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This is certainly the year that a lot of stereotypes have bitten the dust: of course the top of the list of broken prejudices is symbolized by our president, Barack Obama, the first person of known African descent to occupy the Oval Office and soon we will have the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.
This is wonderful. But the destruction of other stereotypes, though they fill the observer with wonder are anything but wonderful.
Max Blumenthal's little film "Feeling the Hate" has broken more stereotypes for me, personally, than the election of Barack Obama or the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
The success of either Obama or Sotomayor is no surprise to me on racial or ethnic grounds, as I have never thought that the color of a person's skin or ethnic origin had any bearing on their ability to carry out the duties and responsibilities of high office.
However, I also never thought I would ever hear Jewish people throw the word "nigger" around with such practiced aplomb as in this video.
As a matter of fact, I don't ever remember seeing a Jewish person as drunk as those portrayed in Blumenthal's interviews in my whole life; in my youth it was proverbial that, "Jews don't drink": getting roaring drunk was something that was left to brutish, wife-beating, Polish peasants and to feral Russian Cossacks.
So here, thanks to Mr. Blumenthal, we have a group of future "my son the doctor(s)" and Jewish Princesses, stumbling drunk, talking with the same disgusting bigotry as the Polish peasants and Russian Cossacks that used to rape their great grandmothers or the rednecks that spat on the Jewish Freedom riders in the 1960s or that lynched Leo Frank.
To whom do we owe this transformation, this leveling?
To the USA?
To Israel?
In the words of a great American poet, "C'est la vie say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell". DS
7 comments:
Human cruelty and rapacity gonna do us under? Globe on the precipice? Enlightened Eugenics! No, wait-- LSD in the reservoirs? No,---. Nearing the end of a long 20th century life and I've never felt so hopeless. I blame the internet.
Bill,
Here is a quote from William James to cheer you up:
“If one has ever taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world’s history fairly into his mind ― freezing, drowning, entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men and hideous diseases ― he can with difficulty, it seems to me, continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he may all the while not really be inside the game, that he may lack the great initiation.” William James
The US didnt invent the word nigger, though we did convince black people that that was the word for them even though the definition is an "ignorant person" not an "ignorant black person". I see white niggers all the time up in New York. You can find them by criticizing Obama's economic "recovery" in their hearing, and then listen to them spout nonsense.
I dont think anyone's to blame. Racism has always existed. It must be fought, not brought under new management for the benefit of different groups like Democrats seem to be keen on doing. It's funny you listed so many ways in which the Jews have been wronged over the years. Kinda makes it seem funny how people who know the history of how the Jews have been brutalized seem to think that Israel's acts of SELF-DEFENSE in Gaza are the equivalent of apartheid.
Just as an aside that doesnt have much to do with the subject, what do you think of the recent drubbing the Left has taken in the Parlimentary elections all over Europe?
Adam
The European left has not shown that they have a coherent critique of the system, which is what the voter of the left wants from them. Until they produce that critique or the ultra-right makes more significant gains that frighten them sufficiently many left wing voters will simply abstain.
I get that.
Adam
The people in the video are mostly American Jews on sponsored free visits to Israel. When they encounter the frankly overt racism of the Israelis, perhaps they lose their own racist inhibitions.
Five private (though 55% government-funded) schools in Petah Tikva are to be sanctioned for not accepting Ethiopian Jewish students.
And as to attitudes to Palestinians, read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bound-blindfolded-and-beaten-ndash-by-israeli-troops-1700194.html
her on Israeli racism:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091234.html
extract:
Asked by Israel Channel Two Television reporter Shai Gal what would happen if Israeli forces tried to evacuate Havat Gilad, Arele replied, "At most, they'll demolish one measly shack, so they'll have something to show - that Kushon [a Hebrew slur equivalent to the "N" word] in the United States, in order to have an Etnan [the biblical term for a fee paid to a prostitute] to give him - if you [secular] guys know what an Etnan is."
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