Why is no one commenting on my post? It's feeling neglected. Come on folks, it was funny--a blood libel and nouveau riche at the country club twofer--you should at least be admiring my cleverness. I think you all hate Jews.
Hey, at least you (& Alameida) got trackback spammed.
Tia, dude -- the contest, clever and funny as the idea for it is, is limited to Jewish cartoonists for a reason (which doesn't mean you shouldn't have posted the idea, just that I'm not surprised people aren't commenting). I'm trying to picture circumstances under which I'd riffle through a bunch of anti-Semitic cartoons and pass judgment on whether they were funny or not, and all of the circumstances involve airborne trayf.
I may be slightly more sensitive about this than most because I was raised by (polite, civilized, reasonably mild) anti-semites, but I am so not going there.
Sorry Tia, I know.
It's a lot easier, whether it should be or not, to be light-hearted about sexual exploitation, at least verbally, than it is to be about anti-semitism. In both cases you would think there was sufficient mutual confidence--you know trolling when you see it-- that some exploring was possible at the edges. Why isn't that true?
For clarity, LB, I'm Jewish enough for Hitler, and if I draw a cartoon, I am thereby a cartoonist.
My parenthetical was meant to indicate that I assumed you were, and that I really didn't think there was anything wrong with you talking about participating in the contest. For me, however, not so much with the being Jewish, and knowing that there's still a fair amount of genteel anti-Semitism out there from all sorts of people, commenting approvingly on an anti-Semitic cartoon idea isn't possible, and I'd expect a lot of non-Jews to share my inhibitions.
Okay. But no one can blame me if this blog gets all high brow and sensitive and devolves into group hugs. I am trying my best to lower the tone, and I feel dang unappreciated.
My grandmother was pretty anti-Semitic, and my cousin married a Jewish, atheist, son-of-a-rabbie who nonetheless forced her to convert. I think my grandmother made her peace with that, although, I have to say, that if this guy was the only Jew in the world, anti-semitism would be fully justified.
Once though I was staying with my grandmother at her assisted living place, and since the breakfast options weren't terribly appealing (the eggs were awful), I ordered an English muffin. Then I saw a woman at another table with a rather large nose who was eating a bagel with cream cheese. I said, "oh she's eating a bagel!" Evidently my tone wasn't quite right, because I meant to convey that I wished that I had known that they had bagels, because I would have ordered one. Then my grandmother whispered rather loudly, "I think she's Jewish." Then I said, "Well G, I eat bagels too." And then her eyes widened a bit, and she said, "Really?" And I said, "Yes." I think it may have done some good in widening her horizons, since I was her favorite grabdchild.
son-of-a-rabbie
At least he probably knew his way around town pretty well.
I was tempted to leave a comment saying "god, ENOUGH WITH CARTOONS ALREADY" but I figured it was rude, and I'm trying not to be such a comment hog b/c Ben tells me it's rude.
It kind of surprises me that highly-literate young people have memories of genteel anti-semitism. I was under the impression that in the educated middle class, Judaism's prestige is at an all time high, and almost everybody now has inlaws, etc. My sister, who is something of a fundie, stayed with me overnight Friday, and while I was driving her to the airport out Devon Av., I was showing off by explaining how to tell black hats from Satmar Hasidim, etc., and her ingenuous reaction was "Cool!"
Why is no one commenting on my post?
Sheesh, you Jews are so sensitive.
I thought that cartoon was pretty funny, but it was topped by the joke about the jewish parrot (in the comments).
It kind of surprises me that highly-literate young people have memories of genteel anti-semitism.
My family roots are working-class Queens and both my parents are still, currently, politely anti-Semitic. (I don't want to badmouth them too much. If they were the worst anti-Semites in the world, no one would ever notice it as a problem, I doubt that either has ever done anything concrete to damage anyone in service of their anti-Semitism, they were delighted when Dr. Oops was engaged to a Jewish doctor, and they take being berated about it with a certain degree of acceptance that they're in the wrong. But they definitely have opinions that come under the rubric of "What's wrong with Jews.") They're both savvy enough about what's publically acceptable that I doubt many people outside the family circle would think of them as anti-Semites.
