‘No Anti-Semites To The Right’
Ann Coulter said what she said, which true to her habit was revolting yet unsurprising. It’s classic Christian anti-Semitism, and like its Islamic counterpart is simply the “logical” conclusion that must come to the fundamentalist believer of a universalist religion. Ann Coulter is an extremely offensive fundie bigot, and one who picks and chooses among Christian beliefs to assemble the most noxious and violent battery of attributes possible, which, in turn, is par for the course for members of the American Talibangelical movement and [Yaaaaaaaaawn]…
Just as revolting yet unsurprising — but more interesting — was the reaction of the wingnut-o-sphere to Coulter’s remarks:
Take, for instance, Chuckles of the Little Green American Bund. The most rabid of the New Right’s pretend philo-Semites, a consistent Chuckie would have called for Coulter to be “glassified.” Which, of course, didn’t happen. But then since anti-Semitic ventilations such as Coulter’s do not give Charles Johnson an excuse to wish for the genocide of Muslims (his real interest in politics, in blogging, and, no doubt, in life), his reaction was confined to equivocating on Coulter and bashing Media Matters for reporting the story.
Then there’s The Anchoress, a truly dedicated William F. Buckley-style Phalangist. The Anchoress dislikes Coulter’s style but is most sympathetic to the substance of Coulter’s remarks. She frets that Coulter will make her fellow fundie Christians look bad, and worst of all will reinforce the “ever-growing moral equivalence narrative that says ‘Christians are just like Islamic Fundamentalists!'” Well, one can hope. After all, they are morally and theologically equivalent: only the cultural and governmental successes of liberals (who include a great many Jews) and liberalism — all of which fundamentalist Christians have fought tooth and nail — keep people like Anchoress and Coulter from setting up their own version of Sharia.
…and “Sharia” is exactly the word Roger El-Simon uses apropos Coulter’s comments. He’s appalled. Yet Simon, too, equivocates. He frets that Coulter, as celebrity pundit, underlines [my emphasis] “the supposed bigotry of the extreme right,” but doesn’t tell us how the bigotry Coulter confirms can remain “supposed.” Maybe it’s just as well; for Simon, Coulter’s narcissism “rivals, maybe even out-strips, the egomaniacs on the Hollywood Left.” Thus Simon conveys the real purpose of his post: yet another jealous whine from the creator of Moses Wine, just another excuse for Simon to bash the evil Hollywood Libs who won’t invite him to their parties anymore. At any rate, smarmy, tenth-rate Christopher Hitchens-wannabe Michael Totten got the point. He echoes Rajah’s whine with ringing stupidity: “Those who think she isn’t a severe liability for you [Republicans], just ask yourself what favors Michael Moore does for the Democrats.”
Finally, we come to the reactions of two Coulter-wannabes who happen to be Jews. First the Shrieking Harpy:
So what?
Of course, folks have written feverishly to me (particularly leftards) gloating at Ann Coulter’s latest controversy – this time, the Jews. VIDEO here. If you want the transcript, go here.
Of course as a Jew I vehemently disagree with her but she can think what she wants.As long as she isn’t blowing people up or forcing them to convert or die, so what? I mean really.
Amen to that, Pammy! I mean really:
Coulter wrote about Muslims: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” She was fired from the right-wing National Review Online in late 2001 for this comment. Since then, she has not changed her position: In her new book, How to Talk to a Liberal, she wrote: “I am often asked if I still think we should invade their [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever!“
And: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
And:
We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too.
Besides being stupid dishonest about Coulter, Pammy’s not very “vehement” in disagreement with her:
Coulter is entitled to her beliefs.
She says Christians consider themselves perfected Jews. I say Jews were perfect to begin with.
She says, “We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.”
I say why the second book? The first one was “perfect”. Moreover the second book opened the door to further “reinterpretation” of the old testament and next thing you know you have another version with subverted texts, and twisted objectives in the form of the Koran.
[…]
She says Christ is the lord, I cite the first commandment, “I am the lord they G-d, you shall have no other G-ds before me.”
But hey why split hairs?
We could go on and on but it’s opinion and the belief that one’s religion is better than all the rest.
That said, I wouldn’t want to convert anyone or kill anyone for disagreeing with me.
How true! Instead, Pammy has recommended dehumanization, carpet-bombing, and “crush[ing] this plague on humanity [Islam]… by any means necessary.” I mean, really! But I digress…
…I do not believe Coulter is guilty of your run of the mill, garden variety Jew hatred. Coulter has been an outspoken proponent of Israel and the Jewish people.
[My emphasis.]
That’s what it boils down to for Pammy: so long as one is a “proponent of Israel” one can say pretty much anything anti-Semitic. And it’s not like Shreiking Harpy’s being inconsistent in her inconsistency here (if Coulter was a Muslim and said what she said, Pammy would call for her immediate physical extinction): Pammy did the same trick for Jerry Falwell. Anyway, our favorite member of the Fake Titty Kahane Committee concludes by endorsing Debbie Schlussel’s reaction to Coulter. What a coinkydink: Schlussel is the other Coulter-wannabe I had in mind…
So let’s examine Little Debbie‘s snack for Jews. Yep, sure enough, it’s pure crapola, full of artificial colors (FD&C Red, White, and Blue #666), high-puketose cornball syrup, Muslimocidic acid, Polysmearbate 60, Bimbotic Lecithin, Enriched and Bleached wingnut flour, piss & vinegar, Coulterphiline Wankonitrate. Little Debbie’s product is so bad even a corrupt ChiCom food inspector would refuse to export it. So naturally wingnuts like Pam Oshry endorse Schlussel’s half-baked hatecakes.
