For those interested, in light of Mississippi Book Burning Banning, Seattle Public Library is being fun:
Teens and young adults ages 13 to 26 living anywhere in the U.S. can access our entire collection of e-books and audiobooks. We believe in your right to read what you want, discover yourself and form your own opinions. Fill out the simple form at the bottom of this page to get a Books Unbanned card.
Go forth and read, my darling dears. 📖📚💕
As advertised:
from Harper’s Magazine, November 1988
From an exchange of letters last summer between Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and Pat Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network.
August 1, 1988
Dear Pat:
I am sure that you have followed the controversy surrounding the film The Last Temptation of Christ. No doubt you are also aware that some in the Christian community have seized upon this film, without even having seen it, to make scapegoats of Jews.
If the film is offensive, I am confident that all Americans, regardless of their religious affiliation, will condemn it. However, I am sure you will also agree that Jews should not be made scapegoats for a work created by individuals of many diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. Those who have been blaming Jews have served merely to foster divisiveness and hatred at the expense of the mutual tolerance and understanding that has always been the hallmark of this nation’s religious pluralism.
As someone whose voice is widely respected in the Christian community, you are in a unique position to condemn and counsel those who are using this film to foment anti-Semitism. We urge you to do so, and we would be pleased to bring any statement you make to the attention of our constituents.
Sincerely,
Abe
August 1, 1988
Dear Abe:
Thank you for your letter, which I just received. Please be assured that I will indeed raise my voice against any suggestion of emerging anti-Semitism that may come about from the release of The Last Temptation of Christ.
However, you must know that when word of the release of this picture came to me I knew immediately that, because MCA [the company that produced the movie] has been identified with Jewish management since its inception, the release of this movie would be viewed by many evangelicals as a Jewish affront to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. This may not be rational, but as I found during the presidential campaign, perceptions are not always rational. Perceptions, however, quickly become reality.
This movie, as you realize, is an offense to 100 million Christians. It ridicules and blasphemes the faith that we have all committed our lives to. In my estimation, The Last Tempta- tion of Christ will be a great detriment to the framework of brotherhood that you and I and others have worked so very hard to bring about between Jews and Christians in America.
I would urge you to do everything you can to exercise your influence with Lew Wasserman and others at MCA to eliminate this affront to Christianity before the trouble begins.
Sincerely,
Pat
August 3, 1988
Dear Pat:
I appreciate your prompt reply but must admit to serious disappointment with its contents. You say you will raise your voice against “any suggestion of emerging anti-Semitism that may come about,” but open invitations to anti-Semitism have already come about, and yet you have been and continue to be silent. This is the time for you to speak out and confront those perceptions before they become reality.
Our immediate concern is the scapegoating the film has provoked. Since this film is obviously not a “Jewish affront” to Christianity, I cannot understand why you are willing to let this dangerous and divisive lie spread unchecked. I would ask again that you speak out publicly against anti-Semitism and condemn those who are using this film to foment it.
Sincerely,
Abe
August 8, 1988
Dear Abe:
I am your friend. Please read this letter carefully. It is obvious from your answer that you did not read my last letter.
Saturday night I was taken to dinner by a millionaire housing developer, who had been a member of the city council of one of our largest cities, who is a prominent Republican, and a national vice president of a major religious organization. He asked me, “What do you think of this movie about Jesus?” I said to him, “What do you think?” He answered immediately, “It is a couple of Jews trying to make a buck.”
There will probably be 50 million people, Catholic and Protestant, who will mirror his sentiments. I can’t do much by myself to stop that, but you can deflect it with the proper strategy.
If the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, an active Jewish organization, comes out against this blasphemous movie and in the process condemns MCA for a tasteless, un-American attack on the cherished religious beliefs of a large group of our citizens, you will have said to all Americans that you are not a part of this movie and that it does not have the endorsement of the Jewish leadership in America.
When you make such a statement I will then be delighted to feature your statement on my television network and to give it as much press as I possibly can in the other media. Then instead of your coming off as shrilly blaming Christians for a problem caused by MCA, you will come off as you are—a champion of all people against all forms of bigotry and intolerance.
Please give this deep consideration because whether we like it or not the thing is going to get Out of hand.
With warm personal regards, I am
Sincerely,
Pat
August 10, 1988
Dear Pat:
I had asked you, as someone whose voice is widely respected in the Christian community, to speak out against, and counsel, those who are using the film The Last Temptation of Christ to foment anti-Semitism. Certain that you would understand, I pointed out that Jews should not be made scapegoats for a work created by individuals of many diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. How disappointing your response.
