"…the national go-to spot for keeping up with the rich and scandalous, the media elite and the pop-culture trends of the moment." -New York Times
Let’s add self deprecating Jew bashing as another go-to category for Nick Denton’s flagship outlet of left of center writers who pride themselves in their unapologetic embrace of decadence.
Here’s the latest entry by Gawker editor Alex Balk (edit on f&%kfest and all emphasis mine throughout)
Happy Rosh Hashanah, Jews! It's time to celebrate the new year, eat apples and honey, blow the shofar, and, if you're lucky, blow some cute single guy you hook up with in temple! Apparently, these holy days are the genesis of a two-week f&%kfest amongst desperate single Jews who want to get their nagging mothers off their backs.
It may come as a surprise to the customer care departments of select advertisers Volkswagen and BMW that their association with Manhattan’s elite media professionals puts them so close to a time they’d rather leave in their past. Not the best message for a German company let alone Absolut Vodka, NBC or Puma. (I give other select advertises HBO, The New York Times, and MTV a pass because certain segments of the media are too liberal to care too much about a little innocent Jew bashing). CNN and ABC also advertise on Gawker Media sites but more indirectly through Double Click.
Next time you’re driving to work in your Bluetooth enabled BMW X5 be sure to pull up Gawker’s exclusive one stop category “the Jews” for all your favorite self deprecating Jewish humor.
Hits like “Hey, Hymie! Wanna get in on the best deal of the fall? Shh, c'mere. I've got a pair of tickets to the High Holiday services at Temple Emanu-El” will be sure to get them rolling on the floor around the water cooler at work.
When HR comes to haul your butt to the unemployment line make sure you explain yourself using Balk’s apology to Jews offended by his writing (filed under Heebie Jeebies).
Dear Jew,
We are sincerely sorry for offending your delicate Jew sensibilities. Yes, it's true, there are a few Jews here in the office—we've crunched the numbers, and four out of five Gawker editors have at least some Jew blood in them (not on them!)—and we do think that gives us the right to make Jew jokes. But you know what? None of us are Irish, thank God, and we still knock the micks every now and again. We're kinda of the opinion that the idea of ethnicity and its accompanying stereotypes are inherently hilarious. So, sure, we may not know a lot about life in Israel—do you guys still eat the Palestinian kids after your tanks run them over, or did you stop that once Rabin came into office? Do we still send Israel billions of dollars a year?—but, guess what, we think the comical ways in which your Jew country kowtows to the craziest Jew elements of crazy Jewiness could not be funnier. Hope that's okay!
Shalom,
Balk
For Gawker Media all is fair in the world of unabashed self deprecating humor. After all, Gawker represents the average Jew that works in New York media circles as explained by Alex Balk predecessor and current New York Magazine online editor Jesse Oxfeld.
“The Gawker voice is that of the average New York media professional,” he said, “which, in a lot of ways, tends to mean Jewish — or at least Jewish-ish. There’s probably a willingness to make ‘We’re all friends here’ kinds of jokes. Part of the whole shtick is to explode and undermine stereotypes by employing them.”
Hah, funny. That explains just about everything I needed to know about the average media professional and the way the MSM reports on Israel. Keep in mind that Oxfeld was replaced by Balk to make Gawker more mainstream from what I hear. It’s ironic how these average media professionals go to such extents to explode old stereotypes by replacing them with new stereotypes that have become commonplace among this century’s latest generation of anti-Zionist detractors; many of them Jews themselves.
Balk himself is probably Jewish so that should make it all fine shouldn’t it? It’s no different than any other race that uses derogatory language in reference to themselves; at least not in the mind of unapologetic liberals who only answer to themselves in the depraved circles of like minded individuals. Besides, it’s Jew bashing for the sake of making a liberal point.
It may not matter to the progressive Jew but it should matter to corporations that wouldn’t allow these kinds of jokes as a matter of HR policy; unless of course they too share this point of view. It would also probably matter to the Balk’s of Lithuania and the rest of the Jews who fled the tide of rampant anti-Semitism during turn of the century Europe before World War I; not to mention those unlucky ones who didn’t quite make it out during World War II. After all, war was waged to snuff out those who murdered Jews in the name of stereotypes so the average media professional would be free to have their typical liberal notions.
But times have changed, stereotypes were dealt with in a different way back then in a time since forgotten by your average media professional.
Ah who am I kidding? It’s not like the writers at Gawker woke up yesterday and decided that Jew bashing would be something new and creative. Even though they are aware of the past they have been doing this for quite a while; it’s practically the in thing for their crowd. It just took a little bit of time for the mainstream to accept it. Companies that advertise with the Gawker Media sites and liberals that look past such writing could apparently care less.
I would almost be surprised but nothing surprises me anymore. What should I expect from the person who brought us Wonkette? It’s much easier to wish Tony Snow farewell by making light of his cancer than it is to be decent and creative in the monolithic world of liberal dementia.
Terry Trippany is the non-Jew Bashing editor at Webloggin.
