Posted on 10/16/2007 9:36:15 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
Here we go again, another Ann Coulter media blowup. This time, however, there is a serious point worth drawing from the episode. Coulter’s latest contested comments were delivered on CNBC to Donny Deutsch on his show The Big Idea. She offered the opinion that Jews need to be “perfected” by becoming Christians.
Deutsch, who is Jewish, spluttered about “how hateful, how anti-Semitic” this idea is. Yet from a certain perspective — which is not my own, but as an Orthodox Jew I find reasonable coming from her — she’s right.
I first became aware of the Deutsch exchange by listening to the curiously popular radio program hosted by Michael Savage (a/k/a Michael Weiner), a New York Jew who plays to the Christian audience while studiously avoiding mention of his own ancestry. Savage, to my surprise, was predicting pogroms.
A brilliant saleswoman for her own books, Coulter played the agitated and offended Donny Deutsch like a violin. But her efforts at self-publicizing were incomplete until the Anti-Defamation League got involved. (The group should demand a share of the first royalty check for her current title.)
“Coulter’s remarks are outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism,” the ADL reliably howled, following its scripted role. Among their many success stories involving this type of outcry, is that of Mel Gibson’s The Passion: They helped out Mel Gibson by denouncing The Passion and turning the film into a box-office smash. Wouldn’t it be unfair to deny Ann Coulter the same helping hand?
On one level, the whole affair is just so silly. Which religion, whose adherents accept the tenets of that religion as the truth about God, does not regard adherents of other faiths as holding imperfect theological notions? If religious belief is important, then to accept more perfect beliefs is to be more perfect.
For my part, I’d try to avoid suggesting that Ann Coulter should be perfected by amending her faith. But I would avoid it only because I see no advantage in patronizing other people. Obviously, Ann Coulter sees an advantage.
But there’s more to say. In the Jewish community, there are two dominant ways of appreciating what it means to be a Jew. One way professes pride at being Jewish even as it follows the lead of secular materialist dogma. It turns Jewish identity into a sorry and pathetic thing — a mere tribal affiliation, a function of DNA.
The other way sees the Torah, the Constitution of the Jewish people, as a grand statement of eternal cosmic truth, whose value casts race, tribe, and blood as purely secondary matters, at best.
The choice is between tribe and truth. In the tribal version of Jewishness, what Ann Coutler proposed — converting to Christianity — amounts to a gentle genocide, the end of the tribe. In the truth version, her view is inoffensive because we regard her in much the same way she regards us. In other words, we think that her perfection lies in recognizing the truth of our religion, in the same way that she sees our perfection in accepting the truth of her religion.
Coincidentally, just the day before yesterday I received in the mail a book that’s coming out this month by a journalist at the American Enterprise Institute. He is Jon Entine and he has written a book aimed cleverly at the Jewishness-Is-DNA constituency. The book is Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People.
Entine does a fine job of retelling the history of the Jews from a racial perspective. The book will be a bestseller in the Jewish world, as evidenced by the impressive author tour he’s embarking on, crisscrossing the nation’s Jewish Community Centers.
A chapter in Abraham’s Children offers to flatter us with the case for superior Jewish intelligence. Another plays to the morbid fascination with physical sickness, focusing on diseases associated with Jewish ancestry. An appendix lists 54 such inherited Jewish ills. This stuff will be eaten up by middle aged and elderly Jews at those JCCs. For many of them, Judaism is a matter of the body, period.
Which, to borrow the ADL’s formulation, is a teaching of contempt for Judaism if ever there was one. But that’s precisely what constitutes secularism: acceptance that reality is only material, physical stuff. Judaism, like Christianity, says the exact opposite. Reality is spirit.
From the perspective of that basic truth, and setting aside particular religious doctrines that elaborate on it, a human being sealed up against the truth is at a severe disadvantage. He could stand to be “perfected.”
Ann Coulter understands that better than many Jews, including her fiercest critics.
Ping.
Read this and maybe you will understand what my previous comments on the Coulter brouhaha were really about.
Shalom, Amen, Allah Akbar, Gesund Heit!
If you agree with the bottom-line opinion of the writer of this article, then - miracle of miracles! - we are in agreement about something! But my objection in the other thread wasn’t about that, as I thought was clear enough.
You might like this article of Klinghoffer’s.
I most assuredly agree with the last statement in the article.
So you're furious with me because I "caucused" one thread in the eight years I've been here (not counting the Bible readings I've been posting for just over a month)? I admit that I used to horn in on the caucused threads of other groups, a terribly impolite and inappropriate thing, but I have stopped that. So to me your posts to me are simply coming out of nowhere.
Are you mad at me because I don't think the TaNa"KH is full of myths, mistakes, and errors like most modern Catholics (including most Catholic FReepers) do?
Otherwise, you don't even know me. Why have you taken such a sudden personal dislike to me?
Perhaps we should just avoid each other from now on.
