Friedrich --

Thanks for pointing out the latest development in the Amiri Baraka anti-Semitic-poetry saga. It highlights, or at least gives me the chance to highlight, a dilemma lefties are forever walking into.

Here’s how it goes: Given that lefties are compulsively, dogmatically anti-authority and pro-underdog (and ignoring for the moment their strategy of being pro-underdog as a way of claiming authority) ... What happens when the underdog turns against the lefties? In this case, when the angry and (supposedly) oppressed black poet attacks the Jews? Well, what happens, as you point out, is that the lefties (in this case, the Times) come out in support of the (in this case, stupid and anti-Semitic) underdog.

Hey, let’s reward the underdog for attacking us; let’s congratulate ourselves on our noble devotion to the cause of underdogs everywhere; and let’s demonize those who would stand up for themselves in the face of attack.

It’s a pattern that shows up over and over again.

*I remember the upper-middle-class (and rich) parents who gave their rebellious, spiteful, angry hippie children credit cards.
*There was the case of a lefty woman judge in NYC who was on trial for something. Her daughter was called to testify against her, and did so devastatingly. Afterwards, the lefty judge was seen telling her daughter how well she’d done.
*These days, it’s striking to observe the Jewish intellectuals (Sontag, Chomsky) who demonstrate sympathy for Islamic fanatics.

Do lefties ever notice how often they fall into this trap? Do they even experience it as a trap? Are they proud of the way even direct assault can’t shake their “commitment”?

As someone from a smalltown Republican background, I stare at this kind of behavior utterly amazed. People in Republican small towns have their own quirks, lord knows, but I never encountered this particular kind of through-the-looking-glass, no-end-to-it neuroticism until I started moving in fancier -- more academic, leftier, more moneyed -- circles.

Did you see this kind of acting-out much before arriving at our Lousy Ivy College?

Best,

Michael

Nope, don't understand it myself. Being of the Jewish faith and having grown up among many holocaust survivors, I never heard those survivors utter the insipid question that has plagued out stupidigentsia since 9/11, which is "Why Do They Hate Us".

Phooey.

Posted by: Jim on August 17, 2003 04:45 PM






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