- As an early teen, I was playing in a YMCA basketball
league in Sumter, South Carolina, a leafy, sleepy southern town of about
35,000 where I was born and raised. Being of Jewish descent, I had to
play for a Methodist team because the Jewish population in the county -
indeed, in the state, at that time - was limited enough to preclude its
own league. The YMCA was agreeable to this, and a few other Jewish kids
from surrounding areas played as well.
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- After one of the games, I remember standing by the scoreboard.
Ahead of me was one of the Jewish parents, shouting at one of the coaches.
The woman wasn't demanding more playing time for her son, nor was she
a diehard seeking an explanation for why we were so bad that year. The
woman, in full view of and to the distraction and discomfort of many, was
demanding an apology from the coach for hurting her son's feelings. The
coach's sin? Taking her boy out of the game for poor play and making him
cry. I thought the whole episode somewhat amusing until two well-respected
men in the community passed by, and I overheard one of them say to the
other: "That is exactly why our kind has trouble with their kind."
Upon hearing this, I didn't find myself offended; at thirteen years old,
I found myself agreeing with them.
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- Today we have our very own national Jewish basketball
mom. Just as shrill, just as petulant, just as obnoxious, and useless
to boot. Our advocate, armed with a $50 million annual budget to ensure
the meanies never get us, is Abraham Foxman. Foxman heads the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), a once proud, worthy and worthwhile protector of Jews and
their faith. Under Foxman's brand of leadership, the ADL has devolved
into an opportunistic, intolerant, grief-grubbing stench - a "rights"
group for any and all who wish to feel offended - one which, in bottomless
efforts to remain PC-safe, unconditionally aligns itself with groups like
the Black Caucus and NAACP, both of which strongly support the pending
anti-Semitic U.N. Conference on Racism. Think about that. You hate me,
so by all means I support you. Why? Because I'm pathetic.
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- This past June, Carl Pearlston, a Board Member of the
ADL and longtime loyalist to its early causes, resigned from the organization
after 25 years of service. Pearlston began to receive increasingly hostile
responses from other Board Members for his more conservative views, and
was informed by Foxman that "he would have to realize that over 95%
of those involved in the ADL were liberal and would be unsympathetic to
his views." Notwithstanding the adage that for every five Jews in
the room there are 10 opinions on everything, the notion that 95 percent
(or even 55 percent) of all Jews support bilingual education, gun control,
feminism, affirmative action, abortion and the homosexual agenda across
the board is not only unfathomable, but further evidence that Foxman has
absolutely no legitimate claim to representing the interests of the Jewish
masses.
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- For years now, despite numerous unflattering (and under-the-radar)
news stories about his complicity in various scandals too numerous and
squalid to confine to this space, Abraham Foxman has held himself and been
held forth by others as one of the chief national political voices of Jewish
people. His misuse of and/or recklessness with ADL funds (see Henry Lyons),
his whorish behavior in the Marc Rich pardon, and his general odor in defending
such cosmopolitan thuggery; to say nothing of self-righteous condemnations
of what he arbitrarily decides to be someone else's "intolerance,"
is brought to the public's attention almost weekly. Last year, during
the presidential election, Foxman, using extreme examples, pulled incendiary
comments off the Web to imply that anyone that didn't want Joe Lieberman
on the national ticket was probably anti-Semitic. Well, in some cases
that's entirely possible. It's also possible that they simply thought
Joe Lieberman was a putz. Or more significantly, they just might not have
agreed with him on the issues. But the substance of disagreement is not
important to Mr. Foxman. Regrettably, whatever legitimacy may have accompanied
such charges has been diluted by the frequency with which Foxman lodges
them, largely in an effort to secure more media attention to raise more
money to continue the never-ending battle to tell everyone else how not
to offend Abraham Foxman. To his credit, it's a pretty good gig.
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- In April, Foxman was quoted in the New York Times assaulting
David Horowitz's campus ad campaign as "just another means of fomenting
racism and hate." The quip was so lacking in resonance it was almost
as if he was walking out to lunch and asked what to do about the Horowitz
situation, and in reply he said "put something together, use some
of the old text, and throw in uh....racism and hate." Instead of
joining Horowitz in showing the guts to condemn the racist, anti-American
black Left, Foxman threw his own to the wolves for a short-term political
pop. Foxman: the man, the myth - the self-loathing maggot.
