On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Brad DeLong wrote:
> Of course, this is much less scary than is the claim that the NYT's
> coverage of Cardinal Law's pedophilia-enabling is part of a Jewish
> anti-Catholic plot to erode the moral authority of the Vatican to
> criticize Israel...
--a stupid and vicious smear of Cockburn. Here's what he wrote, from NY Press (emphasis added to a passage rather accurately capturing the debate on lbo-talk):
"...I head off down the road from Greenville, SC, toward Birmingham, AL, and my cellphone rings. It's a fellow from The New Republic called Frank something or other, who is eager to quiz me about some recent remarks of mine about the Internet being awash with anti-Israeli material. Amid the crackle and hiss of the ether and the roar of the interstate it's hard to hear Frank through the no-hands speaker on my dashboard, but eventually I catch his purpose, and ask him flatly, in more-or-less these words, "Frank, is your purpose to accuse me of disseminating anti-Semitic libels, under the guise of relaying rumors on the Internet?" Frank allows jovially that this is indeed his intent. I tell him that in my opinion the stories about Israeli spies, as categorized in a DEA report discussed on Fox News, by the French site Intelligence Online and various other news sources including the British Jane's, are legitimate topics of comment, as are the stories about anthrax dissemination involving an anti-Arab researcher.
"We go back and forth on such issues until the static gets too bad. Later I retrieve a magnanimous message from Frank saying that he is conferring with associates about whether to deal with me in The New Republic. So I assume that at some point Cockburn will be stigmatized yet again as the purveyor of anti-Semitic filth. *It's all pretty predictable. The viler the actions of Israel, the more rabid and undiscriminating the assaults of their troops on Palestinians in the camps, the shriller become charges here that almost any discussion of Israel or of the Israel lobby here is by its very nature anti-Semitic.* The day there's a photo of an Israeli soldier shooting a child next to the font in that Bethlehem church you'll find a big story in The New York Times about the troubling resurgence of anti-Semitism, with plenty of quotes from Abe Foxman of the ADL.
"And on the topic of the Times, have you noticed how that great paper has had a front-page piece rubbishing the Catholic Church as a nest of molesters every day for some time, especially since Sharon invaded Ramallah? The uncharitable could see this as a preemptive strike against papal criticism of Israel's actions, and also to shift attention away from the blood-stained molestations of the adherents of one of the other monotheistic religions."
--CGE