First Schlussel chacterizes the Media Matters’ wingnut-recorder as a “monkey.” Then she says she’s not offended by Coulter’s comments, implying that any Jew who finds offense is dishonest or hysterical. She then confides that she is just as fundamentalist in her Judaism as Coulter is in her Christianity — so Little Debbie can see where Ann is coming from, and admires her for it. Why, just because Debbie doesn’t believe in Christianity or Hinduism or Bahai Faith doesn’t mean she is a bigot! (In the same sentence she inserts a gratuitous kick at Muslims.)
Then it she really gets into it:
[T]he villain here [is] Media Matters. It’s anti-American, anti-Israel, and funded by George Soros,* a Jew who proudly worked for the Nazis rounding up Jews and sending them to their deaths.** Hmmm . . . him versus Ann Coulter? That’s an easy choice. I’d much rather go with the woman who looks like an Aryan [ed.’s note: Schlussel is just as bleached] but is a friend to the Jews and their allies than the billionaire atheist Jew who’s lived his entire life like a Nazi.
This hategasm gets her so worked up that she forgoes the previous implications about her fellow Jews and gets explicit:
I certainly can’t be bothered in the least that she thinks that Jews must be perfected to Christianity. I think the fact that far too many of my fellow co-religionists have substituted unabated liberalism for Judaism is what gives so many a platform for questioning us, though I don’t believe that is what Ann was doing here.
Whoa that’s some crazy shit right there: Schlussel is saying that Jews who are offended by Coulter’s classic anti-Semitism are actually infidels and apostates, betraying their Jewishness for the sake of liberalism. Indeed, such Jewish Liberals are so devious that they:
[M]anufacture[…] hype in order to try to play gotcha with Ann. Like I said, I know Ann personally and I like and respect her. She doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in her body. If anything, she is one of the most philo-Semitic gentiles I know, and her columns–constant attacks on the modern day enemies of the Jewish people and defenses of Israel and America–are strong evidence of that.
There it is again, and I don’t mean the personal loyalty to Coulter. I mean, the wingnut definition of anti-Semitism. As I’ve said over the years whenever this thing comes up (and it does, often, because of the alliance of rightwing Jews with the evangelical Christian movement), this is Norman Podhoretz‘s legacy. The wingnut formula for determining who is and is not an anti-Semite is based entirely on the subject’s attitude to Israel, and this formula was popularized if not invented by NPod. It so happens that I’ve been reading Michael Lind’s excellent Up From Conservatism. I’ve learned that it was the wingnut movement’s acceptance of Pat Robertson’s anti-Semitism that drove Lind away from conservatism. What happened was this: Lind wrote a horrified essay about one of Robertson’s Jewish-conspiracy tomes. Wingnuts attacked Lind as a commie and traitor. They either denied that Robertson was anti-Semitic or evaded the issue altogether. Then the Pod put a novel twist on the argument:
Unlike all of the other conservatives who weighed in on the controversy, Podhoretz conceded that I….had been correct all along…: “The conclusion is thus inescapable that Robertson, whether knowingly or unknowingly, has subscribed to and purveyed ideas that have an old and well-established anti-Semitic pedigree.” Podhoretz proceeded to reach the bizarre conclusion that Robertson, despite the manifest evidence of his anti-Semitism, should be supported by conservative Jews because he is pro-Israel.
Lind then quotes some similar anti-Semitic batshittery from the awful Louis Farrakhan and notes that in whose case, the Pod isn’t so generous. Why the inconsistency? Because Robertson says nice things about Israel, while Farrakhan takes the reverse line.
For Podhoretz, it seems practically any lunacy can be forgiven the conspiracy-mongering leader of a mass movement, as long as he supports Israel. Podhoretz is not the only Jewish conservative who takes such a position. Writing in Commentary in 1984, Irving Kristol excused an evangelical Protestant leader who had remarked that God does not hear the prayers of Jews. Kristol wrote: “Why should Jews care about the theology of a fundamentalist preacher?….What do such theological abstractions matter as against the mundane fact that this same preacher is vigorously pro-Israel?” …At any rate, Robertson’s pro-Israel statements and deeds, according to Podhoretz, outweigh his anti-Semitic propaganda, in light of the ancient rabbinical rule of batel b’shishim: “if the contaminant has slipped in accidentally or unintentionally, and is not more than one sixtieth of the whole, it is neutralized and the food can be lawfully eaten.” It seems that Reverend Robertson is kosher.
As was, by the same reasoning, Richard Nixon. As is, the screaming WingNet insists, Ann Coulter. And since this formula has become the standard line among wingnuts, it’s inevitable that its corollary — that leftists (even the Semites among them) who are insufficiently enthusiastic about Israel are ipso facto anti-Semites — has been strongly asserted.
The WingNet’s ‘No anti-Semites to the Right’ schtick is perfectly reprehensible, and the only sure thing is that the ADL will tacitly condone it.
* Media Matters is not funded by George Soros.