Nonetheless, given that one tends to assume that the people one knows well are at least somewhat typical, I tend to assume that there's a fair amount of polite anti-Semitism out there, even among the well-educated middle class.
14: That's one of my favorite jokes! I actually thought about telling that joke in the post, and then later I saw it was in the very post I linked to.
#12: Well, also the "having inlaws, etc" thing really is a pretty east coast-centric world view, no? In other parts of the country, the public profile of Jews just isn't as high as it is there. I knew a few people who were Jews, growing up, but the vast, vast majority of the folks in my region of the country are Catholic immigrants.
ok, WTF is this "having inlaws" tripe?
The best tripe comes from in-laws.
Anybody else notice that the front page only has about 24 hours' worth of posts?
by having inlaws, I mean that among the people I grew up with, midwestern protestant educated middle class, it's a rare family today where someone hasn't married a jew. I've actually been quite curious about this, (it's me in my family), so much so that I've been conducting a kind of informal survey for years.
Now I grant you, this is not a representative sample of the whole country. Small cities and college towns is as uncosmopolitan as we get; my sister is the only truly rural member of my family.
Still, it means something. Two generations ago, my class was the backbone of isolationism, and would have been the bedrock of President Lindbergh's support.
Okay, I'm Jewish, so I'll go ahead and say that I think Tia's cartoon idea is hilarious.
So are we allowed to talk about how Seinfeld is good, now that our esteemed host and founder isn't posting and commenting? Because this conversation should be reminding everyone of when the dentist converts to Judaism for the jokes. In fact, I was about to tell a story about how one of my roommates and I have developed a sign language symbol for making jokes about jews, then realized I'd have to note that I'm jewish and he's half in order to justify myself in making said jokes.
then realized I'd have to note that I'm jewish and he's half in order to justify myself in making said jokes.
So now that you've done that, are you going to tell the story?
The anti-Dentite episode is one of my favorites, w/d.
No, b/c Seinfeld is overrated and its popularity has grown tiresome.
You really do hate America, don't you, B?
Jews are controlling America, so same diff.
26: Oh, you just put you just put one finger from each hand up on the left and right side of your forehead (resembling horns) in order to indicate that a joke about a stereotypical quality of jews could be made in the current situation. It's quite useful. Yet another reason I'd be going to hell, if it existed.
America is overrated and its popularity has grown tiresome.
I love the Jews, though. Some of my best friends are Jews. But none of my inlaws, because, really: there are limits.
So would it be gilding the lily if I had a toles-esque mini-cartoon at the bottom saying "I don't think I'll leave a tip"?
I'd like to say here that my Irish working-class family from Queens was not/is not anti-semitic. But we were the progressive branch that used to get into arguments with the other branches from the New Deal onwards.
I can't help it. I look at the post title, and see "Teh Spastic".
#17: While I'm certain I must have met some prior to this, nobody had ever been identified to me as Jewish, so the first Jewish person I knew as such was at summer camp after the 6th grade. At the time, my sum total knowledge of modern Judiasm was 1) they didn't believe in Jesus, and 2) they didn't eat pork. The first seemed reasonable enough, though the second seemed utterly insane and probably some divine punishment for not believing in Jesus.
Anyhow, we were eating breakfast and I watched this fellow, Ted, eat a strip of bacon. This completely upended fully half of my preconceptions about the faith's adherents. Trying to make sense of the situation, I said to him, "I thought you were Jewish?" To which he replied without missing a beat, "When it's convenient."
So, I mentally replaced "don't eat pork" with "very, very quick with a joke."
Laughing all the way to HELL, you mean.
I'd never heard anyone make an anti-semitic remark until I was in my late teens and had a friend who was Jewish and prone to making self-deprecating quasi-anti-semitic jokes.
In fact, I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've ever heard someone in the UK make an anti-semitic remark where the person making the remark wasn't themselves Jewish and making some kind of a joke.
I have actually experienced Anti-Semitism first hand; when I was in first grade I was bullied by a couple of kids, one of whom used to sing "Jesus Loves Me" in such a way as to make me uncomfortable (among other things he did which I've forgotten). This kept up until I finally told the teacher, who sat us down and gave us a speech about the Holocaust which went right over my head (and I assume his) but did get him to leave me alone.
