Sobran: My Obsession with Jews [for all who mistakenly think he is a valuable contributor]

Federal Observer ^ | maybe 10/30/03 | Joe Sobran

[Snuffington]

Refer for post #34

[Lazamataz]

Maybe it's because I'm Jewish and the child of two Holocaust survivors, but I can't give Sobran a pass on this or anything else.

I'm a Conservative Joo, and my grandfather father escaped Stalin's Kulak farmer purge of the early 30's. That is another Holocaust, one we don't hear much about.

[rmlew]

I really don't see any professional writer who's a paleocon who doesn't at least have a tinge of anti-Semitism.
Robert Locke, Jim Kalb, Lawrence Auster, Matthew Alexander, Paul Gottfried, Srdj Trifkovic come to mind as non anti-Semites.

[Lazamataz]

Ow. Really?

Really. I was born to a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic italian mother. Dad split when I was three so I was raised RC. I hated it. Everything was so weird. They had, like, three G-dlets (Father, Son and Holy Ghost -- I kept thinking the Holy Ghost was Caspar). They worshiped a bunch of saints. Something was really amiss here.

So my mom one day revealed my dad was a Joo. So I looked into it. HEY! HOME! This was the religion I identified. ONE G-d. NO evangelizing. People from different religions even get into 'heaven'. COOL!

I converted in time for my 24th birthday. :o)

Um, yeah: Ow.

[Paladin2b]

Anyone who knows or has had dealings with Sobran realizes that the man has serious personal "issues", which may be the real root of his anti-Semitic impulses. Apparently Sobran's early family life was a troubled one, particularly his relationship with his father, so it isn't too difficult to see him coming to see Bill Buckley as a sort of surrogate "father".

Trouble is, Sobran stayed on as an editor at National Review way too long. Normally, editorial tenure at NR is like being a writer and bit player for "Saturday Night Live"; it's supposed to be something of a way-station, you stick around for a couple of years and then move on to the next, bigger stage: Brookhiser to scholarly books, Will to a huge syndication deal, etc. (if Jonah Goldberg doesn't move on in another year or so you can peg his career as DOA, by the way, no matter how funny he can be on occasion).

But almost exactly like Al Franken on the SNL staff, Sobran hung around National Review for almost 15 years. Like a prolonged adolescence, in more than one way: people (including myself on one occasion) who encounter Sobran in person are often shocked at his unkempt appearance, with greasy uncombed hair, cheap rumpled suit, and insecure demeanor. If you know anything about adolesecents, you know that eventually there comes the Revolt Against Parental Authority. In Sobran's case, this meant lashing out in sullen rebellion at the surrogate father (Buckley) on a point important to the surrogate father (support for Israel).

So Sobran was kicked out of the house. Today, he is sort of a pseudo-intellectual ne'er-do-well, a crank who can only get his message out on a fairly tawdry website and "newsletter". I'm surprised there are that many people on FR who take him at all seriously. I agree with the poster who suggested he might eventually convert to Islam; he's an angry hater who would fit right in with CAIR types and has come very close to saying that the US got what it deserved on 9/11.

[Mr. Mojo]

Eric Alterman of THE NATION has compiled a list of more than 60 well-known pundits who "reflexively" support Israel, while finding only 6 who are frequently critical.

Sobran reduced to falling back on the "research" of a columnist of such a leftist rag is pretty funny. .....and pathetic.

[AmishDude]

I look on Townhall.com, which has Reese, Sobran and Buchanan as columnists as well as a raft of neocons. Let's go to your names:

• Robert Locke: Not there
• Jim Kalb: Not there
• Lawrence Auster: Not there
• Matthew Alexander: Not there
• Paul Gottfried: Not there
• Serge Trifkovic: Not there

For all I know, you could have been listing your bridge club.

Now, I see Trifkovic and Gottfried have written books. Trifkovic wrote "The Sword of the Prophet," a scathing critique of Islam, and Gottfried wrote "After Liberalism: Mass Democracy In The Managerial State" and "Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt". But it's impossible for me to evaluate whether either of these men is a paleocon, but it is quite clear that they are not movement-leaders of any kind.

[Mr. Mojo]

Many columnists write about it more often than I do: Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Paul Greenberg, Mona Charen, and George Will, to name a few. Of course they write uncritically about Israel,

Nonsense, Joe. These columnists can be very critical of Israel sometimes. .....usually when it appeases the violent Arabs surrounding them and buys into the suicidal "land for peace" bullsh/t.