** George Soros did not do any such thing.
Oh Mistah Kristol!
See, I was only a year old when he wrote that ringing endorsement, but I now I have a question for him, perhaps to answer.
If I don’t have to care about an anti-semite’s theology, why should I give a shit about his support for a country I don’t live in, and don’t care to live in? I think that perhaps his diminishment of my God, particularly to fit his hate-filled brain, is of more import than him supporting which lines in the dirt have more meaning.
Lindh is a liberal? No, just another flaming-batshit-insane fundamentalist.
The Christian Right and the Islamists really do have much more in common with each other than either of them does with normal people.
Wait a minute. Michael Totten and Roger Simon are still blogging?
Who knew?
Not to defend conservative evangelicals, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in Ann’s religious sincerity. I think it’s more she’s just not so crazy she doesn’t know her market. Orcinus’s take on all this mentioned that that’s language the real evangelicals know to keep private. Ann’s use of it for attention-getting doesn’t help the movement. I honestly wonder whether Coulter has any genuine beliefs at all, or is capable of them.
The pro-Israel bit…. supporting policies any sane person can see only serve to further antagonize hundreds of millions of their neighbors and continue cycles of death and retribution doesn’t seem very pro-Israel to me. Then again Israel, like the US, only really exists in the hearts of a small section of its most rightwing and militaristic populace, it seems.
Ahh, another dig at those “Nazis” at Mediamatters.com How dare those commissars accurately quote us! A country where you can’t lie or rant insanely without looking foolish? That’s, like Communism, Islamism, and Nazism all rolled together!
Does Podhoretz make no distinction regarding the ‘pro-Israel anti-Semites’ for those whose writing/televangelizing make clear they ONLY are pro-Israel because that nation of Christ-killers needs to play its part in their juvenile triumphalist-Christian Armageddon fantasy?
After reading that, my migraine has developed a personality of its own just so it can join with the other voices in my head to unanimously declare Debbie batshit crazy.
Well, shit. I guess the hiatus didn’t improve my writing, then. Sorry. (I am trying to do better.)
Does Podhoretz make no distinction regarding the ‘pro-Israel anti-Semites’ for those whose writing/televangelizing make clear they ONLY are pro-Israel because that nation of Christ-killers needs to play its part in their juvenile triumphalist-Christian Armageddon fantasy?
Huh?
I tend to think that’s not real high on NPod’s list of reasons for making no distinction. It’s entirely political and secular.
Do better? Geez, HTML, I know we’re all best served when we’re our own worst critics, but c’mon. I, at least, am just socially awkward and forget niceties such as good to see you back.
Don’t take my nitpicking as finding fault.
Well, I was refering to D. Sidhe’s saying the piece worsened his migraine.
And I truly am trying to do better with catching errors and so on. I’ve been disappointed with the sloppiness of my recent output.
Everyone I know is spacey these days. Too much to process. I’m torn between living and creating detailed plans for a small escape location in Nova Scotia.
The weakening of the dollar is a plot to keep people from escaping abroad.
I’ve been disappointed with the sloppiness of my recent output.
I know what you mean. Thunder said my sandwich wasn’t big enough, but I fixed it real good:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3415885397699345059&hl=en
Won’t someone tell me I have a big sandwich?
Is that a sandwich in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
(horse whinny sound…)
Well considering the Australian dollar is approaching parity with the $US (and is tipped by some commentators to go as high as $1.12 US) I could offer you a nice cushy job down south cleaning my pool.
Will I need to learn Spanish?
😉
See, ontological issues aside, this is why religion just doesn’t work for me. I don’t understand why people are so upset with what the Coulter Beast said. Now, as loathe as I am to even sound like I’m defending that horrible woman, isn’t one of the default positions of Christianity – particularly the uniquely American strain – basically “We’re right and the rest of y’all are so wrong it ain’t even funny.” Yeah, sure, only God knows where a man’s soul is bound, but the preachers at Enon Primative Baptist Church always told me that if you ain’t washed in the Blood Of The Lamb, you are bound for the Lake Of Fire. No exceptions.
As Mrs. Robinson (I believe) at Orcinus noted, the whole idea of “perfected Jews” is one of those things fundamentalist conservative American Protestant Christianity just don’t talk about around non-Christians. It’s sorta like how if you were to throw a rock into a crowd of hardhsell Baptists, most likely the one you’d hit would tell you that not only are Catholics “not Christians” but neither are Methodists. I have these people in my family and they do come up with the craziest shit. Momma’s Bible study group decided that Jesus went to “Hades” during his three days instead of the actual “Hell” because, well, Jesus just doesn’t go to Hell.
So I don’t understand why folks got all worked up over what Coulter said about Jews. There’s a whole lot of American Christians who feel the exact same way, sorta kinda, but gee don’t make ’em think too hard about the implications therein. Still, I must wholeheartedly agree with HTML’s main premise, in that anti-Semitism for the wingnut intelligencia is anything but total agreement with the farthest of far-right interpretations of Israel’s right to exist. Any deviation is the EXACT SAME THING as being Hitler.
I don’t understand that, either, as the non-Christian strain of right-wing support for Israel seems to be fairly contingent on, frankly, the total destruction of anything Palestinian and just basically pissing off the rest of the Middle East as much as humanly possible. Ever notice that? Any sort of peaceful advance that doesn’t involved blowed up brown people, and the wingnuts get all pissy.