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- And so it is that, as an observer of all these "anti-hate,
don't hurt my feelings" campaigns, a logical, rational Jew can't help
but logically ask himself: "Exactly what is it that this man has ever
actually accomplished?" Surely he can take credit for the fact that
there might be one less KKK group in the world (which would bring the grand
total to four), or the fact that more Jews are now allowed in certain country
clubs (lawsuits have a way of greasing such processes)... but concretely,
what is it that Abraham Foxman has done besides bend the ADL over for the
Leftist agenda of the Democratic Party, and give much of America an image
of most Jews as whiny, petulant, hate-thought shylocks? Sure, he sticks
his nose in just about everything that gets him headlines (i.e. the future
and futile U.N. Conference on Racism), but the real answer is pretty simple:
not much.
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- To be sure, I am very proud of my heritage. I believe
Jewish people are some of the most brilliant and determined people on the
planet. From Walter Annenberg to Max Fisher to much of the work of Steven
Spielberg, Jews have consistently risen from humble, even punishing beginnings
to not only enjoy great power and success, but pave the way for others
of all stripes to enjoy the same. And yet somewhere along the way - in
oft-embarrassing displays of uninformed hyperemotion a la Foxman - many
children and grandchildren of those who suffered so horribly in the Holocaust
have awarded themselves the right to gripe about this country as if it
were not the one that gave their ancestors their liberty. As if they themselves
were in the Holocaust. As if we are all just one conservative Attorney
General or High Court appointment away from being stripped of our "rights,"
which have basically expanded to include what any sniveling Manhattan/LA
liberal feels like doing at any given moment. The ignorance of how embarrassing,
foolish and distasteful this is to the rest of the country is glaringly
front and center, and a textbook example of how some Jews contribute heartily
to their own alienation. This in turn allows hucksters such as Abraham
Foxman to emerge - the kid nobody liked but who is determined to make others
like you - and raise millions to salve the wounds of the very people he
helps afflict with a crippling sense of victimhood.
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- Self-aggrandizing hustles such as this have in recent
years become an indisputable national pastime. Angst-ridden souls with
massive inferiority complexes now frequently cloak themselves in the mantras
of groups such as "The National Organization for Women," and
then use the broad title to imply that they in fact represent everyone
who might fall into such categories. This is a cynical, manipulative,
outright lie, and in this regard there are few bigger demagogues than Abraham
Foxman. Under his leadership, the mission statement of the ADL, the organization
created solely to safeguard Jewish interests, now reads: "dedicated
to translating democratic ideals into a way of life for all Americans in
our time." One translation would be aligning itself with Americans
like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which in its school
workshops has taken the liberty of edifying our teens on the finer points
of "fisting." Another translation is more simple: Whatever raises
us money to continue projecting our misery onto you.
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- It is an old axiom in politics that the longer an assertion
goes unchallenged, the quicker it becomes an article of faith. This axiom
has lent significant legitimacy to people like Jesse Jackson and Abraham
Foxman. No one questions them. No one looks at the sinister, highly unproductive
leadership they have attempted to peddle to millions and stops for a moment
to say: "Who anointed this person? What makes Abraham Foxman the
ultimate arbiter of who is anti-Semitic and who isn't? Is there a school
for this? Why do I have to listen to him or Jesse Jackson as an authority
on anything?" Of course, anyone who tenders such a challenge would
immediately be branded a racist (or, in my case, a self-hating Jew) for
not lining up to pull the collective pimp wagon, but at this point even
that seems worthwhile. It is worthwhile because these men are not leaders.
These men are liars - the corrupt, failed and demagogic sort - who have
proven repeatedly that they will, to the clear detriment of their own people,
pursue or create any cause that generates them media or money. To wit,
one of Abe Foxman's recent public forays on behalf of Jews was to loudly
condemn the naming of the Hurricane Israel as discriminatory against Jews.
If this is what has the Jewish community atwitter, then surely a lot of
people have missed something. Moreover, that Mr. Foxman could even consider
this to be a matter worth ten seconds of his life indicates that perhaps
it's time for him to begin to come to terms with the fact that he hasn't
accomplished much in it. In a Washington Post op-ed recently, Mr. Foxman
almost gleefully talked up the pending U.N. Conference on Racism (which
President Bush has wisely pulled the U.S. out of) as an excellent antidote
to combat racism around the world. What he failed to foresee (or acknowledge
in his zeal to support the Mutual Admiration Society event) was the potential
for the U.S. to withdraw from the event, a move largely predicated on the
insistence of Palestinians that language condemning Jews in very harsh
tones be adopted for the Conference. Again, this is the leader of my people?
I don't think so. This is a snot-nosed man-child who represents everything
neither I nor many other Jews want anything to do with. Leaders provide
leadership, not handkerchiefs and crutches.
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- Monty Warner is Senior Director for the Center for the
Study of Popular Culture. Readers may e-mail him at montywarner@yahoo.com.
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