Bad News for Jews

I'm a New Yorker, so even though I was raised in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, I schlep to work, I nosh when I'm hungry, and I complain about the gonif in the White House. I've always had Jewish friends and neighbors, Jewish roommates and Jewish girlfriends and Jewish co-workers. The eye doctor who first fitted me out for glasses was Jewish. Growing up, the vast majority of my friends were either Catholic or Jewish, so it was easy to assume that the majority of the nation was as well. Until recently, I (like most of my Jewish friends and acquaintances) thought that the Jewish people in the United States were as safe as any Jewish people on the planet. Now, I'm not so sure...

In the past three years, I've heard from LGBTQ friends who were afraid to get married because they thought they might get put on a list. I've heard from Hispanic friends who were afraid that they would hear a fateful knock on the door because their immigration paperwork might not be in order. So far, I haven't personally heard any Jewish friends express any fear of the current regime, but that time might come. Oddly enough, the most worrisome factor in Trump's 'Jewish Policy' is couched as a bill combating antisemitism... the bill seems to define Jewish people as a national identity group as well as a religious identity group, which plays into an old trope that Jews have divided loyalties to this nation. This is mere days after Trump peppered a speech in front of a conservative Jewish audience with antisemitic tropes. As a bizarre coda to this farrago of anti-Jewish bigotry, Trump invited antisemitic evangelical pastors Robert Jeffress and John Hagee to the White House Hanukkah party.

In the meantime, antisemitic attacks are on the rise in this country, from both white and black right-wing whackjobs. Trump's legislative order will do nothing to prevent real antisemitic violence, while playing into the hands of conspiracy theorists who portray Jews as a sinister 'Other'. If I thought Trump had a scintilla of awareness, I'd suspect that he planned things this way.

Shana Tovah

Here's wishing a happy new year to my Jewish readers. This Rosh Hashana, I am perplexed by the prevalence of anti-semitism in the United States in the year 2018, by which I mean 5779. As a non-Jewish person with many Jewish friends, who is interested in fields in which Jewish contributions loom large, such as science and the arts, I am perplexed by anti-Jewish attitudes. There is a whole Conspiracy Industrial Complex which pushes the idea that there is a Jewish cabal which seeks to overthrow 'White' cultures with a blend of multiculturalism and 'degenerate' art and culture... you know, stuff people like for entertainment.

Being a New Yorker, I have always had Jewish friends and neighbors- we celebrated each others' holidays together and, in contravention of Tucker Carlson's assholery, appreciated each others' culture. Yiddish terms such as schlep, nosh, kvetch, and mishegas season my vocabulary. I often joke that I'd make a good shabbos goy.

This post, besides being a Happy New Year wish to my Jewish readers, is also a statement of solidarity. The United States has been one country in which Jewish people have been allowed to thrive, and their contributions to our society are immeasurable. They have been at the forefront of medicine, science, the arts, and civil rights movements- the latter being a major factor in the hatred that authoritarians feel toward them (besides their role as the perpetual 'other'). I am confident that things will get better later this year, but if things get worse, I will do my utmost to be among the Righteous.

Shana Tovah, friends, and be of good courage.

Shana Tova, People! Be Careful!

Here's wishing a happy new year to my Jewish readers. I have always been lucky to have Jewish friends and neighbors, and we would often double up on holidays- we would celebrate Hanukkah with them, they would come over for Christmas Eve. I am still flabbergasted by anti-semitism in the US... this was one country where Jewish people, their religious freedom protected by the Constitution, could thrive, and thrive they have. The arts and sciences would not be what they are without the contributions of Jewish people. Personally, my first pair of glasses was outfitted by a Jewish optometrist, so MY academic potential wouldn't have been the same without this 'Jewish plot'.

I wish I could wish an unqualified happy new year to my Jewish friends, but nothing is straightforward these days. Anti-semitism is on the rise here in the 'States, from attacks on Orthodox Jews in NYC to synagogue shootings country-wide. Conspiracy theories abound, but they all seem to be rehashes of the old 'Protocols' style blood libel. Nothing is untainted by the current awfulness... I can post a picture of birds one day, but bird populations are plummeting. Cool bug pics are nice, but insect populations are declining. Those cute baby turtles I posted about will face the danger of plastic ingestion. Nothing is 100% happy, there's always a downside in this stupid, cruel era. I'd like to think that the bulk of the population is supportive of our Jewish neighbors, but there is a sinister undercurrent which the current administration has emboldened to go public. They aren't the norm, I tell myself, the decent people will defeat them, I hope.

