Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Mea Maxima Culpa

I’m typing this post with one hand while attempting to remove my foot from my mouth with the other.

A reader wrote me this evening to say this:

Do not alienate the Jewish community. I personally do not know how many Jews read your blog, but we are your natural allies. Who is a stauncher ally than Israel against the threat of militant Islam? Americans have only been attacked on US soil twice. Israel lives with the reality, not the threat, but the reality of constant terror. Death to America is chanted all over the Islamic world, but not as much as Death to the Jews is chanted.

Referencing your post, “Beyond the Pale,” why would you feel the need to toss away such a natural ally? There is no call for belittling anti-Semitism. If I am not mistaken, you say that freedom of speech should be protected. I would die for Hargrove’s right to say Jews killed Christ, wrong as it may be. However, I think you need to make it more explicit that you are ridiculing Hargrove for adding offense to an unrelated party (Jews) in addition to ridiculing the state of Virginia for apologizing for slavery. Indeed, I understand you are making fun of the PC police. Still, the way you phrased your original post made it seem you meant that you supported Hargrove’s sentiments.

I know you mean well. As a moderate Democrat, I know you are not a crazy right wing intolerant Christian lunatic as the bleeding heart liberals would call you. You are a secular humanist, full aware of the dangers Islamofascism poses to the enlightened world. Are you a crusader? I should say so, though not in the vein the jihadists would accuse you. You crusade against an inhumane evil, against those would limit free speech in a misplaced sense of decency. When WWII threatened democracy all over the world, it was people who spoke up and fought against the Fascists that saved freedom.

Allah loves ya! (irony~)

His point is well-taken. Del. Frank D. Hargrove’s little aside about the Jews was so self-evidently ludicrous that I didn’t think I needed to point it out.

But now I know that I should have, and I will be clear: I do not support any version of the old canard about the Jews and Christ; I consider it a close cousin to the Blood Libel. Mr. Hargrove’s mention of it is at least as embarassing as the politically correct high dudgeon that arose in response to the rest of what he said.

Mel Gibson has managed to drive the idea into the mainstream, so that it is no longer obviously ridiculous.

When I’m feeling sardonic I get carried away, and obviously I’m not paying enough attention to how my words appear to you, our loyal readers.

I’m glad you all are keeping me in line; don’t hesitate to take me to task. I rely on you for it.

[Nothing follows]

16 comments:

Epaminondas said...

I don't think any special pointing out was needed.

The rep is probably a racist moron.

What else is there to say?
I went to school in Charlottesville from 67-71 and it's the only place outside of my gulf arab acquaintances I have seen real live racism. No shock that a state rep let's it out, or that ex Sen Allen being too stupid to name the monkey properly exposes both that and his undersoul simultaneously.

No, I don't think too much needs to be said...ot was pretty clear.

Someone like that probably sees the apology issue as not being needed for a bunch of now uppity....., well you know...

I thought it clear

scrilla said...

ummmm Mr. Hargrove made a valid point. i quote from your previous post:

"Hargrove said in the interview that slavery ended with the Civil War and added, “I personally think that our black citizens should get over it.” He also asked how far back apologies should go and wondered, “Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”"

Hargrove was clearly equating the two as equally ridiculous, not demanding an apology from Jews.

and seriously, i don't think we could do anything short of resurrecting hitler that would cause us to lose the jews as allies against islam.

scrilla said...

crucis don't forget that Communist slaughter is covered up mostly by American Communists in the media

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

I thought the original post was spot on. Hargrove made a clumsy "insensitive" comment, the reaction was over the top. He made a clumsy comparison to a ludicrous slur in order to demonstrate how ludicrous the slavery claims are. Wrong audience obviously, cause they apparently took both demands for ludicrous apologies seriously.

Surely that disproportionate resonse can be ridiculed without obligatory ading of 28 this-is-sarcasm-and-therefore-really-non-anti-semitic disclaimers, right?

Apparently not, the silly commenter reactions IMHO reinforced the original post.

I guess that the Baron's apology for making light of ludicrous demands for apologies compared to other ludicrous apologies is really just more satire. Otherwise it'd be ludicrous.

Those people really need thicker skins.

NM Dean said...

You're apologising for nothing and making yourself look ridiculous.

KG said...

Baron, no apology is necessary.
The first sentence of your post made perfectly plain where you stood - even for a first-time reader - and I'd have thought it impossible to misconstrue that.

Epaminondas said...

crucis3, after sitting across a voter registration tables in the 60's from some folks who I knew damn well wore sheets at night, it is my opinion, you have a problem.

That screed sounds an awful lot like past little speeches I have heard which marshal scant facts to justify an inner illness.

"Jewish holocaust industry"

That is simply a COVER for SICKNESS (don't bother using Finklestein, it puts you in bed with REAL denier defenders).
CYA

Epaminondas said...

