In its eagerness to ensure that an indicted man be feeble Joe Biden’s opponent in on 2024, the apparently shameless and now completely ethics-free Democratic Party and its mainstream media mouthpieces are pushing the Big Lie that the Florida black history standards for its grade school students advances the theory that U.S. slavery benefited slaves. Ethics Alarms examined the standards here; they don’t (though they include far too much instruction on the topic); one politically stupid, academically legitimate item buried among the others is being used by to characterize the whole curriculum: “…slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” For example, MSNBC host Joy Reid invoked the topic (“You can’t even say slavery was bad now in the Republican Party!” Despicable ) as part of her network’s perpetual partisan propaganda effort, and truth be damned.
So, you may ask, what does this have to do with Jews and the Holocaust?
Comedian Greg Gutfield, who hosts the only late night comedy show that does spend all of its time attacking conservatives and pimping for Woke World, is also a participant in “The Fives,” which been moved to the 10 PM slot by Fox News, which is desperate to stop the ratings bleeding as it discovered that so many of its viewers only hung around to hear a cynical demagogue rant. One of the Five, political strategist Jessica Tarlov, compared that one statement in the history standards to saying Jews derived some benefits from being imprisoned during the Holocaust. (Terrible analogy.) Gutfeld brought up the work of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who wrote about his struggle for survival Nazi concentration camps. “Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’?” . Gutfeld asked. “Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”
Of course this is true. The fact was one of the brutal and inhuman traits of the Nazi regime: people who couldn’t benefit the state with their labor or talents were murdered. Strong Jews were valuable as slaves. Sick Jews were killed. Old Jews were killed. Children were killed. If prisoners had skills that could assist the war effort, those skills could keep them alive. Some Auschwitz prisoners survived because they were musicians: Arthur Miller wrote a TV historical drama about the death camp ensemble in 1980 called “Playing for Time.” The title supports Gutfield’s assessment. (That’s a shot from the show above. Do the players look like they are “benefiting” from the experience?)
Never mind: this White House is intent upon misleading the public and intimidating any opposition. The White House released a statement this week condemning Fox News and Gutfeld, calling his comments “a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement…There was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust.”
And nothing in Gutfield’s statements implied that there was anything good about the Holocaust. What he said was that if you weren’t useful and a Jew, you died during the Holocaust. That not a compliment.
It is an abuse of power for the President and those who represent him to target citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights and attack them for political ends. Obama had a revolting habit of doing something similar, although his specialty was shooting of his mouth about controversies he didn’t know much about and had no business interfering with, as when he implied that George Zimmerman was both a murderer and a racist, or when he criticized a Cambridge, Mass. cop for how he treated one of Obama’s pals. Did the Trump White House issue a statement when Stephen Colbert called him “Putin’s cock-holster” on national TV, or attack CBS for allowing him to do so? Why no. I did, but my criticism doesn’t reek of government action.
The public trusts the White House to tell the truth more than it trusts a comedian: this is the epitome of “punching down.” In this case, sadly, the comedian is more trustworthy.
Ethics Alarms 
Typo on aisle 5: the only late night comedy show that does NOT spend all of its time
“the President and those who represent him”
There’s no President doing anything. He might as well be an animatron. A misfunctioning one.
Typical DNC talking point. Gotta keep the Jewish vote and the black vote. Everything that comes out of the Jill Biden White House is calculated to get votes.
[AGAIN: This troll has been banned. Do NOT reply to him: his intentionally obnoxious comments only stay up until I see them, and then they are spammed. I’m leaving this one up, sans text, because two respected commenters replied to it.
This one would have gotten this jerk banned if he hadn’t been already: he asked “So what’s your issue with Jews anyhow? You keep bringing them up. I guess there are a lot of Jewish people in your profession but honestly this is a pretty nasty way to deal with your professional rivalries.”
Yeah, I keep bringing them up when there is an ethics issue involving the Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. I’m funny that way. And why would this guy assume that “there are a lot of Jewish people in [my] profession? Stereotype much?]
JM.
What the fuck is this comment trying to say or imply?
This is the most moronic a statement ever written on this blog. Obviously, you take a position that Jack dislikes Jews because he stated a truth about the holocaust in which he took issue with the President misrepresenting historical facts simply to bash Jack’s opinion. This will be my last response to you.
Is there such a thing as commenter’s arrest? Should be.
It should be: he’s been banned for weeks for just such fatuous trolling.
Nothing he wrote claimed anything else.
Regardless of how many people died, the fact of the matter is that the Nazis kept people alive longer who were more valuable to them for even a short amount of time. Those were the people who were younger, stronger, healthier and, of that bunch, had skills to put to work for the Nazis.
He has no issues with Jews. He does have issues with an administration that repeatedly otherizes its political opponents as bigots and, by extension, does the same to anyone, including media figures, that criticizes it.
And I agree here, too, to a degree. The people who survived – whether by wits or luck or by some valuable skill someone else didn’t have – were put in that position by the Nazis and never should have had to do so.
On the other hand, it shouldn’t be necessary to add a disclaimer before you make a point like Gutfield’s. Nuanced conversation about the Holocaust or Slavery shouldn’t always be required to start off with, “Slavery (or the Holocaust) was terrible and never should have happened” but that seems to be the world we’re living in now.
Especially when the context that the Auschwitz Memorial mentions is only applied to one side of the political spectrum and is ignored when, say, comparing the detention of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border to the Holocaust.
The whole premise of “Schindler’s List” is consistent with Gutfield’s point.
Exactly. They would have been killed had they not been useful to the Nazis. Some people survived because they were fortunate enough to have what their oppressors wanted.
