While surfing about yesterday, I came across this post on KesherTalk, in which Yehudit Weiss delights in her shared disdain for my friend Douglas Rushkoff with some unknown journalism student at NYU. Apparently the author’s less-than-flattering comments were picked up on by Jeff Jarvis, who was recently touted by New York magazine as one of the most “prolific” bloggers in New York, and who apparently isn’t much of a Rushkoff fan either, as he didn’t seem to mind publicizing such rude assertions about Douglas’ work.
In the past five months, Yehudit has kept herself mighty busy talking smack about Douglas, as have the folks at Protocols, Hasidic Rebel, and even my friend Jay over at Zeek (who was, at least, polite with his criticisms, as opposed to others aforementioned).
In her most recent post, however, Yehudit goes as so far as to suggest that Douglas was looking to exploit American Judaism as a new market being that he “squeezed whatever celebrity he could out of the old one.” From this statement it becomes obvious that Yehudit knows nothing about Rushkoff’s work prior to Nothing Sacred. His widely-popular novel Ecstasy Club (1998) told the story of a San Francisco raver reconciling his drug-addled lifestyle with his Jewish heritage. His next novel after that, Exit Strategy (2002), was an allegory on the story of Joseph, set in a hellish techno-future, which impugned the wealthy elite for their rank materialism. With his last two books heavily exploring Jewish themes, how could Nothing Sacred be construed as a play for marketshare? It was through his exploration of cyberculture and media culture that Douglas came to understand his own connection as a Jewish person, as well as the manner in which Judaism forged his moral sensibilities, his perceptions of materialism and wealth, and his propensity towards media dissection. He didn’t switch to Judaism because he exhausted his popularity in media or technological circles (he’s actually a leading columnist on Nokia’s wireless news site). He switched because his own focus in life switched. He was awakened! Thus, Nothing Sacred is a result of Douglas’ transformation from a disaffected American Jew consumed with popular culture, into a conscious American Jew consumed with Jewish culture. It is the documentation of his foray into that consciousness—not some shallow attempt to sell books. To accuse the man responsible for “The Merchants of Cool” of approaching this topic in such a manner is apalling. That’s just not who he is.
Yehudit: To quote Bill Hicks, “Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!” That’s not what Douglas is doing… That’s what you’re doing by perceiving of his work as some vain attempt to cash in on the Jewish literary market. Nothing Sacred is bigger than that, but because you can’t get past the filters of your own prejudice, you can’t see it. That’s just too bad for you.
Anyway, since “the fun” just never ends and people won’t let up on the guy, I implored Douglas to respond to his critics in the way Michael Moore responded to those who have waged false criticisms against his film Bowling for Columbine. Douglas was reluctant at first, but once again, he has firmly stayed his ground.
So here it goes—the final word in defense of Nothing Sacred.