intolerance

I guess this is a sign that the right wing is abandoning all hope of attracting the Jewish vote. Their racism has alienated the black and Hispanic vote they have claimed to be wooing. Now, by showing their willingness to exploit anti-Semitic stereotypes, Fox News shows the right wing has given up on Jewish voters.

So recently the New York Times reported that Fox News is seeing its ratings plunge. Of course this is fact based on commonly used data.

Fox News, always unwilling to accept unpleasant facts, decided to vilify the reporters who wrote the story. Cause you see, Fox News can't face the fact that their audience is shrinking fast, so they have to blame someone else. But what is really revealing is how they choose to do it. They altered photos of the journalists who reported on the Fox News ratings plunge. In particular, they altered the image of Jacques Steinberg into a grotesque caricature of Jewish stereotypes. From Media Matters:

This man is running for Congress and he hangs out with Nazis:

From CBS News:

Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in northern Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

The event Zirkle attended was in celebration of Hitler's birthday. These people are real Nazis, losers who still believe in Hitler's ideology more than 60 years after Hitler got his ass kicked.

Of course this is no surprise coming from a Republican who is pro-segregation.

Republicans are not Nazis. But the ties between Republicans and white supremicists and their willingness to accept intolerance is disgusting to me. Also in Indiana, Republican Speaker of the Indiana House Brian Bosma told a group of Jews they didn't matter because only 2% of the population is Jewish. Ann Coulter has attacked Judaism and Islam. Racism is a frequently used and well-documented tactic by the Republican Party in electoral politics. A Republican in Montana has been openly racist towards a Native American politician. Right-wingers in Delaware have even carried out a genuine pogrom against a Jewish and a Muslim family. Prominent Republicans even blame Jewish conspiracies for their problems. Anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance are rampant in the Republican Party these days.

Back in 2006 a horrible example of religious intolerance occurred in Indian River, Delaware where two non-Christian families (one Jewish and one Muslim) were driven out of town by threats and abuse by religious fanatics because they wanted the community to follow the Constitution of the United States. Indian River's school board had instituted specifically Christian prayer in their PUBLIC schools, forcing everyone's tax money to support Christian prayer. This wasn't a "moment of silence," it was specifically sectarian prayer, explicitly prohibited by the Constitution and legal precedent.

These two families objected, as any patriotic American should when the Constitution is being violated. The response of the community, including school officials on school property, was to humiliate the Jewish and Muslim children, threaten the parents and a whole slew of anti-Semitic rhetoric including the age-old "Christ Killer" accusation. In the end both families were driven from town. A good old fashioned pogrom to shame all of America. Yes, let me say it. Delaware has shamed America with this intolerance.

You can go here to read my first piece on this based on the excellent work done by Jews On First, a pro-First Amendment, Jewish opposition group to Christian extremism.

Reporting on this a bit late...this happened a week ago, but slipped my mind until reminded of it by an email from the Anti-Defamation League

According to the FBI, hate crimes are on the rise again, up nearly 8% in 2006. This month a particularly nasty group of bigots in New York City attacked four Jews on the subway because those Jews had the unmittigated NERVE to say "Happy Hanukkah."

From Haaretz:

On [December 7th], Four Jewish subway riders who wished other people Happy Hanukkah were pelted with anti-Semitic remarks before being beaten, New York police and prosecutors said.

The incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The four were on a train in Manhattan on Friday night, during the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, when they were approached by a group of 10 people who offered holiday greetings. The victims responded, Happy Hanukkah and were assaulted by the larger group, police said Tuesday.

Police caught up with the train in Brooklyn and arrested eight men and two women, aged 19 and 20. They were arraigned Saturday on charges of assault, menacing, riot, harassment and disorderly conduct, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said.

The case was being handled by the office's civil rights bureau, and charges could be upgraded to hate crimes, prosecutors said. The two men and two women who were attacked had bruises and welts on their faces and heads but were not hospitalized, police said.

I didn't know this but last week was self-proclaimed "Islamo-facism awareness week," a right wing intolerance fest dreamed up by extremists Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. I only know that these fools were strutting around advocating intolerance because of an email I got from the organization Jews on First.

There is something so disgusting about the right wing fear of just about everything that isn't white, male, Protestant Christian. Ann Coulter is the perfect example of this. When we hear her condemning so-called Islamo-fascism, let's remember that she is the idiot who said right after 9/11 that:

"We should invade their [Muslim's] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

And what did she choose to advocate during her "Islamo-facism awareness week?" Anti-Semitism. Yes, she attacks Jews as part of her paranoia against Islam. Last week she told Donny Deutsch:

"we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians."

Ann Coulter also claimed that Christians want Jews "to be perfected" by converting to Christianity.

When she was challenged about how bat-shit crazy and offensive this was, she "explained:"

"No. I'm sorry. It is not intended to be. I don't think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. 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 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." Coulter later said: "We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all."

Imus was doing what he is paid to do. He was doing his job. He was doing what made him successful. He was fulfilling the role society offered him.

I don't defend what he does or even say he shouldn't get his comuppance. But I do feel that it is wrong that Imus is being dropped like a hot potato for insensitive, rude comments while Bill O'Reilly can tell American Jews to move to Israel if they don't like a Christian America and Ann Coulter can advocate terrorism and violence and largely get away with it.

Imus is a royal asshole. But that was what he was getting paid to be. Ann Coulter is getting paid to advocate violence. Bill O'Reilly is getting paid to advocate pogroms. They are each getting paid far more than I get paid to be a scientist.

This is what society values, if salaries are any indication. Assholes, terrorist advocates and anti-Semites. In the grand scheme of what is wrong in today's media, Don Imus ranks pretty minor in the long list of disgusting statements. He, at least, wasn't advocating violence.

A grad school friend of mine commented on the sexual assault charges against Mike Tyson: "We pay people to beat eachother up, then we are surprised when they are violent."

We pay people to be assholes, terrorist advocates and anti-Semites on the air...then we are surprised when they say things offensive.

Don Imus and his wife run a cattle ranch for children with cancer. They sell a line of foods where all the profits go to this ranch. They have designed cleaning products that are environmentally safer and safer for children than store brands, they sell them at cut rate prices to schools and hospitals and any profit they make goes to a center for pediatric oncology.