anti-Semitism

The Latest Trump Embarrassment: You See, Donald, Hanlon’s Razor Provides No Protection To Presidential Candidates…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Star of David

Writing about the latest Donald Trump controversy, blogging professor Ann Althouse concluded…

This is either a revolting outrage or shocking incompetence.

Social media critics, Democrats, Jews here and in Israel and journalists who enjoy interpreting every Trump communication in the worst possible light were (and are) foaming with anger and indignation over the above re-tweet by The Donald, whose long-used press nickname is on the way to being officially changed to “The Lunkhead.” In case you are as insensitive and ignorant as he apparently is, that’s six-pointed star in the graphic, superimposed on a background of cash and referencing Hillary’s corruption. The six-pointed star, the Star of David, is associated with the Jewish people, culture and faith. When one links that symbol to money and corruption, you have the classic elements of anti-Jewish hate and bigotry. Here is a sampling of the online commentary on what some pleasantly refer to as Trump’s latest “unforced error”: The Verge, The American Spectator, The Atlantic, Hot Air, RedState, Raw Story, The Times of Israel, Gothamist, CBS New York, Mediaite, Little Green Footballs,  and ThinkProgress. Continue reading →

The Astounding Apology of Anti-Semitic Harvard Law Student Husam El-Coolaq

/ Jack Marshall / 101 Comments

husam_linkedin_photo

At Harvard Law School, an event in the Program on Negotiation, sponsored by the Jewish Law Students Association and Harvard Hillel and titled “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict & the U.S” consisted of an exchange of ideas between former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and American diplomat Dennis Ross.

Husam El-Qoulaq, a law student in the audience asked this:

My question for Tzipi Livni is, how is it that you are so smelly? It’s regarding your odor — about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.

How professional, civil, respectful and representative of the image that the nation’s most prestigious law school wishes to present to the world!

Harvard Law’s Jewish community reacted with indignation at this brazen display of anti-Semitism, while Harvard’s Law School Dean Martha Minow issued an official statement that the incident…

“…was offensive and it violated the trust and respect we expect in our community. Many perceive it as anti-Semitic, and no one would see it as appropriate. It was an embarrassment to this institution and an assault upon the values we seek to uphold. The fact that speech is and should be free does not mean that hateful remarks should go unacknowledged or unanswered in a community dedicated to thoughtful discussion of complex issues and questions.”

Husam El-Qoulaq then posted this astounding “apology”: Continue reading →

Swastika Ethics: 8 Observations On The George Washington University “Hate Crime”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

swastika

I was recently reminded about the origins of the Nazi swastika, ironically enough, during the Cincinnati funeral service of my dear friend, Georgetown classmate,  lawyer and patriot Mitchell Dale, who died last summer. Looking down during a prayer, I was startled to see the Hindu version of the symbol in a mosaic imbedded in the church floor.

Oddly, the pastor and mourners weren’t arrested.

Yet last month, an unnamed Jewish student placed a small, bronze, Indian swastika on the bulletin board of his Jewish fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, in the university’s International House. The building had recently been the target of an unidentified vandal who drew three swastikas on the walls. After posting the swastika, the student stayed close to the bulletin board, intending to discuss it and the previous vandalism with observers. He briefly stepped away, unfortunately for him, and during that period a member of the student’s fraternity saw the swastika and called GWU’s campus police. They  filed a report and took the swastika as evidence. When the student found out the police had been called, he immediately came forward to authorities and said that he had posted the  image to spark a conversation about the ancient symbol, cultural appropriation, messages, perception…as in what used to be called “education.” He said he did not intend to offend anyone, noting in doing so that this was an Indian swastika, not a Nazi one. He had just returned from studying religion in India, and said he became fascinated by the idea that a symbol that was not one of hate could become so defined by hate.

GWU suspended the student and evicted him from university housing pending the outcome of five disciplinary charges. The university also kicked him off campus, and referred the incident to the District of Columbia police for investigation as a potential “hate crime.” He could face expulsion.

Ethics observations:

1. FIRE, Freedom for Individual Rights in Education, is on the case. Thank you, FIRE. FIRE Program Officer and attorney Ari Cohn wrote,

“GWU may not ignore thousands of years of history and effectively forbid all uses of the swastika because it was used by Nazi Germany. It’s ironic that the charges against the student illustrate the very point he was trying to make in the first place—that context is important and there’s much to be learned about the history of the swastika.”

2. Now the Hindu American Foundation is protesting as well. This is the wonderful aspect of diversity, and a warning to institutions and diversity hounds that diversity must cut in all directions, or is a sham. It is discriminatory for a university to demonize and censor an aspect of a world religion’s symbology and culture. Do you think the administrators at GW sufficiently understood this, or just didn’t care, going with what they perceived as the most powerful interest group?

