THE EASTERBROOK AFFAIR
"A quick word on the Easterbrook affair: For those of you who are unaware, New Republic scribe Gregg Easterbrook recently engendered some controversy when he wrote on his blog, in reference to Quentin Tarantinowitz's new film Kill Bill, " The Jews need to remember that they're guests in this country; if they can't keep their money-grubbing urges in check long enough to start making decent movies, maybe it's time to send them back to Germany." To his credit, Easterbrook only waited four days to apologize (you can read it here). In his defense Easterbrook noted that
While we can't speak to the second part, we're not unsympathetic to the first: We've certainly made a few ill-advised posts of our own recently (we're thinking in particular of "Enough Already with Black People", "We'll Get to AIDS When We're Done With Cancer, Okay, Bruce?" and, perhaps most controversially, "Fuck You, Pope"). We think the lesson here is pretty clear: Before you post something to your site, you need to read it very carefully and make sure that your message can't be misconstrued. Also, you know, don't fuck with the Jews: They totally control the media and they'll come down hard on your ass."
via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
a) the immediacy of blogging somehow lends itself to poorly chosen anti-Semitic phraseology (i.e., without a sharp Jew editor to blue-pencil it out, you might actually write what you think) and
b) the entry in question was actually written by guest blogger Mahathir Mohammad.
While we can't speak to the second part, we're not unsympathetic to the first: We've certainly made a few ill-advised posts of our own recently (we're thinking in particular of "Enough Already with Black People", "We'll Get to AIDS When We're Done With Cancer, Okay, Bruce?" and, perhaps most controversially, "Fuck You, Pope"). We think the lesson here is pretty clear: Before you post something to your site, you need to read it very carefully and make sure that your message can't be misconstrued. Also, you know, don't fuck with the Jews: They totally control the media and they'll come down hard on your ass."
via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
