Michael Lerner bashing (was:Re: against 'entrenched identities')

[Tom Condit]

Well, I've met Michael L., and even worked with him. Like the little girl
who had the little curl, when he's good he's very, very good, and when he's
bad he's horrid. Lately he seems to be bad most of the time, but he has done
some excellent work in the past. You won't be amazed to discover that much
of the time the actual work part has been done by women.

My Lerner horror story is a forum on the Middle East at the Starry Plough
pub in Berkeley, where Lerner declared that Jews had to (ever so critically)
support Israel because anti-semitism is "in the blood" of Gentiles. I've
thought ever since I read _The Boys from Brazil_ that there was a congruity
of belief in "blood", genetic destiny, etc., between Zionism and Naziism. I
read something somewhere ascribing this to the decay of romanticism in the
late 19th century. I'm not sure exactly what the writer was getting at, but
it *feels* right.

Tom C.