True enough about the neocons, but I don't think there's anything neo about Jacoby. His stuff is low McCarthyite swill with great heaping shovelfuls of the racism that Tailgunner Joe himself largely sidestepped. Much of what he writes is just stupider than the neos' university-audience stuff. Jacoby is a skillful enough propagandist, though, to catch the tones and the form of the acceptable op-ed piece, and appears conscious enough of what he's doing to cover his ass with the properly-placed qualifying example or the judicious quote from a supporting "authority." He *was* suspended once, though, for plagiarizing one of those e-mail make-the-rounders (duh). This was followed by a nation-wide letter-writing campaign from right-wingers blaming his suspension on retaliation by the dirty liberals who run the Globe (hah).
If I had access to the Globe archives, I'd link you to a piece he once wrote on Edward Said. It was a masterpiece of character assassination, one of the vilest things I've seen in print.
----Original Message Follows---- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Reparations Conference Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 21:00:21 -0000
How typical of the neocons. Everyone's suffering is good for them except mine. Mine entitled me to kill people.
I should have thought of this before, but the Jacoby column is of course Randy Newman's song Sail Away, without the irony and lyricism. "Climb aboard, little wog, and sale away with me." --jks
>From: "Gregory Geboski" <ggeboski at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Reparations Conference
>Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:08:59 -0500
>
><< Course, this only applies to the ones that got out . . . .>>
>
>Yeah, as with the dead, raped, tortured, and brutally exploited slaves. I
>believe these are categorized as "externalities" in the bourgeois econ biz,
>n'est-ce pas?
>
>The analogy to the Jews should have been, and probably was, obvious to
>Jacoby, one of two Jewish reactionaries who have a regular column in Boston
>papers (Don Feder of the Boston Herald is the other). (Any Jewish
>reactionary, racist of color, or anti-feminist woman who can boot up a word
>processor should be able to find a job in These United States.) I had
>drafted a letter to the Globe using the Jewish history analogy, but someone
>else beat me to print--I would guess hundreds of other letter writers had
>the same idea. But, as was also made clear in an earlier post on this
>thread re the mythic McDonald's coffee lawsuit, mere facts, logic,
>recognition of obvious analogies, rational coherence, etc., are not
>particularly relevant to rightists’ arguments.
>
>Every so often, Jacoby will switch gears and write about his relatives who
>were killed in the Holocaust, and bemoan the horror of (other countries’)
>fascism. I think this is supposed to give him a free pass on his own racist
>propagandizing--I write "I think" because it all seems to operate on that
>alogical, sub-rational level to which rightists seem wonderfully attuned.
>Just as citing two (I infer) Black writers is supposed to, I guess.
>
>BTW, Jacoby's screed was not the only bit of in-your-face racist blather
>passed along by the “liberal” Globe during Black History Month. Harvard
>professor Howard Mansfield, the noted homophobe and incompetent translator
>of de Tocqueville (per Caleb Cain in the 1/14/01 NYT Book Review), got an
>above-the-fold photo and a front page “news” article blaming grade
>inflation at Harvard on—-affirmative action policies in the 60s and 70s.
>Soon after the story appeared, some other Harvard profs rebutted him with
>data and such, and a story appeared later, inside, in the Globe’s
>City/Region section--“balanced” by one on feminist theologian Mary Daly,
>who was merely kicked out of her tenured position by Boston College
>administrators. (Harvard’s president had no comment on Mansfield.) Defender
>of intellectual standards Mansfield dismissed all rebuttals as counter to
>his own “observations” and “recollections,” thereby ending the argument.
>
>
>
>----Original Message Follows----
>From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Reparations Conference
>Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 01:38:05 -0000
>
>
>
>And Czarism and the pogroms were good for the Jews, because otherwise we'd
>be in Russia suffering under the aftermath of the aftermath of the
>revolution against Czarism and the pogroms. For that matter, Hitler was
>good for the Jews, because otherwise we would be suffering under staggering
>tax burden in socialist welfare states. Course, this only applies to the
>ones that got out . . . .
>
>--jks
>
>>
>>BTW, the latest right-wing line against reparations: No reparations are
>>owed because slavery was good for Blacks. The following was written by
>>reactionary columnist Jeff Jacoby in the February 5 Boston Globe. He
>>quotes an economist, so it must be true:
>
>>‘Blacks have benefited from slavery, because we have far greater freedom
>>and far higher incomes than we could ever find in Africa.’...
>>
>>
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