More on Barton Fink: Aggression and Intellectual Superiority

Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick
Jews and the Left

Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick

The recent high-profile firings of Rick Sanchez, Helen Thomas, and Octavia Nasr leave the eager-to-please among us with an uneasy feeling in their collective gut. What is the “proper,” socially-sanctioned way to react to such shocking displays of high-handed, sanctimonious, censorious overreach on the part of one’s party bosses, as it were?
Crystal clear as it seems that Sanchez, Thomas, and Nasr, all entrenched liberals with impeccable establishment credentials, were sacked for making critical remarks about Jews (or in Nasr’s case, mildly positive remarks about a deceased member of Hezbollah), such a assertion cannot be allowed to stand, because it would seem to reinforce “anti-Semitic” notions about Jewish control of the media, which are assuredly un-kosher to imply, much less state aloud. To criticize the principalities and powers for sacking critics of Jews thus means condoning anti-Semitism, which in today’s Zeitgeist quickly makes you little better than a genocidal and deranged Nazi. The gutless careerists, to be sure, want no part of that order! Read more
In the 2008 election, an overwhelming 83% of Jews voted for Obama. Since then, the Obama administration has not been sufficiently pro-Israel to satisfy the the pro-ethnic cleansing/apartheid crowd at AIPAC and the Weekly Standard. The empire struck back, organizing “The Emergency Committee for Israel” to try to panic Jewish voters into voting for Republicans.
It didn’t work. As Eric Alterman notes, Jews split 66 to 31 in favor of Democrats. This is down from the 83% for for Obama, but more in line with traditional patterns. Alterman points to a gap between the leadership and rank and file Jews. To some extent this is true, but explicitly Jewish organizations like the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and de facto Jewish organizations like the $PLC remain bastions of a multicultural America, closely associated with the political left. And, as Norman Podhoretz points out, citing an academic study, Jews “back Republicans only so long as they adopted the liberal position on ‘such bellwether issues … as immigration, abortion, gay rights and the separation of church and state.'” Read more
I have the feeling that Rick Sanchez will manage to return to a career in the national media. Jon Stewart concluded his bit on the affair by questioning whether Sanchez should have been fired for some “banal Jew baiting”; he also showed a clip where Sanchez condemned a guy with a swastika in the background who says he avoids the “Jew media.” So Sanchez’s heart is in the right place, at least when he “has time to think about it” and “isn’t worried about being fired anyway.”
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Hurty Sanchez | ||||
| www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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Christopher Hitchens wrote some odd things.
In the manner in which Sanchez spoke … there was something like a buried resentment. He didn’t descend into saying that there was Jewish control of the media
But that’s exactly what he did say. Which is why he got in so much trouble. The amazing thing about all the mainstream discussion is a failure to discuss the extent which that is true. Hitchens continues:
But he did imply that liberalism was linked to a single ethnicity.
Sorry, I didn’t get that. Sanchez certainly accused Stewart of being a bigot and of having “an establishment White liberal point of view.” Hitchens comes much closer to acknowledging Jewish power when he comments:
I ask myself if the world in which I have worked for so many decades—the intersecting and overlapping world of the news media, publishing, the academy, and the think-tank industry—is even imaginable without the presence of liberal American Jews. The answer is plainly no. Moreover, I can’t think of any other “minority” of which this is remotely true, unless it were to be the other minority from which I can claim descent: people of British or Anglophile provenance.
Hitchens’ claim that “British and Anglophile provenance” are even remotely on a par with Jewish involvement in these overlapping elites is far less than remotely true. And in any case, this high level of Jewish involvement means that Jews effectively hold veto power over things that can and cannot be said. That’s why Sanchez got fired in the first place.
Still, his statement is one of the remarkable comments on Jewish involvement in the information elites to appear from a mainstream media figure—a nice addition to Edmund Connelly’s collection. Coupled with his statements on the power of the Israel Lobby and his defense of Karel de Gucht, Hitchens is definitely being a bit edgy.
That reminds me of Philip Weiss‘s recent comments in his series “Note on my racism” (which bear a more extended discussion):
When you look at hives of Jewish writers, say the New Yorker Magazine, or the professors at Columbia University schools, I believe there is a strong kinship network at work. I’ve mentioned Lawrence Summers and Elena Kagan and Michael Walzer and Judith Shklar, their faculty networks at Harvard, as indicative of the same tendency.
