"I don’t know if you’ve been on comment sections on most news articles, but it’s pretty f-----g normal. As you know, it’s incredibly normal. But the one thing I will say is I don’t believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end antisemitism or to gain understanding. I don’t believe in that. It’s the wrong way for us to approach it.... Dave said something in the 'SNL' monologue that I thought was constructive, which, 'It shouldn’t be this hard to talk about things.' And that's what we're talking about. Whether it be comedy or discussion or anything else, if we don’t have the wherewithal to meet each other with what’s reality, then how do we move forward?"
Said Jon Stewart, quoted in "Jerry Seinfeld says 'subject matter' of Dave Chappelle's 'SNL' monologue 'calls for a conversation'/Chappelle's opening routine on last weekend's episode of 'SNL' has been criticized for 'normalizing antisemitism'" (Fox News).
The headline writer must really not like Jon Stewart... or maybe he just didn't read the bottom half of the article. If you're curious what Seinfeld said, it was much more distanced and wary: "I did think the comedy was well-executed, but I think the subject matter calls for a conversation that I don’t think I’d want to have in this venue." That's three "I thinks"s in one sentence.
Perhaps that wariness is more indicative of genuine fear of anti-Semitism. But Seinfeld, it seems, has always stayed in neutral territory, and social and political discord is Stewart's milieu.
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39 comments:
What Dave said about Jews is nothing compared to what leftists have been saying about white people.
And by leftists, I mean up to and including the President.
i think it's Still verbotten to use the word n-word.. Isn't it? I mean, there ARE Still rules
How is it anti-semitism to say that Jews dominate Hollywood, or the corporate legal business? They do.
They didn’t accomplish this by conspiracy. Ashkenazi Jews are the highest IQ group in the world. I’ve been out of the corp legal biz for 25 years, but Jews were 1/3 of the partners in the highest ranking firms… because they’re so damned smart and talented at business.
That 1960s pop music explosion was to a great degree the work of Albert Grossman, who created the Woodstock scene and managed just about every one of the legendary acts. I knew him. He was an incredibly smart Jew and a superb businessman.
What sort of insult is it to say that Ashkenazi Jews are the smartest, most adept businessmen in the world? Yeah, those who don’t have their IQ and skills are mighty jealous. Me too, at times.
What Kevin said.
I distinctly remember Jon Stewart announcing 20+ years ago on the Daily Show that Hollywood was making a Spider-Man movie. The punchline was that, since Hollywood is run by Jews, Spider-Man should call himself Spiderman. Irving Spiderman.
I never watched the Daily Show, but I watched Comedy Central, and they thought it was funny enough to re-use the clip in promos.
I can't see a substantive difference between Stewart's joke and Chappelle's.
Routine social practice:
1. Some academic or theorist creates a complex, nuanced, and through analysis.
2. A popularizer (student; media) doesn't understand and bastardizes the ideas into mush.
3. A political subgroup (left and right) runs with #2 and never understands #1 at all.
I find it ironic that 'normalize' is the routine critique used by the left. Normalize = norm = common = average = mainstream = accepted. This is from the same group that preaches 'diversity' morning noon and night. You can't emphasize NORMAL VIEWPOINTS and DIVERSE VIEWPOINTS at the same time.
It was funny. That's what counts. Seinfeld fans know that.
Shouting Thomas said...How is it anti-semitism to say that Jews dominate Hollywood, or the corporate legal business? They do.
Jews are concentrated in certain disciplines because 75-125 years ago, they were excluded from many others. Similar to how the Irish went into police and fire departments, Chinese and Italians opened restaurants, Southeast Asians run motels and convenience stores. That's where the opportunities were when those immigrants were first trying to break in to American society.
So who exactly was at all surprised that a Black, American convert to Islam is less than loving to the Jewish faith? He could have gone off on Harvey Weinstein's ongoing rape trial under his shtick of "Keeping It Real" about Hollywood, and been just as condemned. My only question is, "Was he funny?"
I grew up with anti-abortion Catholicism, and dead baby jokes. The transgression nature of comedy demands offense to those with selective sensitivity.
The original Hollywood Reporter interview.
Ray Benson bills himself as "the biggest jew in show business"
I've never heard a complaint.