Any of that make any sense? I’m stoned, so it may not.
So I don’t understand why folks got all worked up over what Coulter said about Jews.
Perfect vs. Imperfect. What’s not to understand? One’s a true human, the other is somewhat sub. Of course a lot of people think it and don’t say it out loud…because saying it out loud sounds nutty.
It made sense to me, quite a lot. But then, I’m stoned too.
How can they possibly get away with saying George Soros worked for the Nazis? That’s so wrong, it’s … not even wrong. It’s just batshit nutzoid. I mean do they know anything about him at all? I mean, other than that he drinks the blood of Christian infants?
For the sake of doing accurate analysis of American movement Christianity, I’m going to make a suggestion: Find your local assemblies of god mega-church and tell them you want to be warrior for Christ, God came to you in a dream and told you to do this.
Ask about God’s dispensations. If they don’t know what you are talking about find the minister.
I had an assemblies of god education, and what you wrote made me want to nitpick at the whole thing, not because you made them sound bad but because you just have them wrong. They are bad in a way that’s even more crazy than you think, but you really need to get it from the horse’s mouth to understand.
I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed….
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.
Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim [non-Jews] toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat.
…but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God’s anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!
Righteous Bubba,
Well, that’s what I mean. It’s a shitass thing to say and of course Coulter is just trying to hump the beast one last time, but if Christians thought Jews were the same thing, they wouldn’t have been such bastards to ’em for the past 1500 or so years. You see where I’m going here? It’s nutty to say but it’s also a core part of the religion. You have to accept Jesus Christ as your savior; failure to do so lands your ass in hell, no questions asked. Being Jewish does not make you exempt. In fact, my upbringing taught me the Jews get double the Hell for being such assholes about not agreeing that the Swingin’ Nazz was the Messiah.
Now, my knowledge of the Jewish mind is by no means equal to my familiarity with hardshell Baptists, but my understanding is that the general rabbinical line on the whole Jesus thing is “Ehhh, not so much”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that Jewish folk see even the use of the Old Testament to confirm Christian mythos as a bit cheeky, to say the least.
Yeah, Coulter’s an inflamed hemeroid on the asshole of humanity, and yeah, it’s rude of her to point out an ugly little bit of gnosis on national television, and yeah, she’s doing it so people will talk about her damnfool book. But. But. This isn’t like some racist pigfucker saying some obviously brain-dead garbage like “All white people reay hate black folks, but most of ’em are too frightened to say it, whilst I’m brave to”. Christianity teaches, at least obliquely, that those who aren’t Christians go to Hell and, therefore, aren’t as good as Us. I don’t know how most Christians deal with this. Some embrace it, some explain it away and some try not to think about it, I imagine.
So, yeah. Maybe in the intent, I understand the outrage. Coulter’s being a turd ’cause that’s her existence. This is like almost every thing else she says, like about women not being allowed to vote. It almost doesn’t even matter if she actually means what she says. Her job and, I think, her joy is to stir up fear, hatred and anger.
But. But. It’s not just that a lot of folks think the same way and don’t say it. It’s that what she said is part of the fabric of the belief system, either explicitly or implicitly. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of my outsider’s perspective that’s confusing me. Maybe I’d see it different if I was a Christian or a Jew, but I always thought everyone already knew this. Christians think Jews are wrong. That’s sorta the whole point.
No, the bit that worsened my migraine was Debbie. I should have been more clear, but in my defense, I have a migraine.
“[T]he villain here [is] Media Matters.”
To paraphrase Olbermann; when we quote your own words back at you, we must seem LIKE a hate group.
I glance through the MM every so often (not religiously, but I keep aboob), and I’d LOVE to know who they’re “anti-Israeli” considering how often (never?) they mention Israel is any sort of negative light.
Bunch of whooping lunatics.
In fact, it was specifically the Soros bits that caused a disturbance in my brain, as though a million synapses all cried out in terror. Your writing as ever was excellent.
Mind you, I’m a chick. Common mistake, for nearly a year the people on my favorite IRC channel assumed I was a gay man.
(Again, migraine. I’m now going to go have disembodied portions of conversations with people who are contractually required to pretend they care.)
Some Guy, someone needs to track down the Stephen Colbert “The Word” segment on that. “If you want Rush to stop offending people, stop repeating what he said to people who would be offended.”
Okay, done postscripting myself. Night, all. Don’t let Debbie get to you. She’s crazy, so she probably can’t help it.
I do not believe Coulter is guilty of your run of the mill, garden variety Jew hatred.
But “exotic” Jew hatred is okay? Coulter, Pammy and Li’l Debbie debating the merits of their respective “sky fairies” is even weirder than getting stoned–but at least you can’t beat the price.
This issue arises constantly in Christianity. Their junior god is a dead, Jewish rabbi of the lay school, and the continual rejection of this god by the Jews themselves is a constant affront to Christianity. As Tom Paine noted, in “The Age of Reason”, the Jews’ continued existence argues against the validity of Christianity. In “The End of Faith”, Sam Harris notes that no German Catholic was excommunicated for participation in the Holocaust; anti-Judiasm is, de facto, a core tenet of Christianity. We should (silently) thank Miss Ann (thrope) Coulter for making this tenet explicit, and then use it to ram a wedge between the Jewish and Christian members of our modern conservative movement.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in Ann’s religious sincerity.
