Garrison Keillor writes a column for the Baltimore Sun. This week he angered Magnes Zionist and Jeffrey Goldberg by taking a crack at Jewish songwriters who do Christmas songs.
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.
I agree that the comment shows a little anti-Jewish feeling. But I've always liked Keillor, and I don't feel the least bit threatened. What interests me is that in the same column, Keillor also attacked
the brilliant economist Lawrence Summers, whose presidency brought Harvard to the verge of disaster. He, against the advice of his lessers, invested Harvard's operating funds in the stock market and lost the bet. In the cold light of day, this was dumber than dirt, like putting the kids' lunch money on Valiant's Fancy to win in the 5th. And now the genius is in the White House, two short flights of stairs above the Oval Office.
Keillor is a good liberal, a thoughtful guy, and in the Minnesota antiwar tradition-- and maybe too in the Minnesota Lindbergh tradition, i.e., isolationist. I wonder if Keillor's anti-Jewish-songwriter/Summers feeling isn't a mask for his real rage: at the neoconservatives and liberal hawks, the Jewish Israel-supporting part of the warmaking Establishment. Summers has been an active Israel lobbyist. Just wondering.
I saw this link to nytimes.com
today. Makes me wonder. I have a hard time thinking that the audience would have called his selections “too Jewish” if he hadn’t pointed out the authorship of the songs.
But he seems oblivious to the fact that at a Christmas concert an audience might have expected actual Christmas songs, like songs about the Nativity, instead of the schlocky standards he offered: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” (yes, Mel Tormé was Jewish), “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” — perennial, beloved and, mostly, written for the sheet music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, not for a show or film. (Two notable exceptions: “White Christmas,” introduced in “Holiday Inn,” and “Silver Bells,” written for “The Lemon Drop Kid.”)
Whoa, whoa! It is completely and utterly useless to try and discuss Christmas music unless you have heard my jazzy Hammond organ arrangements! I play them for my wife (On Christmas, she’s an expert!) And she said “I wish these were the definitive versions!” Anyway, she said something with a “def” in it.
And can you say you really have Christmas spirit until you have heard me play (try and stop me!) “It came Upon a Midnight Clear” interpolated with “Mack, the Knife”?
But don’t worry, there’s 12 whole days to Christmas, plenty of time to hear “The Chipmunks Christmas Song- Hurry Christmas” with me doing a Boris-and-Natasha vocal interpretation (Try it, it really works, especially on the “plane that loops the loop” and “gun that shoots” line)
I usually finish up with “O Little Town of Bremerton” a local favorite.
May an earworm crawl into your brain and warble Orrin Hatch’s Hanukkah song for the next 88 days.
As Sigmund Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” The issue of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is a major issue, no doubt. But when you raise White Christmas and Inglorious Basterds and Larry Summers or even lower rates of intermarriage for Jews going on Birthright, you are confusing culture with life and death. Culture is not minor, but it deserves a few paragraphs and does not possess the self evident quality that the conflict infers. Mixing culture and the conflict, you are being glib where seriousness is required and being shallow where analysis is required.
Oddly enough, I think this is one of those few things on which WJ and I would agree on. (Take a picture — I don’t think it will last long.) Are you even sure Keillor would know that Summers is Jewish? I wouldn’t know just by cursory examination — “Summers” is a pretty religiously/ethnically neutral name, and all of Keillor’s criticism was leveled at Summers, rather justifiably, for his massive incompetence as an “expert” in finance.
And really, who isn’t sick of Christmas music at this point, no matter who’s writing it?
First of all, Keillor tends to inject no small dose of dry humor in almost all of his commentary. Second, isn’t it a little unfair to assume the over-arching motivation for both comments are the same? Keillor has been vehemently anti-war and, like you’ve pointed out before, you can’t really throw a stone in a room full of Establishment war hawks without hitting a Zionist (Jewish or otherwise).