[Mr. Mojo]

Every American president has to spend a disproportionate amount of his time coddling Israel and denouncing or actively fighting Israel's enemies.

I guess it's never occurred to Sobran the Israel's enemies and our enemies are one and the same. .....They're the enemies of civilization, in fact. But Joe is way too blinded by his Jew-hatred - aka, envy - to comprehend this.

[rmlew]

Trifkovic and Gottfried write for Chronicles, which is the main Palecon publication.
Robert Locke wrote for Frontpagemag. He know rights for VDare.com .
Auster has written a book on immigration. He has a blog, View From the Right.
Matthew Alexander writes for The American Conservative.

[Mr. Mojo]

In truth, the neo-conservatives were hardly conservative at all. For most of them, Israel was everything and overrode all other issues. You could agree with them on nine out of ten issues, but if the tenth was Israel the other nine didn't matter to them. You were the enemy.

LOL..... First he says that neo-cons aren't at all conservative, then he admits that it's possible for paleos like himself to see eye to eye with them on 9 out of 10 issues!

[Rushian]

Paladin, what grade did you get in Psychobable 101 ?

[general_re]

He know rights for VDare.com .

Boy, that's one where even a spell-checker wouldn't have helped ;)

[Mr. Mojo]

Israel's cruel invasion of Lebanon, led by Ariel Sharon

I see Sobran is getting his talking points directly from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah these days. What's next Joe? You gonna quote Osama himself?

[Paladin2b]

Paladin, what grade did you get in Psychobable 101 ?

LOL, actually. Not a bad comeback. Look, I don't pretend to be able to get into Sobran's head...and frankly I'm not sure that's a place I'd want to go anyway. But sometimes even a little pop psychological analysis can be close to the truth, and I offered it only on that level. Clearly the guy is missing a few rivets from his mental skyscraper; it is interesting to speculate on FR how that happened to come about.

I could have offered speculation on the possibility that he is a latent, uh, well, you-know-what who adopts his hatreds as part of his denial, but I decided that the "evidence", i.e., his obsessive championing of the flaming homosexual Oxford as the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays, his frequent invocation of his kids with no mention at all of a wife, etc., but really that's all too thin gruel.

[wideminded]

Mr. Sobran probably overdid it somewhat, but it should not be an unspeakable statement in this country to point out that the interests of allied countries, including Israel, do not always match our own. Our connection with Israel often has much of the quality of an "entangling alliance". We had better have better intelligence than a few Debka articles if we decide to invade Syria to find the WMD.

[gcruse]

my own ardent support for Israel had ended in 1982

That was about a year after I had published a letter
to the editors of the Dallas Morning News coming
to the defense of Sobran for something or other.  He
was a good guy  then, not the scaly-backed  maggot of
today intent on hanging the worldz woez on 'da Jooz.'

[gcruse]

, yet why wouldn't it surprise me if the Libertarians jump on the Palestinian bandwagon

Capital 'L' Libertarians come in isolationist flavors, so it wouldn't surprise me
if some of them wanted the US to disengage from Israel.  I hope they wouldn't
take that so far as to become pro-suicide terrorist bombings, but some of the
big 'L'ers are looney as hell.

[anotherview]

There have been many examples of genocide in the 20th century, from Pol Pot and the "killing fields" of Cambodia to the near extermination of the Jews of Ethiopia by the Marxist rebels (now the government) there to Stalinist purges. I can name many others if you like and if you have a strong stomach.

What makes the Holocaust different is that the German people were leaders in the arts, science, culture, etc... They were as civilized as any people on the face of the earth. The genocide of the Jews, Roma (gypsies), and anyone else the Nazis decided to eliminate was systematic, mechanized, and meticulously organized and recorded. That, it seems to me, is different than any other genocide in history. We tend to think of genocide as barbarism, but the Holocaust happened with all the elements of modern civilized society in place. That, I believe, is unique.

[inquest]

It should still be noted that "My Obession With Jews" is not the title that appeared on his site. The article appears at two different pages on his site under the titles "Obsessions About Israel" and "The Obsession". The bogus title listed on this thread gives the impression that his issue is with Jews in general, rather than with a particular faction who, in Mr. Sobran's opinion, use their religious identity browbeat opponents into caving into their political demands. This false titling will naturally color whatever impression readers will have of his article.

Also, note that in his actual titles, he never used the word "my", thus indicating (as the body of the article indicates) that it's not his obsession, but that of his opponents.