Who’s putting stock in her sincerity, adb? If we make sincerity the test of religious fundamentalism, we’ll eliminate many of the world’s most prominent fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is all about what one is willing to affirm in the public square…and what you are willing to force other people to do. Ann Coulter is the very model of a modern fundamentalist.
Perfect vs. Imperfect. What’s not to understand? One’s a true human, the other is somewhat sub.
Actually, RB, it’s even worse. You’re missing their poisonous anti-humanism. Humans, without “grace,” are totally depraved and caught in a veil of sin. In God’s eyes, humans without grace are, as Jonathan Edwards put it, like loathsome insects. So the difference isn’t between human and sub-human. It’s between saved and human. And the merely human deserve nothing but contempt, death, and damnation. And they’re thus “fair game” for stalking, torture, and worse.
Debbiecakes said Soros ‘proudly’ worked with the Nazis to round up Jews?
Now, I know the bar for libel is high in the US, but I think that fucking well clears it. On steroids. (Admittedly, Deb-Deb might be so dumb that she thinks it’s true, but I’ll give the benefit on this one and just say she’s a libellous piece of shit.)
I’m also not a fan of libel writs, but given that one will pretty much eat up the Costco Coulter’s entire punditin’ income for the year, I have to hope that Soros’s lawyers oblige, because the only way to hurt these hate-flingers is to bankrupt them.
Anyway, what Coulter said in public is what plenty of fundie Christian Zionists say in private: all power to the Jews until they get Jesus to come back, and then fuck ’em if they don’t convert.
Raw Story made inquiries over a year ago and discovered she isn’t a member of the church she said she attends. Recently she told some guy that she attends churches wherever she happens to be and is “half Catholic and half Protestant.”
I blame self-injected silicone caulking and/or peroxide and botox for all of these physiological responses to the presence of matzo balls.
Don’t hate them because they’re snotdrip ugly. Bless them for proving that modern technology can give human-like appearances to guano.
RAAARRGGH!
I TRIED MAKING L’IL DEBBIE’S HATECAKES! I ONLY HAD — PAKI! — BROWN VINEGAR! I ATE — PAKI! –TWO AND NOW I CAN’T STOP TYPING — PAKI! — IN ALL CAPS!
RAARGH!
Who do you folks reckon hates Muslims the most:
a. Schlussel
b. Charles Johnson
c. Pammycakes
d. Coulter
Personally, I think Schlussel and Johnson are tied for hating Muslims the most. Pammycakes sort of hates them out of a sense of tribal pride, I think, while Coulter doesn’t hate so much as she sees them as useful props for her vaudeville act.
That’s my theory, anyway.
Also, out of that group, clearly Coulter hates the Jews the most.
HTML, another brilliant takedown of the right. Thank you. I especially enjoyed that you picked up on Roger L. Magoo & Totten’s oh-fuckisms.
Oh-fuckisms, as in,”Oh fuck, did I really saddle up with these scumbags after 9/11? Fuck.”
Apparently George Soros was 8 years old when he was proudly rounding up his fellow Jews for the Nazis.
Much as it pains me to quote Michael Ledeen, I’m beginning to think we need to pick up one of these trolls and crush them against the wall to show we mean business.
Matt T is right about it being an ontological issue:
Sadly, no. Anchoress and Coulter would, under Christian fundie rule (or Islamic or Jewish or any other religious fundamentalism they might blink their extended eyelashes at) be baby factories, which is what Coulter, in her round-about way, has actually been pleading for all along. Had God intended Coulter to speak, he would not have given Rush Limbaugh a penis. There’s an ontology fer yeh…
Forgive me father, for I use commas real bad. It has been 12 hours since my last real bad use of commas…
How can they possibly get away with saying George Soros worked for the Nazis?
Any stretch for these people is enough, but this is twisting the facts way beyond there actual meaning; form wikipedia:
“Soros worked briefly for the Jewish Council, which had been established by the Nazis, to deliver messages to Jewish lawyers being called for deportation. Soros was not aware of the consequence of the messages.[8] To avoid his son being apprehended by the Nazis, his father had Soros spend the summer of 1944 living with a non-Jewish Ministry of Agriculture employee, posing as his godson.”
I suppose, in essence he did ‘work’ for the Nazi’s, but context is a problem for scum like Debbie.
She says Christ is the lord, I cite the first commandment, “I am the lord they G-d, you shall have no other G-ds before me.”
But hey why split hairs?
Believing in Jesus is a “hair”? So that’s what the past 2,000 years of Jewish oppression have been about!
I love it when wingnuts debate religion … they’re so stunningly bad at it.
A minor correction: Christianity is not a “universalist” religion; most Christians consider universalism — the belief that all souls will be reconciled to God — to be a heresy. “Universalists” offen turn up in the same breath with “atheists” and “homosexuals” in fundie diatribes.
