A couple days ago I did my most successful item, counting by serious comments: about the vanishing progressive Jewish presence in public life, from my viewpoint as an assimilating Jew. Later that day I opened my email to discover a message from a “John Podhoretz.” It was titled “Look Out!”
I don’t know John Podhoretz. I opened the note, and it said, “We know where you live!” That was all.
I was disturbed by the note and I emailed the guy back: “Huh? Who are you? What does this mean?”
He wrote back, “AN EVIL NEOCON JEWBOY! Let’s see if you can figure it out….”
I felt pretty sure it was John Podhoretz, the New York Post columnist and a regular contributor to the National Review Online. NRO has a conservative community blog called “The Corner.” John Podhoretz is often on there, and when you click on his name, you get the same email address from which the notes came to me: jpod@sprynet.com. And looking around, I saw that Podhoretz refers to himself as Jpod.
I called a few of my rabbis. One of them knows Podhoretz and said he felt sure that it was he who had emailed me. The guy has a pattern of sending weirdly antagonistic emails to people he disagrees with, sometimes accusing them of antisemitism. Another described Podhoretz’s emails as “acrimonious.” Later I saw that paleo-conservative Steve Sailer talks about Podhoretz’s emails on his blog, saying that they show him to be a “moron.”
I wanted to be sure the emails had come from Podhoretz. First thing this morning I emailed him at his Post address, jpodhoretz@gmail.com, to ask about the emails from the other address. It’s 1. I haven’t heard from him. I’m pissed off. I’d ask my readers what I asked “John Podhoretz.” Who is he and what does this mean?