Happy new year... but be careful.

Terror in a Safe Space

This morning, as I was leaving work, I figured that I would be posting about the capture of the MAGAbomber, but upon waking up this afternoon, I learned of the mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue which resulted in the death of eleven persons.

I have not been in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in many years- the first and last time I was there was when I helped a high school friend of mine move into an apartment when he started his MFA program in lighting design at Carnegie Mellon University. It was a nice place to visit, but my trip was a whirlwind- I was tasked with returning the rental van my friend used to move his worldly possessions, so there was no time for lollygagging.

Demographically, Squirrel Hill's population is forty percent Jewish, with the neighborhood housing one-third of Pittsburgh's Jewish population, which has been in the neighborhood for a century. I can think of no other place, besides neighborhoods in NYC and LA, in which Jewish Americans felt more secure in their lives, their faith, their culture. This attack was perpetrated by a deranged bigot who was convinced that the Central American migrant movement trumped up by right wing media outlets is a Jewish plot to undermine 'white America'. It was a textbook case of terrorism, an attack designed to make the Jewish population of the United States feel unsafe no matter where they are- if a massacre can happen in Squirrel Hill, a haven for Jewish people and a diverse college town, a massacre could happen anywhere. The right-wing media, including such mega-corporations as Fox, have been pushing the narrative of an invasion caravan for the better part of a month, so they, and Trump, bear some culpability in the radicalization of the shooter.

This massacre has been a particularly horrific coda to a terrible week, and I sincerely hope that my Jewish friends stay safe. The bigots are a small percentage of the population, and they WILL LOSE.

If there's one ray of sunshine in all of this darkness, it's that the MAGAbomber case was broken because the jerk left a latent fingerprint on a bomb meant to harm Maxine Waters- the lady can kick right-wing ass without even breaking a sweat. In a week as terrible as this, any bit of good news is precious.

The Great Jewish Conspiracy of the 20th Century

It seems that Donald Trump has finally crossed the alt-right (better known as neo-Nazi) Rubicon... Team Trump has rolled out an ad which hearkens back to anti-semitic conspiracy theories depicting a sinister Jewish plot against 'real Amurkins':





I've never seen Jewish people as a threat, having grown up with plenty of Jewish friends and neigbors, having studied under Jewish teachers and being a patient of a Jewish opthalmologist. Lately, though, I have been researching the claims of the cartoon frog brigade and I uncovered evidence of a vast Jewish conspiracy that successfully swept over the world throughout the mid-20th century, leaving only three countries as holdouts.

For this conspiracy, I am profoundly grateful.

I cannot wait until Tuesday, when this country can rebuke Vulgarmort and his deplorable followers.

NY Times Publishing Protocols

I don't read the New York Times anymore. I don't click on links to the Times, I don't link to the Times... I don't say this with any joy, back when the world (and the Times) was not so awful, one of life's low-key pleasures was spending a post-bender Sunday sipping coffee and reading the Sunday Times damn near cover-to-cover, completing the crossword puzzle, naturally.

Every so often, I am reminded why I now shun this newspaper that I once loved, and this weekend is one of those reminders... the Times published a Bret Stephens piece about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence that cites a white nationalist 'race realist'. The idea that different racial groups have different IQ ranges, with Ashkenazi Jews at the top, is a pseudo-scientific update of the myth of the sinister Jewish plotter. One of the tenets of the current fascism is that wily Jews are fostering non-white immigration to the United States and Europe to promote interbreeding in order to lower the general IQ, resulting in a more easily manipulated populace. Yeah, claims that one particular group has a higher IQ are invariably connected to claims that other groups have lower IQ.

I don't even know if Bret Stephens, an Ashkenazi Jew himself, is aware of the full implications of his 'race science'. Being ignorant, though, is more damning than being evil- after all, the guy is a paid contributor to what passes as the paper of record. I'm not even Jewish, but I have a well-tuned ear for racist dogwhistles. Basically, Stephens is writing a seemingly flattering depiction of Jewish people, while not caring that he is trafficking in the foundations of a century-old antisemitic trope- I'm not privy to the New York Times publishing protocols, but I never thought they'd be publishing 'Protocols'.