The Condensed Greatest Hits of Matt T.:
You see where I’m going here? It’s nutty to say but it’s also a core part of the religion. You have to accept Jesus Christ as your savior; failure to do so lands your ass in hell, no questions asked. Being Jewish does not make you exempt. In fact, my upbringing taught me the Jews get double the Hell for being such assholes about not agreeing that the Swingin’ Nazz was the Messiah. Christianity teaches, at least obliquely, that those who aren’t Christians go to Hell and, therefore, aren’t as good as Us. I don’t know how most Christians deal with this. Some embrace it, some explain it away and some try not to think about it, I imagine. But. But. It’s not just that a lot of folks think the same way and don’t say it. It’s that what she said is part of the fabric of the belief system, either explicitly or implicitly. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of my outsider’s perspective that’s confusing me. Maybe I’d see it different if I was a Christian or a Jew, but I always thought everyone already knew this. Christians think Jews are wrong. That’s sorta the whole point.
THANK you, Matt. If being stoned is what allows you to say what so many other people can’t seem to realize, then toke away, my friend.
It’s very simple, people. There’s no meaning in “choosing Jesus as your savior” if there’s nothing to be saved from. No paradise without its polar opposite. Shit, even Anton Lavey said that much. I know that many Christians today just want to quietly lift up a corner of the rug and brush this seemingly anachronistic barbarism under it so they can get back to their hippy-dippy platitudes and pretend to find life-lessons for the 21st century in the sparse story of the original “turn on, tune in, and drop out” guy, but there it is. There has to be a Hell for this idiocy to even make a modicum of sense, and there’s no point in building such a place without sticking people in it, so…
Sorry, if that’s discomfiting to you, I’d suggest just accepting that your life experience and common sense have made you a secularist and act accordingly. You can still enjoy all the platitudes if that’s your thing.
Personally, I think Schlussel and Johnson are tied for hating Muslims the most. Pammycakes sort of hates them out of a sense of tribal pride, I think, while Coulter doesn’t hate so much as she sees them as useful props for her vaudeville act.
D.
Watch out for that. When I observe these Authoritarian types, I keep thinking that they must have a corrupt, selfish reason for spewing the poisonous evil that they spew. I think that they are really trying to make some $$$ or something.
But Sadly, no. The truth is even worse. They may have some corrupt reason, but underneath that, I think they actually believe the vile shit that they spew.
Corruption and cynicism would be much more attractive, and understandable to me. But that is because I try to understand wingnuts as some other version of myself. I assume that they think the way I do, but come to some other conclusion. But they don’t think the way I do. The actually believe the shit that they say.
And by “support Israel” they really mean back the most hawkish positions imaginable with regard to Israel and any of its dealings with Arabs or Muslims.
If suddenly some wave of liberal peaceniks swept to office in Israel and the new majority government began moving toward peace & justice with the Palestinians and negotiating with Syria on the Golan, etc., then for the right wing the “anti-Semites” would be those who supported the now-evil surrendercrat government of Israel, and now all good “pro-Israelis” would need to work to overthrow that evil peacenik government of Israel, and any degree of illegality and treason to that government would not just be acceptable, but absolutely necessary.
It is not by any stretch of the imagination loyalty to a nation or a people which the right embraces — it is loyalty to a bitterly cruel reactionary-revolutionary ideology, and that alone.
I was born and bred within a particularly “philo-semitic” strain of Evangelical Fundamentalism. The church itself was called Word of Faith Christian “Tabernacle” and we frequently celebrated Jewish holidays and studied aspects of worship in Solomon and Herod’s temples. Nothing after the time of Christ, natch. But while we were on the extreme side, I think that our views were theologically similar to those of most fundies:
1) The Jews really are and were God’s special, chosen, forever-favorite children. God has a special curse for anyone who hurts his kids, even though most of them, spoiled first-born brats that they are, are out boozing and whoring and “getting to know themselves” and have lost all contact with the folks back home.
2) Under the New Testament, God opened up the membership plan to Gentiles, but we were still second-born or adopted children, which I guess meant that we weren’t quite as good somehow.
3) There is just nothing so special as a “Messianic” Jew. They are big brothers come home. Our duty as Children of God was to defend the Jews, convert as many as possible, and hope that one day we would all be fundamentalist Christians.
4) Eventually the clock will run out and all of the Jews who haven’t fully realized their true Jewishness by becoming Evangelical Christians will be burn to a crisp along with all the others.
So it isn’t so much a matter of keeping the anti-semitism private; it is that they genuinely don’t see the contradictions. They LOVE Jews. Jews are the once and future Christians. They just hate people who try to keep them from being Christians, including all of these so-called Jews.
“Moreover the second book opened the door to further “reinterpretation” of the old testament and next thing you know you have another version with subverted texts, and twisted objectives in the form of the Koran.”
– Pam Oshry
Is it my imagination, or is Pam blaming the very fact that Islam exists on Christianity? It seems to me she’s saying that without Jesus, there would be no Mohammed.
And since she hates Mohammed more than any other historical figure (except maybe Hitler) ever, how do you think she feels about Jesus and his followers?
[sigh]
Oh, why can’t everybody just be Buddhist?
ohm ma ne pad me ohm
Heh, good point Rufus.
Although, I find it curious that Pam wants to go with a strict literalist interpretation of the “old testament”. Does she think that the difference between her faith and Judaism is that her people cut out the latter third or so of the Bible? I mean, even Orthodox Judaism has done a bit of evolving and reinterpreting since the time of Christ.