I'm not sure that this really qualifies as Anti-Semitism in the proper sense, because I doubt he or his family had deep-rooted prejudices; it was just something he could do to bother me, and he jumped on it. It was unpleasant, though.
I was once accused of anti-Semitism because I reacted with shock when a guy I'd just met (friend of a friend) said he was Jewish. He wasn't inclined to accept my explanation that I was actually shocked because he'd just finished patronizing explaining to me, quite seriously, that some remark I'd made betrayed the "spirit of Christmas" (it was the holiday season).
It's true, I disliked him. But I maintain that was because he was an asshole, rather than because he was a Jew.
Shoot, my attempt to do a strikethrough on "patronizing" didn't work.
I was actually once accused of anti-Semitism for not liking Seinfeld. I said something along the lines of "I'm from New York. I know people like that and they're irritating rather than funny," and my interlocutor bristled and said "What does 'people like that' mean?" Responding with "Whiny neurotics" didn't make her happy.
In case anyone else wants a story to tell which begins like 41 and 44, I accuse you (where "you" means "all people who satisfy the first part of this conditional") of anti-Semitism.
What is this, the return of the repressed or some other Jewish bullshit theory?
One of my closest friends from college is converting to Orthodox Judaism (from Baha'i, of all religions), and her temple in Chicago was recently vandalized by white supremacists. I had no idea that anti-Semitism was still that virulent, especially in major urban areas, but she says that non-Jews just don't know about much of the time. There's a kinda happy ending in that there was an interfaith event condemning anti-Semitism at the temple a week later. Apparently, there was even a strong Muslim contingent in addition to the Catholic priest from down the street (who spoke and is apparently good friends with the rabbi), Protestants, and Baha'is.
46: I'm not sure about that, perhaps you mean "eternal return," which I believe is a feminist theory about the patriarchy always reasserts itself, or possibly about how all heterosexual sex is rape.
A synagogue in Sacramento was burned a few years ago. Around the same time someone was burning American flags and throwing them onto the bushes next to my synagogue, presumably attempting to set it on fire. It happened several times but never worked. So yeah, it's out there.
48: My Freudian theory is crap, I meant the idea that one "jokes" about things that one really thinks and the like. Plus, a pun on "repressing."
Oh, I promise I know less Freud than you do, and certainly less than Tia does. I just took 46 to be an unserious statement of one theory and responded in kind.
Tia was once accused of being anti-Freudian, and then...
No, good lord, not serious at all. I mean, I was being an asshole, but a Mineshaft asshole. Not the other kind.
53: We seem to be having some kind of massive and repeated miscommunication. About the only thing in this thread I've said sincerely was that Seinfeld is good, and I've read everything you were saying as kidding around as well.
Seinfeld sucks! And I hate Jews! Also, all sex is rape!
Also, all sex is rape!
Not sex with Jews.
45--Hmm. I deleted a comment of mine in which misplaced philosemitism, combined with a genuine ignorance that there actually were people who didn't like Jews, got me accused of anti-semitism in a way that made me very very sad. The worst is that looking back on it, my older self thinks my younger self should have been more PC and held my tongue.
#57: That must be why I'm such a man-hating feminist then; I've never fucked a Jew.
(I don't think. Now I'm going to have to go down the list and make sure.)
I once submitted a cartoon to a contest and got accused of anti-semitism.
59: if you want to change that, you have my number.
you have my number
Which, as with all Jews, is 666.
Why is no one commenting on my post?
Sorry, I was vampirizing the local Muslim orphanage. You were saying?
You know, I once offered a ride--in my car--to a guy who was walking in the snow. He asked me to come up to his place when I dropped him off, and when I said no thanks, he asked if I was sure and told me he was into pagan sex magic. Maybe I missed my chance.
pagan sex magic
Sure, it seems like fun, until he pulls out the rabbit.
I have your number too, Ben. Not sure how your fucking me would put B right with the Jews, though.
I'm pretty sure he was into pagan sex magick.
All my sentences end like, this.