Actually, I happen to think that perhaps there’s some of that anti-jewish feeling out there in the heartland, as I run into that – inadvertently – often enough. With a non-descript accent, people who do not do much traveling abroad cannot place accents and assume it’s from somewhere in middle europe (they are not entirely far off the mark) a neutral enough place that they’d tend to speak rather freely in my presence. I’ve noticed just a tinge of a resentment directed at “east coast jews” as much as to hispanics for appropriating and co-opting cultural symbols, festivities and even linguistics. Maybe many people over in new york and DC think it’s cute to have emanuel light hanukiah. But to many more it comes across as a kind of a take-over – they do not feel part of of and do not understand why the president needs to pay homage to all these foreign symbols. I also detected on quite a few occasions that there are those who feel insulted when confronted by Yiddish words and expressions that are quite ubiquitous on TV. people in the heartland do not understand why they are expected to understand certain expressions, and simply don’t find it as cute as jewish people do. There are also those for whom emanuel-lighting-candles ceremony displayed in full glory on prime time is merely proof that jewish people have far and above more influence than any other group. All the more so when there’s an equating of hannukah and christmas – which to many is a fundamentally religious holiday that’s being taken over, secularized and made into a commercial frenzy.
I think that this subterranean resentment is more dangerous than people realize. garrison gave it expression – probably deliberately. he has been around long enough and his liberal credentials are solid enough that he probably felt he could partake in the luxury of a little jab. especially since these christmas ‘songs” are really unbelievably annoying. If people knew that jews wrote them (for the most part), it’d be enough to turn anyone a bit anti-semitic, especially after a long hard day at the mall.
Look, let’s just keep in mind that Garrison Keillor is probably the most over-rated man in America.
He was great on PHC.
I think he still is on Prairie Home Companion. And I’m a little bit surprised — I would have expect you to appreciate Keillor’s brand of humor, considering. :)
I can appreciate Keillor’s humor, not to mention his versatile and underated musical skills, but he needs to recognise his limitations.
I think Danaa is correct: these subterranean resentments are real.
But they are real for reasons that are only slowly rolling across the country; I live near a military base, I hear these things late at night in bars as a wail at God when no one listens. When you lose your child, you lose your son or daughter or father, in a war meant to benefit the ungrateful and Spartan Israel, when the USA is under no threat whatsoever, this seething anger against Israel grows. I’ve heard it spoken.
You can applaud the anti-semitism laws that the ADL passed, but they are meaningless when your kid is gone, you Dad is dead, or your Mother or Brother will never come home, and for what? A Wolfowitz wet-dream? A Douglas Feith lie? You can count on the Grade Nine education of the average grunt to get you over the first year of engagement. But dont rely on them remaining stupid once they get home. Keillor has tapped into a silent majority. America is pissed, and I now hear it all the time in small towns where you think it doesn’t matter.
[For the record, I travel a lot. But I no longer use planes unless the travel is overseas; I use cars. And when I travel I wind up at a local bar every night talking to locals.]
Yet these resentments have apparently not effected the election of officials who constantly give speeches about how much fealty they pledge to Israel.
(interrogative not rhetorical) I assume that the handful of Congressmen with large numbers of Zionists in their districts make their agreement and/or compliance with the Israeli Lobby known to their potential voters, but do the majority with constituents agnostic on the issue use it to appeal to them, or do they just make sure AIPAC knows that they should be on the ‘reliable’ list?
And mayhaps one shouldn’t overlook what is being done to districts where AIPAC muscles don’t necessarily have much flex — e.g. “caging lists.”
They make it known ONLY to their Jewish voters with separate mailing pieces professing their loyalty to Israel and how many times they have been there and frequently show a photo of them with some high ranking Israeli official.
Not only to members of Congress, Jewish and non-Jewish, with the exception of a district or two in NY, never mention their support for Israel in general mailings to their constituents, but you would be very hard pressed to ever find any mention of their voting for a pro-Israel, AIPAC sponsored bill on their websites.
Now, one would think that if Israel was so popular with the public as we have been repeatedly told, they would be proud to demonstrate their pro-Israel credentials. What can we conclude from their failure to do so? That the public’s strong support for Israel is nothing but a myth.
The “majority” of people in most districts are deeply cynical about any and all lobbies. They tend to lump aipac (to the average citizen, just “the jewish lobby”) with all the other lobbies and special influence pedddlers out there which make any government dysfunctional. The most common lumoping I hear is with the “wall street” lobby. As I noted above, the vast majority of the low information voters out there 9and many high information citizens too) make a direct connection between jewish influence and monied classes, in particular lawyers, accountants, bankers, business owners, financial managers and the like. I forever seem to be in a position of having to point out that many lawyers and accountants are far from rich, and there are lots of jews who work in other fields, not known to be all that lucrative, such as technical areas, academia, research etc. Interestingly, I rarely hear jewish doctors being brought up as an example of “fat cats”. maybe because so many doctors nowadays are from India? (just a snide thought there. it’s true BTW in the california bay area). people’s thoughts and prejudices are influences by personal experiences, snippets of news they hear and commentary from their friends. So the fact that so many seem to be forming the impressions I mention (including people in rural area who hardly ever ran into a jewish person) should be telling us something.