Does she reject the Talmud and all of the other “revisionist” Rabbinical literature? I think the fundie might be rubbing off on her.
ohm ma ne pad me ohm
Ahem. That’s:
om mani padme hum
Apostate.
difference between her faith and Judaism
Should be, “difference between her faith and Christianity”. I’ll stop correcting other people now.
Sadly, Cambridgeport: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to improve myself and accrue good karma! By the way, your spelling is incorrect also.
Oh yeah, Namaste.
Okay, so I looked at the Anchoress, and she analogizes the situation to scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, where Scout’s aunt tells Atticus that it’s better not tell black people that there are whites who hate them because it gives “them” something to work with.
It just makes my head hurt. So like, Christians do want to perfect Jews but we shouldn’t tell them?
And by the way I hate it when wing nuts invoke to kill a mockingbird for anything. I know Harper Lee is in seclusion but I wish she’s come out and kick some conservative ass.
MzNicky: all good karma that I may accrue in helping a fellow sentient being I offer back to the universe.
Hmm… reading our exchange, I realize that it is impossible to be either helpful or humble online without coming accross as a total ass. Like, even if you wanted to be.
Namaste back at ya
Sadly, Cambridgeport: I thought the same thing — even the Buddh-ish can look like assholes when they’re trying to be clever at a blog. (Speaking for myself.)
If I don’t have to care about an anti-semite’s theology
Unless the anti-Semite’s theology is all about Allah.
Anybody else think that Christianity of whatever stripe isn’t going anywhere until they sit down and rework the bible? Hell, it’s been HOW many centuries since the last time they REALLY cleaned it out.
Soros did what any jew with an ounce of self-preservation tried to do in the war–live. to do so one had to make very hard and very yucky decisions. while the ex post facto analysis will be “what did he know and when did he know it” the truth is that during wartime who gives a shit? you live or you die. the rest is extraneous.* soros managed to live.
for jews like the anchoress the only good jew in that circumstance would be a dead jew. a live one would have done things (faux conversions, selling out fellow jews, singing/fucking/doing dentistry for the nazis) that someone like the anchoress (and her ilk) sitting safely 50 plus years later and many miles away would find reprehensible. this of course makes such people as the anchoress total scum. the worst. their self-abnegation is evident to those who see them with a clear head, but opaque to them in the privacy of their basements.
*the scene in 28 days later where the black woman tells cillian murphy that certain actions lead to death and others might allow survival is the inch-perfect description of what this must be like.
I don’t know why you waste your time and considerable talents taking anything that Coulter says seriously. She used to absolutely disgust me, until I realized that the reaction is what she feeds on, like a dung beetle feeds on shit. She’s not worth the time or the outrage. Her persona is no more real than Steven Colbert’s.
in light of the ancient rabbinical rule of batel b’shishim: “if the contaminant has slipped in accidentally or unintentionally, and is not more than one sixtieth of the whole, it is neutralized and the food can be lawfully eaten.”
But real frum Jews (as opposed to the fakers like Schussel) generally don’t eat food that is acceptable under batel b’shishim. They make sure there are no acccidents.
Anyway, the situation with the Christian Zionists, though, is the opposite. It is their Zionism that is the contaminant, not the anti-Semitism. Just because you use Kedem sacrimental wine, rendered perfectly mevushal, etc. etc, to make your pork braised in wine sauce doesn’t make that pork kosher.
Seriously, I’m still curious.
Maybe it’s because I’m a convert instead of born and raised, but I don’t really get what Zionism has to do with my faith in God. Why, WHY, should I care more about some stupid line in the dirt over my own faith in God?
It’s not even the right borders, from I can recall. Where’s Judah? Do I have to get pissed at people for refusing to regard the Sinai peninsula as part of Israel, or was that just overreaching?
Of course, it goes right over the heads of Pam and Debbie that Ann Coulter’s views of the Jews are not unlike those of the average German in Pre-WWII Germany. If you look at Jews as people who stubbornly refuse to accept Christ, then heck, it is not a great leap to support discriminatory policies towards them.
the truth is that during wartime who gives a shit? you live or you die. the rest is extraneous.* soros managed to live.
Abso-freakin’-lutely Robert. I hate that kind of holier-than-thou bullshit.
Really, it’s a lot like what Raven’s point-of-view was, a couple of threads back. It is as if, in the main, the people who are most in support of this war are precisely the people who have the most illusions about the nature of life in the middle of a war.
And yes, I know that some of them don’t have illusions so much as a kind of emotional deadness about the suffering.
We have a petition online to ask the TV networks to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest: http://www.njdc.org/stopcoulter.html
Now, I know the bar for libel is high in the US, but I think that fucking well clears it. On steroids. (Admittedly, Deb-Deb might be so dumb that she thinks it’s true, but I’ll give the benefit on this one and just say she’s a libellous piece of shit.)
I’m also not a fan of libel writs, but given that one will pretty much eat up the Costco Coulter’s entire punditin’ income for the year, I have to hope that Soros’s lawyers oblige, because the only way to hurt these hate-flingers is to bankrupt them.
Y’know, as someone whose job for years was to sit on the copy desk and watch out for stuff that might lead to said libel suits, I gotta say the phrases about Soros pretty much set off the flashing red lights and deep-throated “Ah-OOO-gah!” klaxons. I’m not sure if he’d want to sully himself by having this kind of libel repeated (as it would be) if he were to bring such an action, but he would pretty much be guaranteed a victory on this one. Provably false, reckless disregard for the truth, provable actual malice and intent to harm on Schlussel’s part.
