![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.keshertalk.com/nav-commenters.gif)
« Idiotarianism Made Easy | Home | Straining at gnats »
March 08, 2007
Round three of Jewcy snipefest
The Jewcy snipefest plods gamely into its third day. So far, John Derbyshire grumbles, neither Matt Yglesias not Design Observer have deigned to notice this artificial exercise.
In today's installement, John tries to muster some interest in our salvo of yesterday.
Listen. mate: If you had two kids with combined ages 25, two cars with combined ages 24, no job, teeth falling out, a damp basement, a garage that needs painting, and taxes still to do in mid-March, you’d be resentful and enervated too. Whyn’t you try it? Huh? Huh?
You're right, John, all I do is blog. I have no idea how the other half lives.
Our house intellectual Benjamin Kerstein tells me he is preparing a blistering erudite rebuttal to John's mild bewilderment about Ben's Zionism, and Kesher Talk blogger Asher Abrams threatened to come out of retirement to castigate John as an antisemite. Yup, we know how to generate controversy here at Kesher Talk.
Daphne has not yet put in an appearance today, even though we have not made any jokes about spanking; I think the Jewish content of this blog makes her uncomfortable.
UPDATE: More Derbyshire, to Daphne, below. i give John kudos for trying to stay interested enough to write every day. I hope he's getting paid. I wish I were getting paid. (Mike, am I getting paid? At least 2 free tickets to something?):
That keys nicely into your skirt-clutching squeals of horror at Evelyn Waugh referring to someone (a third party! in a private letter!) as “a terrible yid.” Now, Waugh was not a very nice person, and was furthermore a crashing snob. (I tremble to think how he would have described me, in private, to a third party. “A terrible oik,” very likely.) I’m sorry but—get ready to clutch your skirts again—I don’t see anything wrong with him writing that.I’m a philosemite myself, and have a paper (and pixel) trail to prove it; but I don’t see anything wrong with disliking Jews in the generality. There are things you can legitimately dislike—for example, the relentless hunting for a writer’s one mildly anti-Semitic remark, and the shrieks of triumph when you find it, and the fierce anathemas and readings-out that follow. Though a disagreeable person (read his son’s memoir for the grisly details), Waugh was a superb writer with a perfectly normal range of prejudices.
Of all the European countries, Britain has been the one in which Jews have lived most securely, have prospered best, have felt least excluded, for three hundred years and more; and all that has been in an atmosphere of mild and genteel anti-Semitism, of the sort illustrated by Waugh’s remark. As a comfortable accommodation with the realities of human nature, this is hard to beat. We are certainly not going to beat it by screaming and finger-pointing at every expression of negativity by one group against another. Yet we are well on the way to outlawing such expressions. This will not end well. This will not end well.
I agree. Let's choose our targets carefully, lest everyone yawn when we cry "wolf!" for the 8000th time.
But I don't control what my co-bloggers write.
Judith | 03/08/07 at 07:52 PM | Categories: - Around the blogosphere
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6289