Just the same coin viewed at slightly different angles ~
This entire Donny DoucheBag controversy was a set up. This schmuck is basically just sitting there waiting for the sentence she utters which he thinks will be the one he can run off and pimp to all of the other NBC family of shows. He practically yelled ‘Cut!’ when she said the part about Jews and ran off to the editing room to get a promo cut so he could get on Today or Olbermann.
I would love to ask Donny exactly HOW Jewish he is. He wasn’t to intone the seriousness that he takes his religion but beyond spending more on his kids Bat Mitzvah than the next richest guy at this Temple did, I’d really love to know the last time he recited a prayer.
Donny was a professional liar (he was in advertising and very good at it, in case his one accomplishment is unknown) so he presumes everybody else is a liar as well. At least he thinks Coulter is. He continually tells her how she is trying to ‘sex up’ her books or ‘figure out’ how to make things more controversial. And promises that he is not trying to debate her about any issues (yeah, like he could possibly debate her on anything).
But Donny will do just about anything to get a real controversial statement on his show like he did the last time with Clinton and the latent homo incident. Donny refused to go on with the show until she admit publicly that her priviate comment to him about Clinton was filmed for his show and he could pimp it everywhere he could to get attention.
And this time, Donny played the offended Jew. He doesn’t even know what Coulter is saying. He was trying so hard to get to the offended stage so quickly that he couldn’t even bother to wrap his mind around the statement to find out whether it was even offensive or not. He just knew that “jews weren’t perfect” so that HAD to be the quote of the show and he was losing precious seconds before he called Russert and got himself booked on every NBC show and maybe even Air America!
Coulter said that she bothers to go on Donnys show because he treats her respectfully. This is incredibly naive. Donny is a promoter and needs Coulter for ratings (badly). And he is argumentative mode the moment they start rolling the camera (after the opening sequence which shows off his fantastic tan).
I predicted, the moment I saw his self-righteous pose struck, that he would be on the phone to find out if the Today show could give him a segment the next morning. And sure enough, by the time I even saw the actual segment with Coulter I found out that he had already been on Matthews, Olbermann, Today and done ‘updates’ with Russert for MSNBC.com. Sure, I bet he is really offended. Offended that his network won’t let him have Coulter on EVERY week.
Allah Akbar doesn’t go with the other three. It goes with “Sieg Heil”.
pardon mouse!
When was the last time donny went to schul? However, I think Ann could have been more tactful - especially since an election is coming up.
Fair enough, we probably should avoid each other. That could easily be accomplished if we both avoid snide remarks on our respective threads of interest. I'll do my part: I pledge that I will never crash one of your Noachide Caucus threads (not that I ever have). There! ;-)
Most people don't realize that all Fundamentalist chr*stians consider themselves "adult converts."
The world should come home to Judaism...or at least ethical monotheism.
The world should come home to Noachism. Judaism is a special covenant between G-d and the Jewish Nation. They are in effect the "clergy" of the human race, and it is no more appropriate for all human beings to become Jewish than it is for all Catholics to become priests, monks, and nuns.
I have to say this: on Newsmax, Coulter is quoting the position of the Catholic Church through Father Richard Neuhaus - yet Coulter is still a Protestant. She is striving to be what religion, exactly? I have to say this because I am a Coulter fan: she keeps digging a hole on this issue because she went on a show run by a dope. She could have thought about us conservative Jews who take all kinds of flack. . . .
You have to realize that there is nothing she could say which wouldn’t be treated as a precursor to Kristalnacht 2008. Its the liberal game today of rushing to be offended and then trying to retroactively construction the rational under which they or anybody else could have been offended.
Remember Trent Lott? He praised the aging Strom Thurmond. His comments were heard by hundreds including a room full of media. Not a single person reported a single word about it since it was just pablum before a deaf alter kaker. But a couple days later, Je$$e Jack$on heard from Media Matters that Trent Lott had said something which could have been twisted into sounding something like words which could have been misconstrued to be misinterpretted as an endorsement of not supporting the Civil Rights Act.
And suddenly, those innocuous comments about a geriatric would couldn’t even stay awake without the help of his nurse because a champion charge for blacks to lose the right to vote. You got to love how easy it is for liberals to be offended, even if it takes them a few days or weeks to figure out how it actually happened.
I can guarantee you that Donny DoucheBag has no idea what Coulter was talking about. But since he mentioned Jews and ‘perfected’ in the same sentence he was just sure that somehow, someway there was some Hitler-speak going on and he had better jump to the offended status before there was a hard break and he had to cut to a commercial (which would have made his shock and horror look for more staged if it happened AFTER the commercial break). He is a tool.
I saw the Strom Thurmond comment LIVE (I was home that day and bored) and I immediately knew there would be trouble - and there was. Ann has to be aware that her comments can hurt the GOP. It puzzles me that she seems oblivious - and yes, I remain a Coulter fan and have all her books. She should have discussed the fact that the Empire State Building was bathed in green in commemoration of a Moslem holiday - that is something that should unite Christians and Jews!
There are plenty of converts to Judaism.
You are right - including former Christian clergy. However, we don’t go around “bragging” about our converts or trotting them out.
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