicago symphony orchestra. He says that most younger Jews are not observant and support the 2nd Torah rather than the 1st. “The 2nd Torah is liberalism and has its own set of commandments.”
Those who are upset with this assistant Superintendent’s view can write to the mayor, Michael Belsky and/or members of the city council…John Kirsch…Scott Levenfeld…Steve Mandel…Larry Silberman…and Nancy Rotsane.
Highland Park is a gorgeous suburb and has been used by moviemakers the world over. It was the location of Ferris Beuler’s Day Off also Risky Business and location shots are included in CBS’s The Good Wife. As you would expect it is filled with the finest cultural advantages: the aforementioned Ravinia Festival featuring the Chicago Symphony orchestra…Highland Park Pops…Midwest Young Artists composed of 5 youth orchestras and 50 chamber music ensembles…The Music Institute of Chicago’s Highland Park Campus…Original Love Sketch Comedy a theatre troupe…the Bitter Jester Creative a satiric cast along the lines of 2nd City…and The Attic Playhouse for serious drama.
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*The Ascension of Our Lord. Today commemorates Jesus Christ’s rising to heaven forty days after the Resurrection. All creeds agree and the Church teaches that He ascended into heaven body and soul. He ascended into heaven by His own power as God in divine power and man in the power of His transfigured soul. Doctrinally the Ascension means the elevation of Christ’s human nature into the condition of divine glory. It is the concluding work of redemption. According to the Church’s common teaching the souls of the just from the pre-Christian era went with the Savior to heaven.
So, how many illegal aliens are there in Highland Park? Perhaps Ms. Hebson would rather not know. I mean, someone's got to tend the manicured lawns and trim the shrubbery, right?
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