Jay Michaelson’s whining critique of the conservative slam of Pajama Boy is all at once nerdy, narcissistic, and self-defeating, illustrating the dark void that is the nomenklatura Manhattanite liberal Jewish American psyche. (Go on, say it three times fast.) It leads me to ask: Is there anything liberals won’t do to emasculate themselves in deference to Big Government?
Uh-oh, I said “emasculate.” I must be “unconsciously” sexist now.
In defense of his thesis that conservatives are latent antisemites because Pajama Boy looks Jewish (try to choke down your offense at that one), Michaelson cites research done by Daniel Boyarin (an academic who has no qualm comparing the Israeli government to Nazis) and Sander Gilman. Gilman, who has contributed to the catalog of study regarding Jews and race, has also written on Karl Marx’s own antisemitism. And here’s where a 5 minute Google search becomes vastly entertaining: It would appear that Michaelson falls into the very pit of Marxian, Jewish self-hatred about which Gilman has written. In fact, Marx’s obsession with Jewish physiognomy is the same as Michaelson’s fixation with Pajama Boy’s physical appearance, sexuality, and mode of dress down to eye wear, all of which he cites as evidence of “Pajama Boy’s obvious Jewishness”.
As for all of you straight-haired, unquestionably sexual, well-dressed Jewish men with no glasses, you stand as much of a chance at pulling off your Jewishness as Miley does twerking her way into the soul train.
To be fair, this isn’t all Michaelson’s fault. The cultural Marxists who make up the nomenklatura love to “Other” things so much that the trend has seeped into pop culture. Liberals who happen to be Jews are breastfed on the academy’s idea that they are simultaneously the Evil White AND the Good Other. (Because the nomenklatura has yet to catch up to the idea of Ethiopian, Indian, Asian, or Arabian Jews.) That old Rabbinic tradition of guilt keeps them in line and away from any potential twerking moments. The side effect: Huge doses of paranoia. If you thought Edward R. Murrow blew McCarthy out of context, you’ve never had a political discussion with a liberal Jew. If they really did run Hollywood, alien movies would be back with a vengeance.
The bottom line: It is better to be picked on than the one doing the picking, so obviously anyone making the slightest criticism of any group one identifies with, be it Jew or liberal, is an antisemite. Especially when the liberal fits the physiognomy 19th century Germans deemed “looks Jewish.” Because, like Marx said, there’s no way to escape that hooked proboscis and curly coif. And, after all, as Michaelson so aptly noted: “as soon as you see it, you can’t un-see it.”
Michaelson’s stereotyping of Jews continues unabated throughout the article, although he quite cleverly blames the offense on conservatives. He writes, “Consciously, they are against everything ‘Judaism’ stands for, at least as construed by its enemies…”
I’m not quite sure why the word Judaism is in perceptible air quotes, nor who the “its” refers to in this convoluted argument. Nevertheless, Michaelson goes on to list a series of traits that are supposedly evil conservative stereotypes of Judaism – er “Judaism”:
outsiderness, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, a progressive rather than nativist agenda, an opposition to the notion that there is one kind of “normal” person, a sympathy for the underdog and the immigrant as opposed to the successful and the privileged, and, yes, a rejection of a certain gendered, masculinist understanding of justice wherein the strong survive and the weak are trampled underfoot like the untermenschen they are.
(Nice use of German there. It may sound a little Mel Brooks-ish, but always throw in a good bit of the ol’ Nazi lingo when things aren’t going your way.)
The nose knows?
The irony is that the supposed conservative/right-wing stereotypes Michaelson lists make up the prototype of the stereotypical liberal Jew proffered by… liberal Jews. You know, the kind that dwells within the five boroughs and writes for publications like the Forward. It may have taken us to the second-to-the-last paragraph of the article, but we finally figure out what Michaelson’s been trying to say all along: Look, I’m being picked on! Big Government Daddy, go do your job!
In other words, Michaelson isn’t doing anything beyond reiterating Pajama Boy’s original message and reinforcing every conservative critique regarding this young man’s gross immaturity and prospective future as a government leech. There is one (dare I say it, ugly) twist to his argument, however: he is making sure that the world knows this flake of a kid fits the Marxist-liberal description of a Jew, as construed by a Marxist-liberal who happens to be a Jew, who likes to blame his nasty habit of stereotyping Jews on conservatives. Again, not totally his fault; it’s a Marxist nomenklatura technique more commonly known as “framing“.
And here’s a hint: Neither that practice nor that ideology has anything to do with Judaism, air-quoted or otherwise. But, speaking of “having no morals,” that ideology sure has a lot of opinions about how “they” look and all “that” implies.
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