Happy Hanukkah, Be Careful

The calendar on my office wall has a note for today: Hanukkah begins Traffic, Civil and Small Claims, 3PM.  Here's wishing my Jewish readers a happy Hanukkah, but be aware that antisemitism seems to be on the rebound.  We can see antisemitism in current conspiracy theories, in right-wing rallies, in petty acts of vandalism, in synagogue shootings.  A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with a Jewish co-worker in which I mentioned that I had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours about how we'd end up having to hide friends in our attics if Trump's anti-immigrant policies got any worse.  She replied that she knew other people had it worse, but that any rise in xenophobia eventually ends in attacks on Jews, and noted that her mother had a backup plan to leave for Costa Rica if things got really bad.  I thought to myself, "Gonna have to make more room in the attic."

Hanukkah is all about survival in the face of an oppressive regime.  Most Jewish holidays seem to be about survival, and the Jewish people have survived for two millennia since the Diaspora, their ethics and traditions largely intact.  Here in the 'States, they have been at the forefront of pretty much every civil rights movement... which has earned them the wrath of reactionaries of all stripes.  

Thankfully, it looks like our political system will be pulled from the brink of fascism, which will allow all of us to sleep better at night (this is why I actually embrace the 'Sleepy Joe' moniker for President-elect Biden).  People in marginalized communities will face less danger with a non-sociopath in the White House.  If the removal of the tyrannical Trump isn't a Hanukkah miracle, I don't know what else would be. Seasons greetings, be careful, because things can still get stupid.

A Shonda for the Primary Voters

Today is primary day in New York and, even though I live in the City of Yonkers, I am paying close attention to the New York City mayoral race. I can walk to New York City in a couple of minutes, I spend a lot of time in New York City, and the fate of my beloved City of Y______ is inextricably linked with that of the Big Apple.

The big kerfuffle in this race is current Mayor Mike Bloomberg's horrible statement that Democratic frontrunner Bill De Blasio is running a racist campaign because his ads feature his African-American wife and mixed-race children- De Blasio's son Dante, with his awesome 'fro has become a minor celebrity in the five boroughs. Bloomberg, when asked to clarify what he meant by a "racist campaign" , whined, “It’s comparable to me pointing out that I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote.”

Predictably, Bloomberg has pointed out that he is Jewish while campaigning in Jewish neighborhoods, even going so far as to billing himself as "Mike the Mensch" and wearing a yarmulke when it suits his purposes.

Bloomberg started his political career as a wonky technocrat and has transformed into a petty autocrat in his third term, a term he engineered in spite of his support for a two-term limit to the mayoralty. Polls now indicated that many New Yorkers have "buyers' remorse for Bloomberg's third term, which has been marred by his stop-and-frisk policy (his howler about disproportionately stopping whites too much and minorities too little was especially odious) and his poorly thought out large soda ban (he should have proposed a penny-an-ounce tax to defray the health costs of soda consumption). Bloomberg has exceeded his shelf life, and is now stinking up the joint.

Bloomberg's animus toward De Blasio probably stems from De Blasio's opposition to Bloomberg's third term, to the extent that he was a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit opposing Bloomberg's third term campaign. There is also a perception that Bloomberg hates De Blasio because he is running against Bloomberg's perceived legacy. If so, Bloomberg's calumnious attacks on De Blasio's family reveals him as a callow, cowardly tyrant.

One of the greatest ads of this political season was recorded by author Junot Diaz. The blistering takeaway quote, one worthy of a celebrated novelist, eviscerates Bloomberg:

“When Bloomberg looks at a photograph of De Blasio’s family, he thinks racism. Me, I just think New York.”

When Your Token Black Friend Turns Out to Be a Hotep

 I would love to know who was in charge of vetting CPAC speakers, but this year's roster is a doozy.  The prize for whackaloonery goes to an individual calling himself 'Young Pharaoh', who has, as a lot of whackos do, opinions about 'THE J00Z':







This week's CPAC is featuring a speaker named Young Pharaoh. In the past year, he's claimed that: 1) Judaism is a “complete lie”; 2) Jewish people are "thieving"; 3) and “all the censorship & pedophilia on social media is being done by Israeli Jews.” https://t.co/km1UFzl1IQ

— Eric Hananoki (@ehananoki) February 22, 2021

The delicious irony here is that Young Pharaoh's problematic content was brought to light by Media Matters for America, long considered a bugbear by the Right. To make matters even funnier, the theme of the conference this year is 'Uncancel America', yet Young Pharaoh was instantly 'canceled' when his outlandish views came to light. Those views are a doozy!