Anyway, like MRW, I’m just the cringer of bad news from the human front. He may be hearing it in bars etc, but I hear it everywhere where interactions go on. For some reason, people always seem to be confiding opinions in me (maybe for the same reason stray cats seem to follow me for a distance? some day I’ll figure it all out).
Yes, I remember how hard the various Christian denomination fought against the War on Iraq and War on Afghanistan! But it was the Jews what made us go there!
Sounds like a bunch of people are getting bitter cause their little war didn’t work out as good as Gulf War 1! But isn’t that how it always is? You gotta get in on the ground floor. If you wait til the second and third war, all you get is the drek. So natch, let’s blame the Jews.
Mooser’s got a point. It’s not as if Israel has a mind control ray pointed at Washington DC. It takes two to tango, and while Jewish Zionist neocons are on the floor it’s hardly a dance solo by any stretch.
Mooser – don’t misinterpret MRW’s comment. The low information people tend to mix everything up in one unholy goulash. They hear something about Israel and something about Iraq and something about wall street and bingo! there’s your omlette. he has a point about returning soldiers and the insights they bring – following a bit of wising up to the ways of the world. Some will start to connect the dots, especially when confronted with the reality of having no good answers as to why they were sent to iraq or afganistan (and soon, columbia?). When those who return suffer, a fraction will start trying to figure it all out. And israel – through it’s neocon troops in the US – and in England (!) – played a key – if not the only – role in getting us into those quagmires. (yes, I include afganistan….though i realize this needs to be elaborated upon – just not today).
Anyone who doesn’t believe in the not-so-invisible-hand should just take a good look at what’s going on on Iran. where is ALL the pressure coming from? certainly not from the US, whose interest in engineering a major confrontation at this time is marginal. Who IS pulling all the strings, ramming agreements through congress and what not? the maldive islands?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but to see how polarized the US armed forces have become — you’ve got the people that Danaa and MRW talk to and how they view our relationship with Israel… and then you’ve got outright collaborators, like OhioJoes (and he’s not the first “Real Israeli” American coming out of the armed forces that I’ve had the misfortune of encountering)
“The low information people tend to mix everything up in one unholy goulash”
I’m one of those low-information people, myself! Think about it, how much information have you gotten out of me? Not much, huh!
Like the mens and womens whom they (should that be “who”?) defend our country’s boarders, I can keep a secret! Loose lips get kissed!
“certainly not from the US, “
So the American voices pushing for a confrontation with Iran are not from America? My, it is a complicated world!
Mooser, you are far from being a low info guy. 8)
Actually Mooser – most folks weren’t sure what to think and so did not protest the war, but rather trusted (perhaps foolishly) that our elected officials were doing there best to pursue America’s interests. M&W’s argument is that the Israeli Lobby was a necessary ingredient and an important one, but not sufficient to be causal alone – 9/11 had to happen in order for the ‘securing the realm’ memo to begin to be acted upon with broad support.
It may help you feel better to say stuff like: ‘Sounds like a bunch of people are getting bitter cause their little war didn’t work out as good…So natch, let’s blame the Jews.’
But it won’t help any of us when it actually happens.
Yes, we call that the difference between first hand and second hand experience.
You can’t even tell the difference between the “Reply” and “Post” buttons.
Oh I know the difference, Chaos–you learn’d me that one a long time ago. I just enjoy your exasperation.
Great. When you exceed my seven-year-old nephew in maturity, then maybe we can have a serious conversation. Until then, do us a favor and go back to your toy soldiers.
“I wonder if Keillor’s anti-Jewish-songwriter/Summers feeling isn’t a mask for his real rage: at the neoconservatives and liberal hawks, the Jewish Israel-supporting part of the warmaking Establishment. Summers has been an active Israel lobbyist.”
And the worst part, Phil, is that it’s the good Jews, like you an’ me who we have (should that have been “whom”?) to suffer on account of those machers huh?
