American Digest has mercifully filled in most of the gaps in my knowledge of the Easterbrook flap here, which finally allows me to make a relevant comment. The offending statement:
"Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else by promoting for profit the adulation of violence?”
Help me mommy, I'm scared. I haven't the slightest idea why this would be seen as anti-Semitic. He's clearly disdaining a particularistic "worship of money," not the generic worship of it. And there are plenty of exhortations in the Torah against the worship of mammon, right? (Perhaps not in so many words, but as "false idols," "idols built with hands," etc.) So, apparently, there is little difference between the new and the old dispensation on the nature of the sin itself, the difference being that under the new there's an "escape clause" in Matthew 19:26. Isn't Easterbrook, if anything, guilty of being ultra-Orthodox rather than anti-Semitic? I mean, he has rhetorically placed himself in the position of an Orthodox Jew, reminding his brethren that just because Christians get a break doesn't mean they do. Which is clearly pretty silly and hilariously self-righteous, but how is it anti-Semitic? He may be inadvertently ironic, but surely he's not deliberately so?
What the deuce am I missing?
Posted by Demosophist at October 20, 2003 06:14 PM | TrackBack