I'm not sure either, SB, but (granting certain assumptions about gender) it's worth a shot.
pagan sex magick
Much more interesting, and no rabbits.
I didn't ask him to spell it.
I may have to give more thought to this theory that sleeping with all identifiable ethnic groups will ensure me ghetto passes come the revolution.
I mean, of course, "representatives from all identifiable ethnic groups."
Come the revolution, B, you'll need the hero.
but (granting certain assumptions about gender) it's worth a shot.
Worst pickup line ever?
The worst pickup line I, personally, was ever on the recieving end of was, "you really should fuck me. I bet you'd come really easily."
The question, apo, is which side will you be on? B/c I ain't sleeping with The Man.
Worst pickup line ever?
It certainly falls well short of Ol' Reliable.
Good, I'm in then.
Favorite pickup line that no one has ever actually used: "hey, baby, let's play house. You can be the screen door and I'll bang you all night long."
This explains a lot. I blame mathematics.
I don't buy the logic there. The proof might make sense in Ben's LiberalIvoryTowerLand, but in the course of my fieldwork, talking to real Americans, Ol' Reliable has proven much more effective than "Betcha ten bucks it won't fit in your mouth."
Does Ol' Reliable actually make some kind of sense, or is the idea that the person on the receiving end will reason that the kind of person who might deliver it is dangerously unstable, and hence should be mollified?
It's a Christian thing, Ben. You wouldn't understand.
It's generally unwise to mollify a dangerously unstable person by agreeing to get naked with them. IME.
Did you just fly in, baby? 'Cause boy are your arms tired.
It appears the pendulum has swung.
12: My gardmother died 10 years ago at the age of 85. My Mom's family are all fairly late breeders. Her grandmother had her only son in 1910 at the age of 40. I think that my Mom's paternal family was relatively liberal, though Republican, about these things. I know that his fairly Yankee law firm was one of the first to hire Irish lawyers.
My Mom's mother became a Roman Catholic when they were living in France. Maybe that's where she picked some of it up.
"The worst pickup line I, personally, was ever on the recieving end of was, 'you really should fuck me. I bet you'd come really easily.'"
Am I wrong in suspecting that's an even worse pick-up line from a woman to a het man than from a het man to a het woman?
Given the eighty-bazillion posts I've made over the years on anti-Semitism, I don't think I need to say that, yeah, there's still a noticeable amount out there in today's America (and specifically at times on college campuses) (though it helps to have a bit of paranoia to spot it), and I'm pretty sure I've written in comments here before (probably more than once, but that was generations ago, I 'spect) about my mother being asked (utterly seriously) by a number of folks if they could see her horns on her hitchhiking trip to visit my uncle in boot camp Down South, but that during WWII, to be sure.
My own experiences have been relatively minor. As I've mentioned a few thousand times here and there, my favorite quite innocent experience was the long conversation in a Seattle workplace with a recent graduate of Seattle Pacific U. who had never, ever, met a Real Jew, and had a long questionaire she gave forth with verbally as to But Why Don't Jews Believe In Jesus, and many similar questions as to the inexplicable and stubborn views of the The Jews on this and related topics, concluding with (dead seriously) "Do Jews celebrate Halloween?"
I refrained from explaining that that was the bestest time to get Christian baby blood to drink (though it is!). I probably wouldn't have gotten my share of The Banks Payment that month, after all, if I hadn't.
Hillel centers getting concrete blocks through their windows, and that sort of thing, though, was last year.
But nowadays all anyone remembers Gregory Peck for is To Kill A Mockingbird, if that.
Not so many big budget anti-anti-Muslim films out of Hollywood, yet, though, besides Edward Zwick's The Siege. Some smaller independent flicks.
Line I'm holding in reserve: "Funny, you don't look Scientologicalist."
The idea that there's a swinging pendulum which results in discussions of apostropher's cock is a result of a dualistic mindset. In fact, the "swinging pendulum" simply is apostropher's cock itself—no more and no less.
Benjamin w-lfs-n, "On the Very Idea of a Cock-Pendulum Scheme", Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (forthcoming).
Interestingly, this makes apostropher's one of the few cocks known to possess a period.