Still I have to say that, under the current political climate, conservative commentators, pundits, politicians or anyone with a soapbox need to stop referencing the Holocaust or Hitler. Fair-minded people understand when the comparison is apt and understand context. The Democrats and their allies in the news media understand this, too, but – for political points – will fall back on otherizing and labeling because they are not fair-minded people. They do it time and time again.
Yes, I suppose this is a “They should have seen it coming” rationalization, but I’m tired of conservatives being pounded with the Fascist/Racist hammer every time the topic comes up.
I have a couple of books on my shelf – Steiner’s “Treblinka” and Muller’s “Eyewitness Auschwitz”. I’ve read Treblinka twice (though not in quite a few years) and Muller’s book once. Both confirm what you’re writing and Greg Gutfeld’s statements as well.
The White House’s response is another small example of the attempt to compel speech…”people should only talk about subjects in ways that are approved.”
The Smithsonian Channel’s Treblinka: Hilter’s Killing Machine is one of the most horrifying programs I’ve ever watched.
Same here…
I just finished a book yesterday on female resistance fighters during the war, including some who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The treatment of captive peoples by Nazi Germany, particularly the Jews, was horrific. The stories in this book alone – to say nothing of the countless stories I’ve read as a WWII buff of over 35 years – would freeze the blood and darken one’s soul at the pure evil in the hearts of some.
Trump constantly targeted entertainers who disagreed with on him and his policies. Is the difference you’re alluding to that he didn’t issue official White House statements on them, only tweets and spoken comments? If so, explicitly stating that point in the article would make it much stronger. But I don’t think most Americans would really see a clear difference there. Trump did threaten to use the power of the state against companies like Amazon whose leaders were critical of them; there’s no threat against Greg Gutfield here, though I still think it’s inappropriate. Trump also suggested that SNL was breaking the law by making fun of him. Yes this statement shouldn’t have been made, but I think if you’re comparing the general issue of presidents targeting citizens, Trump comes out much worse than Obama and Biden.
At least we have an alternative in DeSantis, who is…*places hand up to ear*…uh, also constantly threatening businesses for disagreeing with him. Well. America!
Sorry, just realized the Obama examples you highlighted weren’t official White House statements either, but spoken remarks…so that further weakens your comparison between Biden, Trump, and Obama.
Makes no sense. A direct Presidential statement to the press is no less “official” than an “official statement.”
You are edging into trolling.
Wait, so you’re saying Trump never made direct statements to the press targeting his critics? I’m sure he did.
I didn’t say that.
I mentioned that Trump didn’t target Colbert, whose “cock-holster” comment was beyond what any previous comic had been allowed to spew on late night. I didn’t extol Trump as a model of restraint. No President should target citizens, period, but a formal statement condemning one institutionalizes the practice AND it misrepresented what was said. Trump’s complaints at least were not lies, but I’m not playing that game. The current White House taking shots at Gutfield—for a factual statement that was not offensive in any rational way—is an abuse of power.
As was Truman attacking the Washington Post music critic for panning Margaret—and he was hammered for it, before the news media became the Democratic Party’s cock-holster.
“I mentioned that Trump didn’t target Colbert,”
Yes he did.
https://time.com/4775633/donald-trump-stephen-colbert-cnn-msnbc-chris-cuomo/
“Trump’s complaints at least were not lies, but I’m not playing that game.”
I’m certain I could find examples of Trump targeting citizens that included outright lies.
And I’m not trying to play a game, I’m trying to engage with the comparison you brought up. Like I said, if you had stuck to arguing that Biden’s official White House statement goes beyond mere tweets or spoken comments, the article would be stronger. Or you could have just not made the comparison and stuck with “No President should target citizens, period,” which is indisputable. But if you’re going to argue that Trump targeted citizens less than Biden or Obama, I’m going to point out that’s inaccurate.
Good research! I should have known that Trump couldn’t keep quiet about someone as persistently after him as Colbert—but he still did not make a statement attacking the cock-holster comment. Trump likes ad hominem attack.
Don’t lecture me about how to make my essays “stronger.” Write your own damn blog. The two points in the piece were 1) Gutfield was accurate and didn’t say what the White House claims he said, and 2) Presidents shouldn’t attack citizens using their full power to do so. Both were made clearly and you have not rebutted them. You seem to see your role as chief nit-picker and apologist for targets of criticism here. Attacking on the margins is easy, and I suppose it makes you feel superior, or something. It shouldn’t. It’s tiresome.
Unless the Nazis taught skills to their prisoners, I wouldn’t count “having one’s murder postponed because of skills one already has” as a “benefit”. It’s a thought-provoking reference, but not a good example for this purpose.
In general, the idea that a bad thing must be one hundred percent bad, that it could never be simply bad enough that it should never have been done in the first place, while also having provided a benefit that wasn’t worth the cost but that we might as well take advantage of since we can’t change the past…
That’s an idea that rejects nuance. It’s a toxic road to go down. I can understand why people do it; they want to dissuade people from hurting others for perceived gain, or from looking for excuses to hurt people they don’t like. However, it’s not worth it.
There are better ways to condemn atrocities than to pretend that nobody ever benefits from them. Obviously somebody at least thinks they’ll benefit from atrocities, or nobody would ever commit them. The simple rebuttal is, “Yes, but at what cost? We are not willing to break society’s trust, and create a world where people must fear their neighbors, to elevate your favorite group. There are better ways of achieving prosperity, and we’ll help you with those.”
Eugenics, there are utilitarian arguments for and against. Morally and ethically it is horrifying. No discussion of such topics benefits from nit picking and straw men, which some commenters are using almost exclusively