After more than a week of hearing all the kvetching about the now notorious Doonesbury smear, I thought I was going to plotz.
Obviously Gary Trudeau isn’t an Anti-Semite. People who shoot up Holocaust museums, people who blow up baby carriages, these people are the Anti-Semites. So how do we explain it? Simple, just as every person of color has to assume that every white person is a racist, every Jew has to assume that every Christian is a bigot. I just don’t mean people who are religious Christians, I mean anyone who is (even marginally) culturally Christian. The cartoon perfectly sums up how they see it. ‘Old Testament G-d’: angry, hateful, full of wrath. ‘Son of G-d’: full of peace, love and understanding. It’s ingrained in them. Christians believe they have a superior moral culture and no mater how many times that morality fails they always believe they are improving; what can we do? Certainly we should point it out to them when they step out of bounds. But should we do it with such vigour? Should we get all worked up over a cartoon? Especially one that’s well past it’s prime? Sure it’s political. Sure it makes standard use of innuendo. Sure we’re all nervous of slanderous talk of ‘moneylenders’ and ‘Jewish bankers’, Wall Street and all that rot. But let’s not overreact.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...