22 Comments
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… (Gothamist)
NPR suggests you listen to annoying Christmas music.
Richard Nixon wasn’t racist or anti-Semitic…. oh, wait. (NYT)
A man got trapped between a train and the platform at Union Square. Scary! (New York Post)
Update, 2:04 PM: Mark Madoff, son of Bernie Madoff, committed suicide this morning. (NYT)
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
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22 Comments
@That's great I can Wikipedia Semites too. Except the Jews you are referring to only recently occupied that part of the middle east, so it doesn’t really make them any more semetic than the people that inhabited that region right before western imperialism, the foundation of the Israel state, etc.
@alumna That is irrelevant since they are descended from the peoples who did inhabit that region prior to western imperialism, etc. Therefore they are still Semitic, or at the very least “of Semitic descent” or something else equally pc.
If your ancestors were from Norway but you were born in Nigeria and moved to Norway in your 50s, would you not still be of Norwegian descent?
@No They are too far removed. Would you say that we’re descendants of monkeys too?
@Anonymous Actually, yes.
@Actually you may just be. I don’t necessarily believe so.
@Anonymous Darwin’d!
@I Actually, humans and other apes are NOT descendants of monkeys. Rather, we are a separate branch of the primate family tree. Apes (humans included) and old-world monkeys share a common ancestor about 25 million years ago, and this ancestor was neither ape nor monkey. Apes and old-world monkeys have been evolving separately ever since.
We are even more distantly related to New-world monkeys; our last common ancestor with them lived about 40 million years ago.
@alumna Who gets to decide who’s “too far removed” to claim heritage? And what counts as “too far”? Are descendants of slaves from Africa too far removed to claim African heritage? And if so, should we just abolish the term African American?
Basically, wtf.
@I don't know a single black person that would want to associate himself with Africa. I’d say a black American today is very far removed from an African slave.
@alumna So you don’t know a single black person that claims African heritage in any way?
@It sounds like you don’t actually know any black people, period.
@aha Recently as in before anyone else that occupied “that” part of the middle east. Step out of your “Palestinian guide to Palestine” class for a moment and check your facts.
@Oh ok so you also want me to talk about the jews that occupied China or India or imaginary land!? I mean we are talking about jews, and I’m pretty sure they are localized to that part of the world.
@The man is dead. how about Ghengis Khan? I’m sure he was racist. Umm Fredrick Douglas probably hated white people. I mean reporters like these should just fucking stop writing.
@Perspective While I’m not sure what relevance Richard Nixon has today, I can point to why that article is in the New York Times Politics Section. Don’t be fooled by the title, racism is just a catchphrase to draw attention to the real argument, which is that Nixon was an anti-Semite (if you don’t believe me, read the conclusion). Of course, the article isn’t really aimed at historians or nostalgic boomers–it’s really aimed at the tensions between American Jews and Israeli Jews. Call it jewish political kitsch, if you will
@um neither of which are the real Semites. So it wouldn’t be called antisemitism.
@alumna Then who are the “real” Semites? Akkadians? Arabs? Ugarites? Moabites? Phonicians? Hate to break it to you, but Semite refers to a member of a variety of both ancient and modern Semitic-speaking groups which originated in southwestern Asia. Jews would therefore be “real” Semites.
If your issue is with the fact that anti-Semitism tends to refer to only Jews, I agree with you. There needs to be a term specifically for anti-Jewness, one which is not anti-Semitism.
@alumna I meant Phoenicians (not Phonicians), sorry.
@or Phony-cians
@uhhh know your history before you open your mouth (open your laptop?) and make an ass out of yourself. frederick douglass was one of the foremost advocates of women’s rights and suffrage–for both black and white women. he most definitely did not hate white people
@That is an interesting view I did not know you knew Fredrick Douglas personally, jack ass. Plus, I said that he PROBABLY did. FYI, when you’re about to bash someone, make sure you have a good point.
@simple Could you be any stupider? Frederick Douglass has been criticized for being TOO accommodating to white elites. It was W.E.B. DuBois who was much more hostile to the white ruling class. Saying Douglass “probably hated white people” would be like saying “Martin Luther King supported violence against white people and he was probably a Black Panther.” it’s just absurd if you know any history.