This is the kind of thing that they construct entire teaching modules over in Press Law 404 in J-schools all over the country.
Of course, it would be shrieked hither and yon all over the wingnutosphere that this was just another commielibrul attempt at muzzling the free speech of rightwingers, PC orthodoxy run wild again, flabberjabber snacklefratz, but it would be fun to see everyone who has republished (or probably would republish) such a vile libel get added to the “Does 1-1000” list on the First Cause of Action…
Debbie has really hung herself out to dry. Every second she spends from here on that is outside of a courtroom, with a bank account that reads more than zero point zero zero … is pretty much borrowed time.
And to think, little Debbie is a lawyer. Does anyone know where she got her degree? I’m guessing it wasn’t an accredited institution. More likely from one of those Jaycees machines; put in a quarter and you might get a gum ball, a horoscope, a cheap decoder ring, or a law degree.
I honestly wonder whether Coulter has any genuine beliefs at all, or is capable of them.
Well, C.R.E.A.M. (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”) may not have the poetical zing we’ve been trained to expect from our godsbotherers, but I assure you that it is the the Primary Directive for all the best-known Talibangelical ministers in the public media. You think Pat Robertson, huckster of blood diamonds and protein powders, gives a flying fart about that easier-for-a-camel-to-pass-through-the-needles-eye-than-for-a-rich-man-to-enter-heaven backscript? Or that Dobson consulted his Jesus’s precepts before promoting those best-selling books telling people to beat their kids ‘in His name’?
In ‘her’ own sick, twisted style, Coulter has actually managed kind of a cute double-reverse triumph over the Christian fundamentalism ‘she’ pretends to revere. As others have pointed out, under a successful Christian sharia code, peroxide blondes in miniskirts would never be permitted to pollute the public media, however hate-friendly and infidel-smiting their message. But it’s really tough for yet another standard-issue Big Daddy Preacher Man to find a unique media niche in our message-saturated country. Coulter’s one real “accomplishment” was discovering the novelty value in presenting hard-core fundamentalist hatred while dressed up as the epitome of a twentieth-century slut. Like Elvis or Madonna, Coulter has made a very nice living by presenting the art of a media-marginalized “fringe society” in a watered-down, prettied-up format that the megacorporations found suitable for sale through the better big-box retail outlets and non-cable television channels.
[…] For more fun with AC, go to Sadly No!. […]
The liberal media can try to censor and silence Coulter, but it only poi nts out their hipocracy and bias and hatred.
Don’t often agree with Coulter but this once I have to admit that she makes a valid point. What possible harm would there be in creating some sort of Christian (good) version of Sharia law.. I mean tax incentives… to help Jewish people achieve Christian perfection? Top White House aides assure me that no harm at all. We could even set up some community centers where the power of Jesus can be “concentrated” .. Concentration Camps (who among us doesn’t like camping?) where such assistance can be provided? And who knows if such programs are successful just think what wonders might be achieved with helping gays, hispanics, and other swarthy types? Maybe we can get Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon’s help with Michelle Malkin’s, uh, eyes.
Her persona is no more real than Steven Colbert’s.
I disagree. Sure, she uses a persona, but she didn’t invent it as a character to speak in opposition to her true beliefs. It speaks hyperbolically in order to reflect her core values. Colbert is a satirist. Coulter is a sadist.
Ahem. That’s:
om mani padme hum
Apostate.
That should be:
Oh! My kneepad! Meow!
Die, heretics!
It must be an American thing. Basically, she didn’t say anything that any evangelical wouldn’t say. I don’t think it’s motivated by hatred for Jews at all. She’s wishing them eternal bliss and shit.
I mean, what else is a Christian supposed to think? God says that if you are given the choice of accepting Jesus and don’t, you burn. Is she supposed to say, no, it’s okay to be Jewish when the Bible clearly states that it isn’t?
Not that their beliefs aren’t reprehensible, but if she is genuinely a Christian, she’s kind of stuck with that shit. I think that hanging it on Coulter is a lazy out, when the fault is with their religion of hate.
Basically, she didn’t say anything that any evangelical wouldn’t say.
Sure she did. That’s why people are pissed.
You can believe it, but you can’t say it in certain company.
Out of curiosity, what was it Icarus Johnson said? The LGF link leads to that delightful “You’re an idiot” singing banner.
I hate when he does that. Let me fix the link…
Out of curiosity, what was it Icarus Johnson said? The LGF link leads to that delightful “You’re an idiot” singing banner.
What does this say about them? If you really believe what you are saying and think that it compares favorably to the views of your opponents and holds up under criticism, why hide it?
He either has an inferiority complex or is completely disingenuous – or both.
But, like the Media Matters wailing, it sorta confirms our whole approach; they wouldn’t squirm if it weren’t a vital area.
I get you, Cambridgport. It’s a reaction of, “Man, I said something stupid. Better dig in and attack anyone who tries to call me on it.”
Hey, Gavs–that LGF link either *still* goes to the “You’re An Idiot!” page, or idle hands have once again done teh Devil’s work. Have you ever been in a stamina contest with Chucky Johnson before?
Betcha can outlast him.