Yeah, this guy believes that there is no historical or scientific evidence for the existence of Jewish people. I'm thinking of running a Schrödinger's Jew experiment to prove the existence of Jews... I can lock a Jewish-presenting guy from the Lower East Side in an opaque box with a bag of Lender's frozen bagels. This individual's Jewishness won't be determinable until the box is opened and we can observe whether or not he plotzed because of substandard bagels. 

Young Pharaoh also believes in the QAnon conspiracy mega-theory and it's assorted suite of outré tenets. You, dear readers, are lucky that I have been unable to find his song about Jews eating babies, and no, I am not making that up. This is what happens when your token black friend is a hotep, a member of a subculture of Afrocentric men who tend to be extremely misogynistic, antisemitic, and homophobic... believers in Black Liberation, but Women's Subjugation. They tend to be right-wingers, and the white right is so vested in trying to paint Democrats as 'the real racists' that they are willing to embrace these whackjobs, until they are exposed as loons by liberal watchdog groups.

Happy Rosh Hashanah

Here's wishing a happy Rosh Hasanah to all readers (Jewish or otherwise). I've always been into multiculturalism because my ethnic background is "mixed European" (my father was the product of an "interracial" marriage similar to the one the inimitable Larry Kirwin, and the boys sing about, my mother's grandparents were European expats who met in Buenos Aires). We always had Jewish neighbors with whom we were close, and mom often peppered her conversation with Yiddishisms picked up from a boss (gonif being a particularly favored pejorative of hers). We even doubled up on holidays with neighbors (also an "interracial" marriage, Rachel being Sephardic, George being Ashkenazi). Seders, Christmas dinners, Diwali celebrations- you name it, I love them all (any excuse, or none-at-all, for a party). To me, critics of multiculturalism are the most boring people of all... they want a homogenous, bland society where everybody is pounded into the same niche.

The Jewish people are remarkable for their tenacity in maintaining their identity while thriving (often in the face of terrible persecution) in the many societies in which they have found themselves. They provide an object lesson in multiculturalism- they have been able to adapt to prevailing social norms while not losing their core beliefs. Today, I'll be raising a nice cold egg cream, and wishing a hearty "L'chaim!" to you and your loved ones.

Two Flavors of Racism Result in a Flavor Sensation

Last night, I hit a supermarket and a produce store before work. I needed to pick up milk for my workplace coffee habit anyway, so I handled my regular weekly shopping duties as well. The store shelves are pretty well denuded, though mirabile dictu, I WAS able to pick up a package of frozen spinach on a top shelf of an otherwise empty freezer. Meat selections were pretty slim, but I was able to grab (heh) a Dominican cooked salami. I have a familiarity with this product... in my years of working in the South Bronx, I was introduced by coworkers to that most Dominican of breakfasts, mangú con tres golpes, mashed plantains with three 'punches', those being fried eggs, fried cheese, and fried slices of salami. I had never purchased an entire Dominican salami, though, so I decided to do some research into different uses, and I fell down a rabbit hole.

Dominican salami has an... uhhhhh... interesting history, and its mere existence is due to two disparate types of racism. In the Bad Old Days of the mid 20th century, Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo agreed to grant asylum to thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the expanding Nazi regime. Trujillo's reason for desiring an influx of Jewish refugees was, to say the least, messed up- in the wake of a massacre of Haitians living in the Dominican border region, Trujillo wanted an influx of white immigrants in an effort to 'lighten' the Dominican populace through intermarriage. The racist Trujillo was eager to welcome the European Jews fleeing the racist Hitler... great, just great.