John Henry
OK- I'll step in it again. I'll apologize to you, Ann, for this length. Anti-Semitism has always existed and always will. But there has been, for a long time, an accepted, taught, nurtured anti-Semitism within the Black community. Interestingly, because of our own history, Jews have always been at the forefront of trying to help or work with the Black community. But as is often the case in human nature- you hate those who impose themselves on you as 'helpers'. So maybe it grew out of that. But you can take any of the old stereotypes and tropes about Jews and know that they are dogma within the Black community. And no one says anything about it. it's just accepted- even as they demand the rest of us bend knee to their every need and never, ever say a bad word about them.
So I think Chappelle's monologue was both hilarious and telling. No one wants to take, head on, the question of rampant anti-Semitism in the Black community and the fact that it's just accepted. Today's version has gotten to a seriously high level. You would think someone in that community might address it. But no...
Being anti- someone else is part of who we are as humans. We all have our own biases. But mostly they are small, petty views on people that we keep to ourselves. ALL OF US. That said, the anti-Jew hatred has been an ongoing and historically violent form of it, on a regular basis. Christians were particularly good at it for generations.
It has not been that long since Auschwitz. Survivors are still with us to remind us-in person- of what happened, though fewer each year. This is not just calling someone a name. It's an attempted extermination of an entire people. And here's the funny part of it: It's happened over and over again in history. The Spanish Inquisition, the Russian Pogroms, and on and on. And today it's very accepted on our college campuses, in the Black community, and it's growing within the Democratic Party here, and the Labour Party over in England. It's actually pretty funny to me that Jews tend to lean left, and the left can always be counted on to eliminate the Jews.
So for those of you wondering why you 'can't' show your anti-Semitism, the fact is you can, and you do- regularly. If you wonder why there is such an 'oversized' reaction to it by us, and so many others around us, you simply don't get what happened just 80 or so years ago. If you're of a certain age, you've heard of it and seen a movie or two about it, but...that doesn't do it right. Watching "Schindler's List" paints a movie picture, but it does not tell you why or what it was like. It's like watching "Amistad" and thinking you get Black slavery. If you want a real feel for the Holocaust, you'd have to sit through 10 hours of Claude Lanzmann's movie, "Shoah". Which none of you will. I don't blame you. It's long and gut wrenching. If you're younger, chances are you don't know a thing about the Holocaust or the Nazi's. You think conservatives are Nazi's, so at that level of intellect I expect you're a part of the problem.
Anyway...my point is that we react because we see it rising again and we know where this leads. This is not just a quaint little human hate. It's a bug in humans. It doesn't go away and it's too easily regrown with every generation. Mostly in Western Civ, we've worked on it and done well. In the Black community and on our college campuses, however, it grows freely. And it'll break out one day. Normalizing it on SNL brings us closer to that day.
Making fun of Jews is one thing. We all make fun of each other. Normalizing vicious anti-Semitism, which is what Ye is spouting, is a line crossed.
Vladimir Lenin used to forbid "incorrect" speech.
For example "it is incorrect to say that Russians are dying of starvation"
It was factually correct at the time he made the statement. What he meant was that it was embarrassing and could not be said. Under pain of death.
So do the Jews run* Hollywood? They certainly did for most of the 20th century. My sense is that they still do but I could be wrong.
So why is it forbidden to say this?
*by run I mean control the major studios, talent agencies, specialty contractors etc. See Neal gamblers book "An empire of their own" for details on the how and why.
When stating a fact is antisemitism, everything must be offensive.
Alan Dershowitz once stated that any criticism of Israel was antisemitic.
Actually any statement at all about Jews is actually antisemitism.
Southeast Asians run motels and convenience stores.
Not just southeast Asians, members of the Patel extended family own something like 75-80% of all US hotel rooms.
Something like 20,000 of them gathered once and paid bill Clinton to keynote.
It would not surprise me if Patels own most c-stores but I've not heard that. I do know that Indians own a lot of them. Certainly could be Patels.
John Henry
I still think the most revealing thing about Chappelle’s take was the admission that he didn’t want to speak I’ll of a black man.
Gotta stand by a brutha.
Meh… clown nose on, clown nose off.
Black anti-semitism?
All I need for evidence is seeing the "Reverend" Al Sharpton in the role of a king maker.But I'm pretty all in on free speech. Chapelle is funny even when he's goring one of my oxes.
