Hanson on Anti-Semitism and Reflections on the Absence of Mean Spirited Jokes about Islamic Terrorists.

Victor Davis Hanson has some reflections on modern leftist anti-semitism:

So they all, whether by design or laxity, take the easier way out — especially when slurring "Israel" or "the Jews" involves none of the risks of incurring progressive odium that similarly clumsy attacks against blacks, women, Palestinians, or homosexuals might draw, requires no real thinking, and seems to find an increasingly receptive audience.

You see, in our mixed-up world those Jewish are not a "people of color." And if there really is such a mythical monolithic entity in America as the "Jews," they (much like the Cubans) are not easily stereotyped as impoverished victims needing largesse or condescension, and much less are they eligible under any of the current myriad of rubrics that count for public support. Israel is a successful Western state, not a failed third-world despotism. Against terrible oppression and overt anti-Semitism, the Jewish community here and abroad found success — proof that hard work, character, education, and personal discipline can trump both natural and human adversity. In short, the story of American Jewry and Israel resonates not at all with the heartstrings of a modern therapeutic society, which is quick to show envy for the successful and cheap concern for the struggling.

Odd, isn't it, that after being attacked by Islamic terrorists, after spending decades of being economically held hostage by Islamic states, after intervening to protect Muslim's lives, the arbiters of the zeitgeist have thought long and hard and determined that the "Jews" are the problem?

Another weird thing is the absence of any Moslem jokes, terrorist jokes or the other forms by which a group esprit de corp is developed against "the Other." (Nothing wrong with demonizing "the Other", mind you, where "the Other" is demonically trying to kill you.)

It's not that we don't objectify "the Other." It's just that there is a short list of politically correct "Others" about whom such jokes can be told. For example, on Halloween evening, I stopped by the bar that serves as the DPB&W megafirm's other office. It was slow and I and another patron were the only customers. The bar down the way was having a costume party. A couple walked into that bar dressed as a priest and a nun. The bartender - who I've known for years - leaned over to the two of us and said, "Hey, do you know how to get a nun laid?"

Seeing what was coming, I grunted a "no."

He said, "Dress her up as an altar boy."

Now, there was no conscious malice there. The bartender knows I'm Catholic. The bartender is Greek Orthodox. Another regular, and a long time friend of the bartender, is Serbian Orthodox. There has been some good natured ribbing over the years. But somehow I got to thinking, "you know, while I've heard dozens of 'the priest and the altar boy' joke, I've never heard an ethnic joke featuring an Islamic terrorist."

Now, I said that there was no malice intended, but there really was. There is a casual kind of malice that is subsumed in the general culture. These jokes are like urban legends. They serve as cautionary tales that reinforces the things that we really know on a metaphysical level. (Which is why my ripostes about the Orthodox are so weak - there simply is no general backdrop of "accepted stereotypes of Serbian/Greek Orthodox" that I can play against. My most succesful to date constitutes a variant of "In Greece, how do they separate the men from the boys?" "With a crowbar." But that has no real resonance in this day and age.)

I've got no real point here, except to wonder when it became socially unacceptable to mock the Enemy.

Or to wonder who the liberal arbiters of correctness believe is the Enemy.

Further Reflections: Of course, I belong to a social group that really inspires some mean spirited humour intended to objectify the Other. I think every attorney has had to listen to the innumerable lawyer jokes that dot the popular landscape. One theory about such jokes is that they reflect in some fashion that lawyers matter - that lawyers are important as a powerful culturally dominant element of society. Which may explain why there are no similar jokes about accountants. With that in mind, consider this excerpt from a book review in the Nation:

One could debate how "significant" anti-Catholicism is today. By pop culture's gauge, it's surely also significant that the most interesting television family, the Fishers of Six Feet Under, with their secrets and faceted sexuality, is Catholic; that the liberal icon of mainstream TV for the past four years, President Josiah Bartlet of The West Wing, is Catholic; that the Sopranos, who both confirm and confound stereotypes, are Catholic. Although they figure far larger in mass consciousness than the theatrical satire Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You, Jenkins doesn't mention them. Instead, he catalogues potshots taken at the iconography, the clergy, the Pope--Sister Mary, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, Sinéad O'Connor's Saturday Night Live tear-up of the Pope's picture, Tony Kushner's denunciation of the Pope in these pages after Matthew Shepard's murder--and notes that similarly vituperative statements would not be tolerated against any other group.

He points to the pains taken recently to argue that Islam is a religion of peace when in practice it has also been repressive and bloody-minded. But he misreads the motivations of Islam's non-Muslim mainstream defenders. Since the same government officials who flatter Islam and warn against vigilantism are also the authors of state-sponsored harassment of and terror upon Muslims, their encomia to the faith ought properly to be understood not as sensitivity but as social control. Likewise, generosity toward Islam among liberals these days largely reflects respect for civil liberties, not religion. Individual Catholics might take offense at the freewheeling criticism of their church, but among them there is no equivalent of The Muslim, The Arab, who really has become the bogeyman.

For every "priest and the altar boy" joke there's some movie or book where the priest really is the validator of morality. On the other hand, I don't know that "The Muslim" or "The Arab" has really become a bogeyman in the circles I travel, which may explain why there are no jokes.