About a thousand Jewish refugees emigrated to the DR, settling in the north of the country. They established farms and food processing businesses, including a meat processing conglomerate that produced European style cooked salami (having faced starvation, many of the immigrants didn't keep kosher). The cooked salami product, inexpensive and having a long shelf life, gained national popularity. It's not, though, the sort of salami that Katz' would send to your boy in the army:





As far as the salami itself is concerned, it's a far cry from the hard, dry salami of my Genovese ancestors... you could cut it with a fine string. It's spicy, but without heat, with a soft texture, almost like that of a pâté. It can be eaten out of hand, but does benefit from a crisping in a frying pan. I also imagine it would be good in a lentil stew, as a substitute for cotechino. It's a tasty product, but its raison d'être is enough to leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Neo(Nazi)logism

Lately, there has been a lot written about the re-branding of Neo-Nazis as the alt-right, because a lot of people hate Illinois Nazis. Similarly, the term anti-semitic has negative connotations among polite people, so Jew-haters have coined a neologism, a neo-nazilogism, if you will- counter-semite. The prefix 'counter' implies defense... the new term is supposed to evoke people who don't hate Jews because of fictional, irrational reasons, but because they are opposing a worldwide Jewish plot to arglebargle why do you hate Jesus and America? As reported in the forward, the term is meant to obfuscate, to direct attention away from the purveyors of hate to an amorphous Jewish threat- it's an attempt of linguistic judo (note- I've met Ole Bischof, and he's one hell of a nice guy, and a terrific judoka), flipping the narrative in order to counter (there's that word again) the mainstream narrative that hatred of Jewish people isn't acceptable in a decent society.

It's amazing to see the constant development of an Orwellian vocabulary on the Right- a cryptolect meant to mislead outsiders and cement in-group loyalties. Given a decade or so, they'll all be speaking Ascian... and they say that it's the Left which is trying to impose Political Correctness on people.

People of Faith in the News

The big local news story today is about an ultra-orthodox rabbi who ran a "kidnaping" ring that would nab husbands who refused to grant their wives a religious divorce and torture them until they relented. The methods of these roughneck rabbis sound like something out of the song Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap:

"Mendel Epstein talked about forcing compliance through the use of 'tough guys' who utilize electric cattle prods, karate, handcuffs and place plastic bags on the heads of husbands," said FBI Special Agent Bruce Kamerman shortly after Epstein's arrest.

Karate? Wouldn't Jiu Jitsu be more appropriate? Karate? Why not Treif Kwan Do while you're at it?

Being a pragmatic secular person, the whole notion of a "get" is baffling to me. I know that the forces of tradition are strong, but if you are hung up on a religious divorce that prevents you from obtaining a legal divorce, you need to dump your religion as well as your husband. Seriously, why subject yourself to the tyranny of men when you want to dump the tyrant you married? The description of an "undivorced" woman is something out of a horror tale:

Without a "get", a religious Jewish woman cannot remarry or get on with her life and she becomes an ostracized member of the community called an “agunah” or a chained person.

Even the description of the defense strategy sounds like something that shouldn't be taken seriously in a secular society:


The defense is expected to tell the jury about the oldest interpretation of Jewish law that broadly outlines torture as a legitimate vehicle for convincing recalcitrant husbands to grant their wives religious divorces. Defense lawyer Robert Stahl said during his opening statements that "the process is a legitimate divorce. It's not a criminal conspiracy." He told the jury that ancient Jewish texts endorse the use of coercion and physical torture in an effort to convince men to grant their wives divorces.


Sadly, the use of torture has been normalized in the U.S., but reading of a non-governmental actor engaging in it is particularly disquieting. I know that anti-sharia laws are all the rage in Red State America, what would the proponents of those laws say about the use of torture to coerce religious divorces? Is this sort of thing okay if the practicioners aren't Muslims?

Passover in a Time of Plague

Here's wishing all of my Jewish readers as happy a Passover as possible in this bad, bad times. I'm not Jewish, but growing up in the NYC metro area, I have always had Jewish friends and neighbors, and have attended Passover Seders (we would double up on holidays with our Israeli-American neighbors on numerous occasions). One of the questions posed by the youngest attendee of the meal is, "How is this night different from all other nights?" I imagine, with stay at home orders, this night isn't much different from the preceding fourteen to twenty nights.

These being fraught times, antisemitism is on the rise as conspiracy theorists blame Jews for the spread of the virus. It seems as if nothing has changed in seven centuries.

On a personal note, I found out that a friend of mine tested positive for COVID-19 after feeling run down for a few days. She is two weeks into her battle, but is on the mend (I just got a text from her indicating this). She does, though, know someone who succumbed to the virus at the age of 54. Scary times, indeed!