72-3: BP, judging by my ex-brother-in-law and his brother, just let the Portuguese-Americans pass right on by. Do two Armenians or something instead.
No offense intended to any Portuguese Americans on this thread, of course. Unless you are my ex-brother-in-law or his brother.
Is "Portuguese" a distinct ethnic group? Can't I just fuck a Spaniard and get credit for the entire peninsula, at least?
On the pre-w-lfs-n view, one must hold either that the pedulum organizes apostropher's cock, or that it "copes" or "fits" apostropher's cock in some way. But w-lfs-n shows that neither of these is coherent.
Can't I just fuck a Spaniard and get credit for the entire peninsula, at least?
Try asking a Basque separatist.
94: Of course not. But you can do a Brazilian and round up.
Can I do Gael Garcia Bernal and check off "Hispanic"?
95: Betcha ten bucks it won't fit your pendulum, SB.
92 is excellent.
89: A friend of mine in college from ________, Illinois (a small town not too far from the Eastern bank of the Mississippi), had some disturbing stories about his grandparents, saying that if I ever met them and mentioned my religion, I would get something like the request to see my horns.
The only experience I've had of something that might have been anti-semitism was around 6th grade, but given how Jewish my town was I think the person just didn't realize how what she was saying ("why don't you go back to Germany (she had no reason I can think of to name that country other than that my last name sounds German, though the most famous person to have had it was Danish) or where ever you're from") could be taken.
That is, if the pendulum is released at some point, P, the period is defined as the time required for the pendulum to swing along its path and return to point P.
But is it not the case that the pendulum will never return to that point, a principle underlying many seemingly dramatic physics demonstrations?
You know, come to think of it, I have a friend who I met in college who had never met a Jew before he moved away from home. Of course, he'd never eaten an avocado, either.
I was in college the first time I ate an avocado.
I've never eaten an avocado since attaining majority.
Dude, that's just sad.
I remember that the Residential Advisor on our floor was just incredibly impressed when he found out I could eat with chopsticks. And people wonder why I hate the midwest.
I don't really care for the texture of avocados. They feel rotten.
You're a freak. You probably don't like guacamole or sushi or mangoes, either.
I know people from the suburbs of Chicago who had never met anyone Jewish until they came to college.
(They probably had, I figure, but didn't know it. Still strange.)
I like guacamole, I eat sushi regularly. Mangoes are okay, but if I ranked fruit, they'd come in pretty low. Fine for juice.
Mangoes only "okay." That's it. I'm not sleeping with you.
I also prefer bananas to be green at the ends and want pears underripe enough to cruch like an apple.
I like mangoes. Guacamole's okay. I've never had sushi.
I'm not sleeping with you.
Your loss. Just don't come crying to me when the Portuguese beat the shit out of you.
I'll have Gael Garcia Bernal to protect me. He's Mexican, I bet he likes avocadoes *and* mangoes.
101: frictionless pendulum in vacuum will return to the same location, duh.
One time witnessed pendulum demonstration, but with older gentlemen who senile-ly leaned perceptibly forward during the swing and got a bowling ball in the face after a few seconds.
Very depressing, but made me like physics.
And I don't hate avocados. There's a place here that makes BLTs with avacado (and aļoli), and they are damn tasty.
If I were immortal I'd probably have time to eat 6.02214199 × 10²³ avocados.
w/d: My last name sounds German, though the most famous person to have had it was Danish.
So your last name is Rask, after Rasmus?
frictionless pendulum in vacuum will return to the same location, duh.
Would you eat them sliced, or as guacamole?
Why not halved, with a little balsamic vinegar and a spoon?
guacamolarity: the proportion of avocado that makes up a given preparation of guacamole? Help me out here.
General Tompiates,
Guárdate los aguacates,
Ríete pero no me mates.
Which method you use depends on the prevailing norms. You wouldn't want to offend your lunch date's sense of guacamorality.
But, having given offense, it may still be possible to guacamollify your date by switching to a different method.
#126: Where is that from? A kid's rhyme? It's awesome!
It's from a short story by Carlos Fuentes that I read in high school. I forget the title.
That's a good point, eb. I'll have to guacamull it over.
