Ever More Ruminations on the Jewish Blogosphere
Chaim Rubin has started a new blog called The J-Blogger Interviews, which features a new interview with a different Jewish blogger each week. I had the honor of being the very first to be interviewed. You can check it out here.
Also check out Clifford Singer’s feature on the progressive Jewish blogosphere in Jewish Socialist.
The interview features the following grossly offensive comment:
“The Yankees fans, for being the right-wing conservatives of the baseball world — cheering on the wealthy (who inherited their fortunes) as they pummel the underprivileged (who have broken their backs for everything in life) into the ground.”
Geez. How to explain that I’m a lifelong right-wing conservative (is there another kind?) who is also a lifelong Mets fan and Yankee hater? Could be because conservative thought is about making poor and middle class people wealthier. Hence, the emphasis on lowering income taxes. In my experience (especially in law school), conservatives, centrists and moderate liberals tended to be middle-class while the Leftists were rich kids. Makes sense. The spoiled brats feel guilty about their unearned money and so come up with all kinds of reasons to tax other people earning money. They know there’s no chance their trust funds or inheritances will be taken away, so, as in the rest of their lives where someone else always pays the costs, they get to feel good about themselves at the expense of others.
Go Mets!
“told Jewish Socialist: ‘I get riled up because I have a hard time accepting that the Jewish community – which is primarily liberal and progressive – should appear to be so overrepresented by the religious right… The domination of the blogosphere by the Jewish right is a stain on our community and reflects poorly on us internally and externally.'”
Dan? A fucking stain?? Did you really say that? Can you possibly contemplate another reason why people who manifest their Judaism on a daily basis might be over represented in a medium that requires daily contemplation about Jewish issues?
Hmm …
j — show me once, in the last 50 years, where conservative economics have benefited the underpriveleged. under reagan, bush i and bush ii, the gap between rich and poor grew. today it stands at unprecedented levels. under clinton, the gap nearly closed, and everyone was moving up.
ck — can you try rephrasing that? i don’t quite grok what you’re saying. are you suggesting that people who lead committed jewish lives are obviously right wing?
No Dan. I just thought you were calling religious bloggers a stain. You were in fact saying that right wing or more republican Jewish bloggers are a stain. That is less offensive, however, even though I am not by any means a republican – I still think the stain designation is a tad harsh.
i’m talking specifically about people who make rachel corrie pancake jokes, dehumanize arabs or supporters of palestinian rights, trumpet the merits of george w. bush, sing the praises of meir kahane, call for the head of ariel sharon, etc. etc.
these are the folks who dominated the jib nominations and my point, more than anything else, is to say that we need more liberal jewish blogs and liberal jewish bloggers. the stain is ours — because we do not speak up enough.
i myself am presently involved in helping organize the liberal jewish blog community and to inspire progressive jewish organizations to start blogging. so far, meretz usa has joined the pack, and i’ll be launching a blog for jewish funds for justice within the next week. i also pushed the njdc to blog, and b”h, they took my recommendation seriously and launched their own blog.