Here's hoping that everyone stays safe. The COVID-19 pandemic is terrifying, but the accompanying plague of stupidity is even scarier.

Happy Hanukkah 2019

Here's wishing my Jewish readers a happy Hanukkah. I have older Jewish friends who tell me that Hanukkah wasn't really a major holiday until relatively recently, post World War 2, at any rate. The holiday became a bigger deal when Christmas became more of a public extravaganza, and who doesn't want a festival of lights during the dark days of December? Maybe that explains why there really weren't any great Hanukkah songs, and the best known Hanukkah song, given the nature of the dreidel game, is best compared to The Gambler or Queen of Hearts. Oddly enough, while there really hasn't been great Hanukkah music, a lot of our popular Christmas standards were written by Jewish composers. I figure that music composition turnabout is fair play, so I present what is perhaps the best Hanukkah song, by the late, great Sharon Jones, who started off singing gospel music in church:





I love that video, with the band wearing ugly holiday sweaters depicting the band, and Sharon absolutely nails it, as she always did. I can't think of a better Hanukkah song, so you should blast it after all of the gambling's done.

A Pernicious Hate Hits Close to Home

The big local news story today is that the continuing epidemic of anti-semitic attacks and threats has hit in our area, with bomb threats phoned in to Jewish Community Centers in the communities of Tarrytown and New Rochelle. I am intimately familiar with both of these municipalities- I work near the Village of Tarrytown and I used to live and work in the City of New Rochelle... both of these communities are exemplars of multiculturalism and the virtues of liberal values. I have posted on the wonders of New Rochelle and Tarrytown on numerous occasions, and have a love for both of these places.

I've always been stymied by anti-semitism, having grown up with Jewish friends, neighbors, doctors, teachers, roommates. The Jewish people, in spite of two millennia of bigotry and violence, have thrived- their gifts to humanity in the fields of science, medicine, philosophy, and the arts are immeasurable. The very fact that this current wave of vandalism and threats of violence is occurring in twenty-first century America appalls and confounds me, and the fact that such threats have been made in such 'safe' communities as New Rochelle and Tarrytown has me pig-biting mad. These are friends of mine who are being targeted now.

I am currently writing this post in the Grinton I. Will branch of the Yonkers Library System, having stopped by looking for some reading material while on errands. In the lobby of the library, there is a small, stark Holocaust memorial:

As I guy who likes to fight recreationally, and abhors cheap-shotting someone, I sure am in a Nazi-punching mood. New Rochelle and Tarrytown are vibrant and beautiful because of their diverse residents, and they are strong enough to resist this onslaught of hate.

Happy Hanukkah 2018

Here's wishing all of my Jewish readers a happy Hanukah. A couple of weeks ago, before leaving for a week's Thanksgiving vacation, I had to clean out the perishable items from refrigerator and cupboard. Having a half-full bag of potatoes, I decided the most expedient way to get rid of them was to shred them in my food processor and make hash browns... now, two weeks later, I can totally get in the mood to make some latkes- the mixture of potatoes and onion fried in a lot of oil just works, and I'm not even Jewish, man.

I'm on the record saying that I like to celbrate EVERYBODY's holidays- Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah... I love them all, the one's I was raised celebrating and the one's I've adopted. Growing up, we'd often double up on holidays with friends and neighbors- Passover at their place, Easter at ours. In this era of polarization and ethnic-based bigotry, sharing our joyful occasions with each other is more important than ever. Hanukkah, like Diwali, is often referred to as the 'Festival of Lights', and we need light more than ever these days.

An Addendum to My Last Post

The Ramones, despite their posthumous ubiquity, were a cult band- their only gold record in the States was career retrospective/greatest hits album Ramones Mania. Part of the band's failure to attain greater commercial success was, no doubt, due to the fact that many of the band's songs were transgressive. In his memoir (co-authored with Legs McNeil) I Slept with Joey Ramone, Joey's Brother Mickey Leigh recounts some of the appalling, often hilarious, subject matter of the band's songs. Regarding Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World, in which a nice Jewish boy (as the cliche goes) from Forest Hills sings about being a Nazi:

(Sire Records executive) Seymour Stein came up to the studio in the afternoon and complained, "You can't say, 'I'm a Nazi baby, I'm a Nazi, yes I am,'" referring to the opening lines of the song "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," which had become the Ramones' signature closer at live shows. It was kind of ridiculous, but not to Seymour. The words are:

I'm a Nazi, baby; I'm a Nazi yes I am
I'm a Nazi shatzi, y'know I fight for the Fatherland.
Little German boy, being pushed around
Little German boy, in a German town

It didn't offend me, and I'm a Jew.