Of course, if your date exhibits radically different value systems, you should be careful! He or she might be a poorly-trained spy for a foreign power. Consider the lines from Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money": "I went home with a waitress / And we smoked a bowl / How was I to know / She was a guacamole?".
You'll Drink Your Orange Juice and Like It, Comrade
There's a Cyprus citrus surplus
Citrus surplus Cypriotic.
No Sicilian citrus surplus
But a Cyprus citrus surplus
Not a Cyprus citron surplus
But a Cyprus citrus surplus
Not a Cyprus citrus circus
But a Cyprus citrus surplus.
It's a special citrus surplus
"Just a surface citrus surfeit,"
Says a cryptic Coptic skeptic.
But the bishop in his surplice
Certifies the surfeit citrus -
In his surplus Sunday surplice
Certifies the cirtus surfeit
Who'll assimilate the surplus
Siphon off the Cyprus citrus?
Sipping at the citrus cistern
Who'll suppress the Cyprus surplus?
Says the Soviet to Cyprus,
"Send us all your surplus citrus;
This is just a simple sample
Of Socialist assistance.
Should you show a similar surplus
In the simmering summer solstice
Send a summons to the Soviet
For surplus citrus solace.
Now on Cyprus they're all reading
Victory by Joseph Comrade.
Is "Tompiates" a character, or a name that has some kind of symbolic significance? I'm thinking "tomar," ok, but what is "piates"?
The best way to understand your date's values is to guacamile in her shoes.
Tompiates means testicles, B. Look it up.
I did look it up, but my Spanish-English dictionary isn't as good as it should be. Dang. Okay, now the poem is much better. Duh.
Tompiates is the nickname of the protagonist's grandfather (I think), who was a general in the Revolution. It's apparently a slang term for "testicles," as apostropher has pointed out while I was writing this comment. Which fits the rhyme, which is supposed to have been sung by his troops, quite well.
Right, and it makes the rhyme funnier, since aguacates / tompiates rhymes both sound and sense. Riamosnos indeed.
re: 108's "I know people from the suburbs of Chicago who had never met anyone Jewish until they came to college."
That doesn't seem that surprising to me, but then I'm not American so don't know that much about the racial/ethnic homogeneity of the suburban mid-West.
I'd never met anyone I knew to be Jewish until I was in my late teens. For that matter, there were two black kids at my primary school and one at my high school and until I was about 20 those were more or less the only black people I'd ever seen either.
Small-town Scotland can be pretty racially homogenous -- in my high-school of around 1600 pupils I think there were around 15 kids who weren't white.
Worst pickup line, heard at a fraternity's Halloween party during the bobbing for apples:
He: You like apples?
She: Um, yeah...
He: How 'bout we go upstairs and fuck, how do ya like them apples?
In high school, we formulated, but never had the stones to employ, the following line: "Fuck me if I'm wrong, but isn't your name Brunhilda?"
108's pretty close to my experience. Pretty much a bubble. I knew a handful of Jewish kids in high school, but my hometown was very majority Catholic (Like, six major churches in a mile radius kind of majority.). As a kid, as far as I was concerned, Judaism was a religion. I never heard of any of the stereotypes outside of reading The Merchant of Venice and some of the Canterbury Tales. This means a lot of TV I think went over my head.
It was a bit of a shocker to discover much later that people still took these stereotypes seriously, or that there was discrimination, or such a thing as a Jewish Ivy, or that Larry Summers' comments about investment bankers were rooted in a longstanding cultural prejudice I'd never heard of.
And it's not like Pgh. doesn't have a thriving Jewish community, either. Welcome to Calabubbleville.
I didn't think it was possible anymore for someone to grow up not knowing anyone Jewish, but I keep being surprised by meeting people who tell me I'm the first Jewish person they've met. Such pressure!
I know I'm the first Real Live Jew for at least one of my carpool-mates. I'll have to ask them about avocadoes...
Turning back to the original point of the post (sorta, well, not really), the Muslim prohibition against depictions of Mohammed makes me undescribably sad, because it means we're not likely ever to see their equivalent of The Passion of the Benny Hill. So much potential.
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