Dave is the next Bill Cosby by his own schtick.
@tim maguire: "Jews are concentrated in certain disciplines because 75-125 years ago, they were excluded from many others."
It started a long time before that. In the middle ages the European Christian church prohibited members from banking or money lending (as evil or sinful). The Jews stepped into this essential role, and then spent several hundred years building their banking expertise and a commercial banking hegemony.
https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-rothschilds/
Once they had money, they moved into now-often Jewish industries such as universities, winemaking, fine art, etc.
In due course the non-Jews of Europe came to resent Jews for often being wealthy and holding the purse strings. This led to antisemitism all over, ranging from England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. (e.g., see Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" circa 1596).
The tense relationship between USA Blacks and Jews (see Lewis Farrakhan) follows from Jewish bankers and businessmen coming into Black communities and being perceived as exploitative. The perception includes Jews setting excessively high prices, promoting subprime credit, effective loansharking, etc. Similarly, some USA Black Muslims adopted and updated very old tensions between Jews and Islam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Islam
I blame Billy Wilkerson for starting the cancel culture in 1948.
Hollywood Reporter/Hollywood Blacklist
John Henry
So who exactly was at all surprised that a Black, American convert to Islam is less than loving to the Jewish faith?
Not surprised. Just sad, and somewhat shocked (I’m stupid like that), that Chappelle can reel off antisemitic tropes on national tv and everyone, including commenters here, laughs.
Jews may have a disproportionate influence in Hollywood—there are certainly many Jewish names at the top; I don’t know about the rank and file—but they do not promote Jewishness or Jews as a group. They, like the Jews I know in NYC, either outright support or maintain an approving silence about antisemitism masked as anti-Zionism, BDS and the antisemitic Dave Chappelle.
Seinfeld is all in for the comedy. He has steered clear of heavy topics forever. That's his space.
If they start rounding up Jews again - He might need to say something.
I despise antisemitism, and I know it when I see it. What Chapelle said wasn't it. It was a meta discussion around it. It's verifiably true that "Jews run Hollywood". It's only antisemitism if you think that means anything beyond sociological study.
Honestly, if anything, the furore is reinforcing prejudices rather than dispelling them. Again, I thought what Chapelle said about Walker was far worse. He also repeated the Russian collusion lie about Trump. Can we focus on that?
Jews are concentrated in certain disciplines because 75-125 years ago, they were excluded from many others.
To a large extent that's true, and true of the Jews in the early days of Hollywood. Once ethnic channels and networks develop, though, groups with members already there move more freely into them. And there were other reasons why Goldwyn and Meyer couldn't become head of JP Morgan or US Steel. It was more cultural differences, backgrounds, and credentials, rather than pure anti-Semitism. Immigrant groups find openings where they can, but that's not necessarily due to the bigotry or exclusiveness of the people already here, though exclusiveness was a factor when Jews born here were excluded from jobs they were qualified for.
Jews were on the outside of Western Christian society in Medieval Europe, very much so, and were excluded from the mainstream, but they didn't go into commerce primarily because they were excluded from farming. They had skills like literacy and numeracy that made commerce a better option, and they didn't want to be farmers, and even after Jews could become landowners later, many stayed in commerce and finance and other non-agricultural occupations.
Scott Patton said...
"It was funny. That's what counts. Seinfeld fans know that."
And it wasn't vicious. It was comedy. If you're allowed to laugh at me then I'm allowed to laugh at you.
Diversity [dogma] (e.g. anti-Semitism) breeds adversity. Lose your ethical religion, your Twilight faith. #HateLovesAbortion
How the hell does Ashley Hume write a news story like this without telling the reader what Chappelle said?
Mrs. X, 8:12:
"Just sad, and somewhat shocked (I’m stupid like that), that Chappelle can reel off antisemitic tropes on national tv and everyone, including commenters here, laughs."
I appreciate this perspective. But if I step back I am (to my surprise) with Stewart here: "I don’t believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end antisemitism or to gain understanding."
Here's how I see it: Someone says "Jews control the media and these corporations, and will destroy you if you point it out." A subset of Jews (and sympathetic Christians and others) then react by campaigning to have that person marginalized or fired. I can sort of see how that looks to any observer who doesn't find the premise absurd. And an observer like Chappelle, who detests cancel culture, is going to feel automatic sympathy with Kanye West in this situation regardless of skin color or religion.