It didn't offend my brother.

Tommy, whose parents had narrowly escaped the death camps during the Holocaust, was more sensitive to this issue but acquiesced so as not to impede the band's artistic freedom and black humor. To me, the song conjured up the image of a weak, skinny German kid, who after being bullied in his own little burg, found a way to become one of the bullies. It was like a glimpse into the mind-set of a typical Hitler Youth member, brilliantly summed up in two lines.

Seymour was insistent that the band change the lyrics. The Ramones were sticking to their guns. A heated and emotional argument ensued; it looked as if this could be a deal-breaker.

Then they started talking about alternatives and came up with the line, "I'm a shock trooper in a stupor, yes I am."

Even that was too much for Seymour; to him, it was equally offensive.

But after a big struggle he finally gave in and allowed them to go with "shock trooper."

"I don't know if I should admit it," Seymour later confessed, "because I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't pleased with the Nazi references in the songs. You can't throw away twenty years of Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn."





Regarding 53rd and 3rd, Mickey Leigh recounted this:

"We got away with a lotta stuff then that we wouldn't have if we'd been big," said Johnny. "Dee Dee came up with '53rd and 3rd' on the first album. I thought it was funny: I didn't know it was anything from real experience. I thought we were just singing about warped subjects that no one else sang about. It doesn't mean that we had to be doing it."

Fifty-third Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan was the notorious spot where young male hustlers made themselves available.

"To Johnny's dying day," Danny Fields (the band's manager) laughed, "Johnny would never admit to knowing that '53rd and 3rd' was about Dee Dee turning tricks!"





My favorite anecdote concerns the choice of first single from the second album, Leave Home:

In January 1977," Legs McNeil recalled, "about a month before the Ramones' second album, Leave Home, came out, Danny Fields held a private listening party for me and John Holmstrom at his loft on Twentieth Street. After we listened through it twice, Danny reappeared and asked us what our favorite song was and what should be the single. I blurted out, 'Carbona Not Glue,' which to me was clearly the best song on the record. The song was written as a follow-up to 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.' It was meant to clarify that while glue might not be good for you, the cleaning fluid Carbona was definitely a better high.

"Danny said, 'I was afraid you were going to say that. Carbona is a registered trademark and we might have to take it off the album.'

"I was shocked," Legs recalled. "It was such a great song, so radio-friendly- like a song the Beatles or the Rolling Stones would have written if they were just starting out in 1976 with great harmonies and catchy lyrics."

"Carbona Not Glue" a "radio-friendly" song?

Though Legs's (sic) enthusiasm was totally sincere, his logic had betrayed him.

As much as I loved Leave Home, I didn't expect to see radio programmers adding a song about getting high by inhaling toxic cleaning products to their playlists anytime soon.

Carbona Not Glue was removed from the album, and Sheena is a Punk Rocker was substituted for it. The song wasn't re-released for years:





Seeing that I've excerpted heavily from his book, I'm going to make a plug. I Slept with Joey Ramone is not a RAWK GAWD hagiography- it's a no-punches-pulled look at living with a fascinating, sometimes-difficult individual. If you're a Ramones fan, or are interested in the history of punk, it is an indispensible read. If you love or have loved someone who is sometimes infuriating, it is a good read. It's funny, it's melancholy... Mickey Leigh gives us an unvarnished view of his family, his friends, and himself- he spares no one but there's an underlying affection for the often-dysfunctional persons with whom he's shared his life.

As a coda, here's a video for I Won't Be Your Victim, a Screamer of the Week (Joey called into the radio station to cast his vote) by Mickey Leigh's band "The Rattlers", which has been made into a video for the It Gets Better Campaign:





Mickey's voice bears a resemblance to his older brother's unforgettable croon. Unable to hold notes for long, Joey tapped his brother to sing backup (Blitzkrieg Bop and I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You) and additional vocals (the "ooh's" on Judy is a Punk and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend) on the first Ramones album.