I am flabbergasted at your accusation that the Anti-Defamation League or anyone else is “shrilly blasting [sic] Christians for a problem caused by MCA.” The problem is anti-Semitism, as exemplified by the housing developer’s comments to you.
Did you answer him? Did you tell him that Jews did not write the novel or direct the film? Did you tell him that the issue is not “Jews trying to make a buck”?
Pat, if you didn’t straighten him out, you should have. And you are someone who can straighten out others who might, in your words, “mirror his opinion.”
For you to even suggest that “the Jewish leadership in America” should tell the American people that we are not part of this movie and do not endorse it is outrageous. “The Jewish leadership” is not the film industry—why should anyone believe otherwise? Why should Jews be put on the defensive because age-old false stereotypes unfortunately still exist in some quarters? We will not be blamed for the Crucifixion a second time.
There is one point in your letter with which we agree. The ADL does, indeed, oppose and condemn bigotry and intolerance wherever it occurs. Sad to say, in connection with this film it has come from some who are erstwhile friends.
I ask you once again, Pat, to speak out against the anti-Semitism surrounding this film.
Sincerely,
Abe
DISCLOSURE: I spent an hour on the phone with a friend today whose kid was getting bullied for being a Jew. The response from our local public school system has been only a shade more supportive than Pat Robertson’s response to Abe Foxman, and a helluva lot less honest.
Jack Teixeira, dressed in camouflage fatigues, his finger wrapped around the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle, faced the camera and spoke as though reciting an oath.
“Jews scam, n—-rs rape, and I mag dump”
from the Washington Post: “Alleged leaker fixated on guns and envisioned ‘race war’”
First and foremost a video like this gets me thinking “Who’s coming to hurt us?”
(Answer: This guy #duh Me and my kids, we scam. He shoots. You get to score points tallied in our blood. End of story.)
But after that, videos like this get me thinking of how the camera fundamentally misdirects: we get so fixated on what’s in the frame, we forget about what’s outside the frame, who is holding the camera, pointing it, choosing what it shows and what it hides.
So I wonder: who was holding this camera? What have they left out? What choice did they make, and why?
Incidentally, if you want to watch a better man than me really stunningly dive into this issue, you can do worse than Errol Morris’s documentary about the American war crimes at Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure:
I’m a mixed Jew who’s lived in the American Midwest for his entire life. I think these songs, more than anything else I’ve ever written, are honest about that experience.
(Incidentally, given that this year is one of the few when Xmas and Xanukah overlap, all of these songs are especially appropriate.)
Yes, this was a real ad for a real thing, with no entendre intended. And, yes, I have the mentality of a toddler.
Although lines of ad copy such as “Get Big Dick and be envied by every boy in town,” “Become a member of the ‘Big Dick Brigade,’” and “How to get BIG DICK free” might seem like obvious double entendres to modern audiences, they were not read as such by customers of the time.
“Is This a Real Ad for a ‘Big Dick’ Machine Gun for Kids?” by David Mikkelson
Loretta Lynn, a singer and songwriter whose rise from dire poverty in Kentucky coal country to the pinnacle of country music was chronicled in the best-selling memoir and movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and whose candid songs gave voice to the daily struggles of working-class women, died Oct. 4 at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. She was 90.…
[Lynn] was a teenage bride and mother, a country star and a grandmother by her early 30s.
obituary in the Washington Post
This is, in lyrics and delivery and bear-trap smile, 100% the song of a 30-year-old grammy who is done taking shit. May she watch over all of us, and forever be our guide.
(context, for those who just need the world to make sense right now; dude is drinking dental rations)
All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth …, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838
Yes, “the leading cause of death among children is a firearm” is an extremely upsetting sentence—and also, a sadly accurate one (given that you define children as “humans between the ages of 1 and 19”; infants in their first year die from lots of stuff that doesn’t kill you after your first year; if you include them in this number, then it skews toward premature birth, birth defects, and SIDS).
But, the truly upsetting part is buried in this chart (shown below with a big dumb pink circle to emphasis the “Mechanisms” section), which was an addendum to the original source Schumer’s staff cited.
Population wide, gun deaths are usually ~66% suicide and ~33% homicide. Among children, that’s now basically flipped.
In other words, in America today most gun deaths are suicide, and most adults will die of something else (probably disease). But for kids in America, the leading cause of death is guns, and most of those gun deaths are murders.