I'd like to see less of this, and more "Here's where you're wrong." You (we) won't win over actual bigots. You might just persuade onlookers that the "Jews run everything" people are off base, and some of them are malicious.
Ray Benson is Jewish and, according to Wikipedia, from Philadelphia? Will Texas cancel him for cultural appropriation? And, of course, Jerry Seinfeld is on the fence. After all, everything in his life evens out (season 5, episode 22 The Opposite)
This issue of black entertainers having anti-Semitic views based on their experiences with Jewish entertainment executives has been around a long time.
Spike Lee’s Mo Better Blues covered it pretty well.
The NBA players have had some issues with it as well since there are a number of Jewish owners and executives. Donald Sterling was a prime example.
No reason to judge all Jews by the actions of Sterling or Weinstein.
But if we are to continue to treat blacks and Jews as discrete special groups in the US then this will continue.
We get the Jewish Heroes and the Black Heroes, as if they are any more representative than the Black Villains and Jewish Villains.
Based on socio-economic statistics Jewish Americans are better off than black Americans. Lot of reasons for this. But so what?
Poor blacks in cities commit about half of the violent crime in US. And the guys on Wall Street commit half of the financial crimes in the US.
Samuel Bankman-Fried is no more representative of Jewish Americans than OJ is of black Americans.
JPS, I don't think Chappelle (or anyone) should be canceled. I'm a free speech absolutist. If people think the SNL monologue was funny, well, chacun à son goût. I don't have to watch. I did see Chappelle's most recent special on Netflix, though, and the idea of Jews controlling the world is a theme he plays for laughs (the closing line - Jews in space!) repeatedly. It's safe to poke fun at Jews. Look at Seinfeld's carefully stated reply to the gotcha question and Stewart's hedging. They can be canceled; Chappelle, as long as he keeps trashing conservatives (per William's astute observation) can't be. The idea that Jews, at 2% of the US population, exert total control of the levers of power is nuts. But hey, Dave Chappelle says it's true. He might say it funny, but I suspect he means it.
Dave's bit was not anti-Semitic.
Observing that People of Color are dominant in the NFL, NBA, abortions, illegitimate pregnancy, and suspects in violent crime is not racist.
Observing that women are underrepresented in blue collar work, overrepresented in nursing and teaching, and earn less because they do not work as hard as men, is not sexist.
The truth is not always funny, but in the hands of a skilled craftsman like Dave, it's hilarious.
Dave Chapelle’s SNL monologue and Jon Stewart’s appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show are easily dialed up on YouTube, and I would recommend watching both a couple of times before proclaiming on this controversy. It’s not like homework — Chapelle and Stewart are masterful comics who demonstrate how to have a sophisticated (or for those who prefer fewer syllables, non-dopey) conversation about all the things that trouble us these days.
"And by leftists, I mean up to and including the President."
Which president would that be?
"And by leftists, I mean up to and including the President."
Which president would that be?
i tried to find the place for this, but; it actually fits here, pretty good
Robert Clary, a star of the 1960s sitcom "Hogan's Heroes," died Wednesday at 96.
Clary was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
"He never let those horrors defeat him," his niece, Brenda Hancock, said of Clary’s wartime experiences as a youth.
"Clary had a special message he used to share with his students. "Don’t ever hate," Hancock said. "He didn’t let hate overcome the beauty in this world."
The forearms of concentration camp prisoners were tattooed with identification numbers, with A5714 to be Clary’s lifelong mark.
"They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews — including a million and a half children — who died in the gas chambers and ovens.."
Twelve of his immediate family members, his parents and 10 siblings, were killed under the Nazis
Suppose that you say;
"The Mossad colluded with American Jewish gangsters and rogue CIA agents to assassinate President Kennedy, because he was standing in the way of Israel's development of an atomic bomb".
Is that anti-semitic?
""They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews — including a million and a half children — who died in the gas chambers and ovens.."
Well, OK, let's just try to sort this out. Did they die in the "gas chambers", that have been shown to have been designed for delousing clothing, and could not possible have been used to kill large numbers of humans? Or did they die in the "ovens", that were actually crematories, designed to handle one or two bodies at a time? Or did they maybe die of the typhus the Nazis tried but failed to suppress with the "gas chambers"?
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