Old Man of Providence's 125th Birthday

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of H.P. Lovecraft, a pulp horror/science-fantasy author who lived in obscure poverty, but whose legacy has, over the past four decades become as vast as an extraterrestrial monster/god. I have been a fan of HPL since my adolescence, as a perusal of my blog will reveal, but I am aware that the man was a racist even by the standards of his less-enlightened age. It's the typical conundrum of the fan- how does one separate an artist's oeuvre from that individual's racism, sexism, homophobia, or other form of bigotry.

There's a great post about Lovecraft on the website of The Atlantic which perfectly encapsulates the complexity of Lovecraft's legacy. Lovecraft was a nativist antisemite who married a Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine and mentored a teenaged Jewish kid from the Midwest. Much of the horror that Lovecraft tried to elicit was rooted in fears of race-mixing or biological regression. His fear of a multicultural society is palpable in one of his infamous lesser works (the idea of Lovecraft feeling a frisson of horror as he passed the anything-but-sinister Ferdinando's Focacceria reduces me to a gale of guffaws).

Not having Lovecraft's hangups and, indeed, being the descendant of immigrants that Lovecraft would have considered "undesirable Latins" or "wild Celts", I find most of Lovecraft's horror tales overwrought and somewhat comical, though at his best, Lovecraft could be genuinely unsettling. Lovecraft did, however, conjure up an "eldritch" image of the universe, with humanity being an insignificant link in a chain of being spanning vigintillions of years and the breadth of the universe, seen and unseen. Given his view of ignorant, beleaguered humanity facing an uncaring universe, Lovecraft's racism is particularly vexing- if we're all we've got, why would we allow our small differences divide us in the face of an existential threat from powers that we can barely comprehend?

There is evidence that, shortly before his death at the age of 47 from intestinal cancer resulting from decades of poor (literally) eating habits, Lovecraft was beginning to engage in a bit of self-analysis. From a 1937 letter to fellow pulp author Catherine L. Moore, Lovecraft lambasted his thirty-three year old self:


I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.


In his seminal essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft wrote: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. By Lovecraft's admission, he was secluded, and had a limited knowledge of the world- it is no wonder that he was afraid of the "other". For this reason, I look on the man with more pity than contempt- his bigotry was a product of his terror, a terror that insured the two main aspects of his legacy- his cringeworthy racism and his fantastic literature.

Don't Scapegoat Us, Scapegoat Them!

The epicenter of the measles outbreak in the NY metro region is the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community which shuttles back and forth between Brooklyn and Rockland County, which lies directly across the mighty Hudson from my beloved Yonkers. It's not surprising that anti-vaccination ideation has hit this community- it is a community which has traditionally been targeted by hostile government forces, and a community which places little, if any, value on secular education. Distrust of secular authority plus scientific illiteracy seems to be the combination which has led to suspicion regard vaccines.

Last Monday night, members of the ultra-Orthodox community met in Rockland County for an anti-vaccination symposium. There, they were subjected to misinformation peddled by opportunistic quacks. The most striking statement recorded during the symposium, though, was a statement by a man who should have known better... a statement by a Holocaust survivor:


Just one of the event’s five speakers, who were introduced as “distinguished personalities” and the “cream of humanity’s crop,” was from the Orthodox community. Rabbi Hillel Handler, who has likened vaccination to “child sacrifice” in the past, told the crowd that according to “medical research,” if you catch “measles, mumps and chickenpox, your chances of getting cancer, heart disease, and strokes goes down 60 percent.”

He also said that Hasidim were being scapegoated by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who he called “a very, very sneaky fellow” and a German.

“The Jews are our misfortune,” he said, bringing up how Jews were stigmatized in Nazi Germany. “We Hasidim have been chosen as the target in order to distract from the virulent diseases that are sweeping through the city from illegals.”


The emphasis is mine... this is a particularly grotesque quote because Rabbi Handler is participating in the same sort of stigmatization that he decries. The lack of self-awareness on display here is stunning. My take on this whole sorry affair is that the Hasidim are being victimized by a bunch of grifters and anti-science loons, and in turn are victimizing their own children. Playing the blame game, and trying to paint Latin Americans as a threat is beyond the pale- it's playing from the same anti-semitic conspiracy theory handbook, merely changing the name of the enemy. I'm not Jewish, but I can recognize a shanda fur die goyim when I see one.