But look, Phil, if we didn’t suffer some unwarranted persecution, could we call ourselves “Jews”?
Did it ever occur to you, Phil, that maybe we Jews aren’t very likeable?
Look Phil, do yourself a favor and make yourself familiar with the facts about Garrison Keillors life and loves. The guy is just Tiger Woods with a higher handicap.
Frankly, I wouldn’t want that adulterous minstrel-boy to like me. He’s just another bitter, divorced, divorcee, and just tell him you also know what those stains are on his Madras sport coat, and watch him back-pray.
I live a couple hours out of Minneapolis and go there regularly, read the Star-Tribune, etc.
Minnesota has a storied history of anti-semitism, true enough. Some of the interplay between the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the Minnesota Democratic Party was carried out in that context.
About all I can add is this–the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul today approach Queens in their level of ethnic diversity–Islamic, Hispanic, Native-American, Scandinavian, German, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Hmong, Vietnamese–and of course Minnesota has two Jewish senators and Minneapolis has a Muslim congressman. Seems a relatively tolerant place to me.
Keillor’s article is addressing something that few on this board have on their radar: the fight within the Evangelical community for its soul. Hagee co-opted the Christian Church with his Christian Zionist political stuff, and there’s been a backlash in the dead serious Christian world since Bush left. That Denver pastor who was caught in his secret homosexual life (can’t remember his name; too lazy to look up now) was a regular in the Bush WH, and commanded as great a zio-friendly congregation as Hagee. Together Hagee and this other guy commanded tens of millions, but now they, and their groups, are perceived as being all about the power and money and war for Israel, not living a Christ-inspired life.
This is not a battle I am involved with, but for whatever reason, I keep my eyes on it. And one of the things that has long stuck in the craw of religious Christians for the past 22 years is that their festivals have to be equated in weight with religious groups that represent an absolute minor percentage of the size of the Christian faith in America. They resent that the birth of Christ has to be diminished in the public square as a result.
Keillor knows exactly what he’s tapping into. It’s not anti-semitism. It’s what that Bush official who resigned because he thought Bush, initially, was really into the Christian curing of poverty and homelessness, and instead discovered it was a callow appeal for votes without following through on the promises. (Can’t remember his name either; he was Asian.)
I meant to write: It’s what that Bush official wrote about who resigned because he thought Bush….
It is true that those who observe the Jewish religion are a minor percentage of the population of the US, but it should be remembered that Jesus celebrated Chanuka and Chanuka is mentioned in the Christian Bible (John 10:22). It is dubious (understatement) that those who are offended by creches in the public square or those who want equal time for menorahs in the public square do so based upon the reference to Chanuka (the holiday of dedication) referred to in John. Yet a little knowledge and acknowledgment that Jesus celebrated Chanuka might inject a few facts into the discussion.
…I thought that holiday was invented in the 1800′s. Didn’t we have this discussion somewhere else?
It was me that wrote that, and I referenced Israel Shahak. I was mistaken. It was the Bar Mitzvah ceremony that was invented in the mid-1800s, not the Feast of Lights.
The passage from John doesn’t say that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, but that he was confronted by Jews at that time to demand that he admit or deny he was the Messiah. Nothing is said about whether he celebrated the holiday or not.
True, the passage does not say that he celebrated the holiday, but he was a Jew, a rabbinic Jew, so his celebration of the holiday can be assumed. It doesn’t say anywhere that Jesus refrained from eating pork, but it can be assumed. When his disciples picked seeds on the Sabbath, they were questioned for not strictly adhering to the prevalent practice and Jesus’s answer was provocative enough to incite questions about his observance of the law, so where there is no citation of his varying from the observance, one can assume the observance.
FWIW: Just back from the Blackhawks game tonight and thought I’d add a comment about ‘the heartland’. Between periods ‘shoot the puck’ always has a kid, a guy, and an attractive single female. The guy tonight had a jewish name and I noticed he got a very cool reception and even boos from the crowd – am I overanalyzing this?
An 80+ year old lady just told me the other day ‘This is a depression honey – next year will be much worse”. I do worry what’s coming if the economy really tanks. Anyone else find it’s much easier to discuss this stuff with folks than it was even two years ago – the meme that we’re being had is spreading. Even the Fox watchers are starting to notice they really have no counter-arguments anymore – especially after Gaza.