Right. Elena Kaganas the poster child of Jewish ethnic networking. Jewish ethnic networking is the key to understanding contemporary information (and other) elites.
Hitchens wants Sanchez reinstated:
The best way to demonstrate the hidden influence of the chosen people would be for Jon Stewart and others to join me in calling for Rick Sanchez’s reinstatement. If it then didn’t happen, it would help us understand who really pulls the strings around here.
The idea seems to be that if Jews in the media like Hitchens (half-Jewish on his mother’s side) and Stewart call for Sanchez’s reinstatement but fail, then it would show that Jews really do pull the strings.
But the issue of how much influence Jews have on the media is not at all dependent on what happens in this case. There is already overwhelming evidence for Jewish power in the media and elsewhere based on a great many sources. Sanchez’s reinstatement, perhaps after a bit of groveling, certainly wouldn’t change that.
The good news is that statements of Jewish power are becoming more common all the time, both on the power of the Israel Lobby and the power of Jews the media. In the long run, frank discussion of Jewish power would also mean a frank discussion of how Jewish power compromises the interests of White Americans. That would really be the stuff of which revolutions are made. And even without an above-ground discussion, Whites with any degree of political sophistication are starting to “get it” and that in itself is a major step in the right direction.
The alert but not particularly conservative Politico webzine has an interesting item “Right sees law group tilting left” by Josh Gerstein (9/25/10):
The American Bar Association, which was dogged for decades by criticism over a perceived liberal bent, is risking reigniting that debate by taking bold stands on a pair of hot-button social issues.
At its annual meeting last month in San Francisco, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group passed a formal resolution, urging every state in the union to permit same-sex marriages.
In June, the ABA took what it acknowledged was an “extraordinary action” by filing a brief urging a federal judge in Arizona to block enforcement of that state’s highly controversial law intended to crack down on illegal immigration
What is going on? Apparently what is going on is that the ABA’s new president is Stephen Zack of Miami, of whom Politico says that he
defended the group’s support for same-sex marriage and its opposition to the Arizona immigration law as part of the organization’s broad duty to defend civil rights…
The fact that the public is sharply divided on the gay marriage issue and appears to broadly support the Arizona immigration law isn’t relevant to whether the bar group should speak out on those issues, Zack insisted. “If that was the touchstone then in the 50s, we should not have taken a stand opposing segregation,” Zack said.
Evidently it is a personal matter:
Zack said his background has made him acutely aware of the danger of depriving people of their rights. “I came from Cuba in 1961. I’m the first Hispanic-American president of the American Bar Association,” he said. “I keep that experience very close to me. To me, the loss of liberty is not a theoretical exercise. It actually happened.”
Another of those socially conservative Hispanics? Well, not quite.
The preface to an article by Zack on Latina Lista (Guest Voz: First Latino President-elect of American Bar Association speaks out about civic education [November 20, 2009]) says
Mr. Zack will be the first president in the ABA’s 131-year history who happens to be both Latino and Jewish.
And Zack himself says
In the early 1900s my grandfather had come to Cuba from Russia, looking for a better life, searching for freedom, hoping for the right to practice his religion and beliefs without persecution. For many years, he found that. He raised a family, worked hard and prospered. Unfortunately, there came a time when that changed for my family in Cuba.
When I was 13, we left Cuba to come to the United States. My grandfather became a refugee for the second time, once again having to flee his home in search of that better life…
Far from being Hispanic — his family spent apparently less than 60 years in Cuba –- Stephen Zack is yet another descendant of Russian Jews working off ancestral animosities against mythical Cossacks by wrecking the societies which so unwisely gave them shelter and hospitality.
Complain to Stephen N. Zack
John Graham is the lead author of the TOO article “Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic?”
Chapter 16 of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together is available here. Again, donations are of critical importance for finishing this important project. This immensely interesting and important chapter is the topic of the current TOO article. I solicit comments here.
Because a lot of people who read the blog don’t read the main articles and because the main page doesn’t have room for comment, this is notice of Solzhenitsyn’s Chapter 21. See here. Kevin M
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