Liberal agony - how to have my cake and eat it too. Re: [lbo-talk] IsThere Still a Jewish Question? by Ellen Willis

[Jesse Lemisch]

The atmosphere on LBO is unbelievable. Two days after feminist Ellen
Willis's death, much discussed and disputed here, with obits in the Times,
Nation on-line, and elswhere, Steve Palmer disagrees with her views on
anti-semitism (as I do), calls her "paranoid," and "urge]s] her to seek
professional psychiatric assistance instead of laying her trip on the Left."
>From the grave? Apparently, though he is clearly some kind of a leftist,
what happens in the world of feminism is for him another world. And, so far
as I can tell, nobody on LBO has said a word about this four hours later.
What can people be thinking? If we just keep quiet, maybe that foul Jesse
won't notice this, which seems to confirm so much of what he has been
saying?

Jesse Lemisch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Palmer" <spalmer999 at yahoo.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 2:29 PM
Subject: Liberal agony - how to have my cake and eat it too. Re: [lbo-talk]
IsThere Still a Jewish Question? by Ellen Willis


> Hot on the heels of an election where my local Jewish newspaper is
celebrating
> increasing Jewish representation from 26 to 30 in the House (7% of seats)
and
> from 11 to 13 in the Senate (13%). It is anticipated that they will chair
a
> number of major committees. This is not bad going for a minority which is
2% of
> the population. Anyone who inspects the list of personnel in the White
House
> would be hard put to demonstrate that Jews are underrepresented. In
society at
> large the only group which has more privilege in relation to its
representation
> in the population is white folks. So Ms Willis fears are not of a
political
> nature, but psychological and the only sensible response to this kind of
> paranoia is to urge her to seek professional psychiatric assistance
instead of
> laying her trip on the Left.
>
> This, it is worth noting, is just a variant of the typical white liberal
> response to anything which advances a truly oppressed minority. How to pay
> genuflections to equality while hanging onto my privileges. Support public
> school integration, but send the children to private schools - nothing to
do
> with racism you understand, its quality, my child's special needs,
Montessori
> blah blah ... etc. This is the paranoid Jewish version: how to preserve a
> racist settler state and somehow get the oppressed to accept it with
> equanimity. There's nothing quite so stomach-churning as watching a
liberal
> wrestle with her conscience - and lose.
>
> --- Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
>
http://journalism.nyu.edu/faculty/files/Willis-Is%20There%20Still%20A%20Jewi
sh%20Question.pdf
> >
> > --
> > Michael Pugliese
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
> "To the socialist it is not the horrors of war that are the hardest to
endure ... but the horrors of the treachery shown by the leaders of
present-day socialism" - Lenin
>
> "When the train of history goes round a bend, all the intellectuals fall
off" - Marx
>
>
>
>
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