By the way what others may perceive as 'thin skin' is NOT about the Holocaust it's about THIS

The Holocaust is nothing special...it's just the same old same old occurring at a moment it could be married to the might of an industrial western state.....and it is, apparently very alive and very well right now.

HERE

Epaminondas said...

Apology? Sorry fella, I've worked in civil rights, and YOU have a problem.

You say what the sheet fitters said, and use the exact same arguments. WORD FOR WORD, it's 1965 in Staunton, and Yazoo City by your arguments. WORD FOR WORD, get it???

Also like you, my gulf arab acquaintances make IDENTICAL WORD FOR WORD arguments.

WORD FOR WORD.

Hysteria?
Sorry, I've been held against trees by the pointy hats.
This is a trifle.
But that doesn't change the FACT that you are justifying an inner deviation with what you consider signifying facts.

By that reasoning all jews are saints as well.

Jonas Salk to you.
Felix Frankfurter to you
Louis Brandeis to you
ENTER XXXX jewish nobel winner here, out of ALL population proportion. (or perhaps those awards were due to undue influence, eh?)

So what?????

Anecdotal individuals are not signifying, otherwise GA Custer would be a model, and not Omar Bradley, or Joshua Chamberlain.

Sorry but YOU have a problem.
With jews.

Next you ask for my papers, right?

But don't worry, as americans who happen to be asian come to dominate by excelling performance many professions, including politics, no doubt people like you will find much to find fault with as 'them', and what 'they' do.

I just hope you are not an american.

But I fear by your syntax, you are.
Illness abounds.

Nevermind deicide, the 'jews' enslaved/killed 40,000,000 christians in Czarist Russia? Pretty good.


Explains how jews were SINGLED OUT in communist russia, from the beginning to the prevention of their leaving for Israel? UGH, don't bother.

Please, DO hold your breath. This conversation is over.

Baron Bodissey said...

crucis3 --

I'm not sure if any argument will reach you, but you're making a categorical error here.

Jews were over-represented among the Bolsheviks -- that is true -- because they were over-represented among Russian intellectuals, as they were in all countries. It was the intellectuals who gave us mass-murdering Bolshevism.

They weren't murdering millions in the gulag because they were Jews and their victims weren't Jews. They murdered them because it was politically expedient to do so, regardless of their race. Many thousands of Jews were among their victims.

The Jewish Bolsheviks came from Jewish families, but they themselves were atheists, and would have considered identification of their race or religion a "bourgeois atavism".

Hitler, on the other hand, killed Jews because they were Jews.

An important categorical distinction.

Asger Trier Engberg said...

Crucis3--

Come on... if you want fight it is ok, but you need to put forth arguments. It is not enough just to rabble off heresay and rumors.

And if you start swearing in a pharaoh voice, well that does not help you either.

If you want to engage in a discussion - well arguments are your only way to do that. Otherwise it is just a matter of blind faith, and that does not work well in the internet age, sorry.

Mike said...

Ummm, excuse me, but the only people who took violent exception to Jesus were his own people. The Romans had no beef with him, and it was at the agitation of the Pharisees and Saduccees that he was executed. You can split hairs that it was the Jewish **leadership** that killed Him, but it was the Jewish established order that had Jesus put to death. In that sense, "the Jews killed Jesus," but so what? God warned them hundreds of years before this, in the book of Isaiah that they would do this. Read Chapter 53, it says pretty bluntly, "you're going to kill the messiah, who didn't do a damn thing to bring it on Himself."

The important point, that Jew-hating groups like many parts of the Roman Catholic Church conveniently eschew is that Jesus died according to prophecy. God used the mistake of the 1st century Jewish establishment to save mankind, but that is a point lost on many "Christian groups." They conveniently forget that if the Jews had honored Him as the messiah, there would be no church today.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

"As a moderate Democrat, I know you are not a crazy right wing intolerant Christian lunatic as the bleeding heart liberals would call you."
How many meaningless epithetic tags can be crammed into one sentence? As for epaminondas' lame attempt to burnish his credentials by "I worked in civil rights", does he realize he is associating himself with such luminaries as Rev. Jackson who has perfected extortion to an art form? Not that I would indulge in the "guilt by association" fallacy.

M. Simon said...

Baron,

Pointing out stupidity however, inartfully did not make you anti-Jewish and I never considered you in that light ever.

Your Zionist Friend,

Simon

BTW here is something to cheer you up:

Christian Zionism

M. Simon said...

Sad to say if Hitler had been nice to the Jews there would have been no Israel.

History is a bitch.

Ezer Was A Savage

Is a story about a miracle in 1948.

Captain USpace said...

That Hargrove is an a-hole. Everyone knows that blacks should never get over slavery, they should just let their anger continue, so as to hold them back so they can vote for the democrats to keep treating them like victims.


absurd thought -
God of the Universe just
admitted he killed Christ
.