3. The George Washington fiasco comes in the wake of other  colleges  responding to anti-Semitic swastika vandalism, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Continue reading →

Lena Dunham, Double Standards and the Jester’s Privilege

/ Jack Marshall / 96 Comments

Jewish DogLena Dunham—you know, the celebrity hyper-feminist, sister-molesting, slandering lying creator/writer/actress of HBO’s “Girls”?—-is again at the center of controversy. This is how people like Dunham, who is wan of talent or appeal so she has to manufacture ways to keep herself in the public eye, stretch out their lucky 15 minutes of fame to interminable lengths. They do it by regularly pissing people off, and requiring those who feel they have to defend her because she is on “the team” (Female, feminist, Democrat, “Pro-choice,” pro-gay, pro-gay marriage, progressive) to compromise whatever genuine values they have by insisting that her crummy behavior isn’t crummy after all.

Yes, she is an ethics corrupter.

Dunham’s latest foray into calculated offense is an alleged  humor piece inexplicably published by The New Yorker. Well, let me back that up: if you or I wrote it, publishing it would be inexplicable, because it’s just not very clever or funny. The New Yorker published it because Dunham is link bait.

The article is called Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz, and it begins,

“Do the following statements refer to (a) my dog or (b) my Jewish boyfriend?”

It is drawing fire from many sources because it invokes negative Jewish stereotypes for the “following statements” such as these: Continue reading →

“The Death of Klinghoffer” : The Metropolitan Opera Flunks Its Ethical Duty

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Death of Klinghoffer

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is scheduled to present John Adams’s 1991 opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer” this fall. [Full disclosure: Adams, then an unknown, was one of my professors in college] The opera is a dramatization of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking,in which the Palestine Liberation Front murdered the wheelchair-bound Jewish-American businessman Leon Klinghoffer. The opera has always been the target of Jewish and other critics who believe that it is too sympathetic to the Palestinians, and is thus anti–Semitic. Predictably (although for some reason the Met seemed not to be prepared for it) the Anti-Defamation League and conservative pundits are condemning the new production, typified by the reliably simple-minded Michele Bachmann, who denounced the Met for sympathizing with terrorists.

This is, and I state this without moderation or equivocation, is anti-cultural, anti-art, anti-free speech political correctness bullying from the right. This is an opera, and it, like any work of art, stands for itself. Whatever the political message of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” it is secondary to the main purpose of any opera, which is music and entertainment. The Met, as an organization dedicated to music and opera, should not be held to any standard in producing it other than whether it meets the company’s standards of excellence. An arts organization like the Met is apolitical, and should never allow the political or ideological messages of the artists whose work is presented there change its programming in any way. This means telling critics like those of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” be they advocacy organizations, would-be public censors or embarrassments to Congress like Bachmann to go fly a kite when they attempt to dictate what art is or isn’t “appropriate.” Continue reading →

The Progressive Clown vs. The Apoplectic Conservative Radio Host On Gaza: Jon Stewart, Funny But Irresponsible…Mark Levin, Uncivil But Right

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKu5rSTyP8

Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” riff on the Gaza conflict was praised to the skies by anti-Israel pundits, like MSNBC’s Cenk Uyger and the Daily Beast’s Dean Obeidallah as providing some kind of much needed moral clarity. In truth it was exactly the opposite, with the Obeidallah column unintentionally showing exactly what’s wrong with Jon Stewart.

Knowing that a disturbing number of Millennials (and an even more disturbing number of ignorant, impressionable older viewers who should know better) see the comedian as a truth-teller, Stewart makes no allowances in his comic routines for that fact. He intentionally encourages the idea that he is a legitimate pundit, then retreats to the convenient bunker of “Come on! I’m a comedian! Don’t take me so seriously!” when he is called out for lazy, misleading and biased—but funny! commentary. (Stewart criticizes Democrats with approximately the frequency of a lunar eclipse, which would be just fine for a comedian who didn’t pose as an objective critic of American politics.) Continue reading →

Ethics Indictments And Observations On “The Greatest Race Hoax Since Tawana Brawley.”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
Hey Oberlin! Can't you take a joke?

Hey Oberlin! Can’t you take a joke?

