Remembering a Story with a Moral

My dear friend, the late talk radio icon Barry Farber, had a number of “Farber-isms.” When telling the story of how he courted and eventually married Sara Pentz, a TV journalist he had first met 40 years prior, he liked to say, “When we first met we got along like a slow waiter and a poor tipper.” [You can listen to Barry and Sara and me discuss this here.]

And when, in a formal or informal debate, Barry’s adversary presented an argument that was so heavy on facts and logic as to preemptively take the wind out of the sails of any rebuttal, Barry would concede with admiration, saying, “You have destroyed my air force on the ground!”

That was, of course, an allusion to Israel’s great military feat during 1967’s Six Day War, the preemptive strike that, on the first day of that conflict, destroyed or crippled the air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, thus achieving total air superiority over the countries that had been arrayed against Israel.

I’m reminded of that masterful strike, which the Israelis called Operation Focus, by Israel’s recent strike on Iran, which has similarly achieved air superiority, leaving Iran vulnerable to precisely-targeted attacks by Israeli aircraft that fly over Iran unmolested, while Iran is reduced to sending missile barrages over Israel from its few remaining missile batteries, a tactic that, while it has taken some Israeli lives, smacks of desperation and cannot be maintained for long.

And, while we’re talking about masterful Israeli military strikes, let’s not forget what was likely the most precise and technologically brilliant anti-terrorist operation ever, the one informally called Operation Grim Beeper, which in October of 2024 caused thousands of cellphones, pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon to blow up, often while in the jihadis’ trouser pockets (and thereby also spontaneously doing a Lorena Bobbitt on thousands of Hezbollah members’ members!).

It could be said that those exploding beepers did to Hezbollah what Israel just did to Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, rendering it impotent, emasculated, barren, fruitless and unproductive.

All of which reminds me of a joke that I likely first heard at old P.S. 40, or perhaps in J.H.S. 104 or maybe at Boy Scout camp:

A teacher tells her students that she wants each of them to stand up and share with the class a story with a moral. So little Susie stands up and tells a story, the moral of which is “Look before you leap.” Then little Billy gets up and tells a story, the moral of which is “A stitch in time saves nine.”

Another child tells a story, and its moral is “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

This goes on until it’s little Johnny’s turn. He says, “My story is about the Red Ryder.

“One day the Red Ryder was riding along and found the trail blocked by 100 hostile Indians. He turned to his left and there were 100 more Indians. He turned to his right and there were 100 more Indians. And when he turned around and tried to go back the way he had come, there were 100 Indians behind him. He was completely surrounded by Indians!

“Then he drew his gun, but he found that he had only one bullet left!”

The students, and even the teacher, were on the edges of their seats. “What did the Red Ryder do, Johnny?”

“Well,” said Johnny, “he shot his one bullet, and it hit a rock and broke into 400 pieces and killed all the Indians!”

The teacher said, “That’s quite a story, Johnny! But what is the moral of the story?”

“The moral of the story, Teacher,” Johnny replied with a big grin, “is ‘Don’t fuck around with the Red Ryder!’”

(We kids told that story over and over. It cracked us up every time. It still does.)

For the moral of my story here today, scratch out “Red Ryder” and replace it with “Israel.”

ST