On  February 2013, the small, elite, ultra-liberal arts (both ultra liberal and ultra-arty) campus of Oberlin College was horrified by a series of racist and anti-Semitic posters, graffiti and anonymous emails. The classes were cancelled for intense self-examination and soul-searching; the news media reported on the shocking episode with dire reflections upon the increasing racial tensions in the U.S. Progressive pundits went further, flogging the story as proof of the assault on minority rights from the right, sparked by their rejection of a black President. From BET’s commentary on the Oberlin incidents:

“The sad truth is that the infection of intolerance is pervasive in American society in the age of Obama. We’re living in an era when Supreme Court justices consider the right to vote for African-Americans to be a form of “racial entitlement.” We’re in a period where Republican candidates for president cavalierly refer to the nation’s first Black commander-in-chief as the “food stamp president.” This is the period in American history that has seen the most highly orchestrated assault on minority voting since the end of Reconstruction. And in the midst of it are Republican elected officials boasting about it.in which two students made seemingly racist and other such for the purpose of getting a reaction on campus, not because they believed the hostile messages.  At least one of the two was an Obama supporter with strong progressive, anti-racist politics.”

It has now been conclusively confirmed by investigative reporters and bloggers that the perpetrators of the wave of apparent racial hate were two students, inseparable friends, who were not conservatives, Republicans or racists, but “pranksters” and provocateurs, who engaged in the conduct to see how the campus would “over-react.” One of the students, Dylan Bleier, had organized a voter drive for President Obama in 2008. His Facebook page announced him as a supporter of the ACLU, a Democrat, a member of the Green Party, and someone who placed “civil rights” at the top if his  interests and priorities. This means that there was not an outbreak of racism on one of the most liberal college campuses in America, but that two progressive students set out to make it seem that way—it was essentially a prank. Continue reading →

The Weiner Joke Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Conservatives will grandstand about declining standards of dignity and decorum in the U.S., happily blaming the decline of gentility and civil public expression on rappers, Hollywood liberals and Joe “This is a big fuckin’ deal” Biden, until a Democrat with a name ready-made for bad sex puns and double-entendres shows up, and then its a mad stampede to bad taste.

Wow. Clever.

Wow. Clever.

What is it with the Right: is everybody 12? From Rush Limbaugh (“Weiner is hard to swallow…”) to The Daily Caller (“Weiner blows his lead”) to the New York Daily News (“Cuomo Spanks Weiner!”) to dozens of websites that can’t resist versions of “Will Weiner pull out?” and “Weiner Exposed,”  to Drudge (“Weiner Goes Soft”) to CNS (“Boehner Won’t Bite On Weiner”) to, naturally, the reliably crude New York Post ( “Too Hard To Stop!’…”Tip of the Weiner”…”Obama Beats Weiner”…”Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out”…and on, and on–okay, it’s  abrand, I get it ), apparently conservative pundits and headline writers can’t resist seeking naughty snickers from obvious gags.  Continue reading →

Group Bigotry: Is This The Way It’s Going To Be? AGAIN?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I'm a fan of women's curves, but I expected their learning curve to be better than this.

I already covered this topic when Christiane Amanpour held an unrestrained “males are inferior managers because all the blood rushes to their penises” session on ABC’s “This Week” a few Sundays ago, but since it is becoming clear that the outbreak of gender bigotry in the media is more widespread than ABC, a second alarm is warranted.

This week’s Time magazine has a column by Meredith Melnick entitled “Why Women Are Better at Everything.” Among its contents:

•    “Recently in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch columnist David Weidner noted that women ‘do almost everything better’ than men — from politics to corporate management to investing.”

•    “What’s the problem with men? ‘There’s been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they’re doing, even when they really don’t know what they’re doing,’ John Ameriks, the author of the Vanguard study, told the New York Times.”

•    “Women, who have only 10% of the testosterone that men have, seem inured to the phenomenon, according to Coates.”

•    “So, basically, the more women around, the better, as the Journal’s Wiedner said. His column referred to a recent book by Dan Abrams called Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else.”

•    “…women are better soldiers because they complain about pain less. They’re less likely to be hit by lightning because they’re not stupid enough to stand outside in a storm. They remember words and faces better. They’re better spies because they’re better at getting people to talk candidly.”

•    “Of course, to most women none of this is much of a revelation.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What Is Wrong With This Statement?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wait...is there some problem with making Hitler jokes in France?

“The Festival de Cannes provides artists from around the world with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation. The Festival’s Board of Directors, which held an extraordinary meeting this Thursday 19 May 2011, profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the Festival. The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately.”

—- The Cannes Film Festival organizers, kicking Danish director Lars Von Trier out of the event (though his film remains in the competition for a prize) for some rambling, clearly (if ineptly) facetious comments he made to reporters in response to a question, referring to himself as a Nazi and saying that Israel was “a pain in the ass.”

This should be an easy one.