Last night my wife and I were talking about a Jewish couple we know: where do they stand on Gaza? I'd run into this couple during the endless festivities of the new year and looked for some sign of outrage or, if not outrage, disturbance. The subject had come up glancingly; they'd said nothing. I told my wife that it upset me that there was not a ripple of concern in their voices. And she said, "You have to give them a break. They're not worldly."
This morning I woke up and thought that this was an essential predictor among all people on the Israel/Palestine issue: Are you worldly or not? If you're worldly you're going to be appalled by Gaza. If you're not worldly you can shrug it off. The great hope we have in Obama springs from the true fact that he's worldly. He loves Hawai'i and Africa, he grew up partly in Indonesia, he's Hussein, he's worldly.
The English writer Jessica Mitford came up [I think this is wrong; the Mitfords came up with it, not Jessica Mitford] with an essential divider of manners a half century or so ago: U and Non-U. U meant upper class. You could be U without being rich. You could be Non-U without being poor.
W is everything in American life today. America is by and large Non-W. We're proudly so. George Bush I was W, Bush II is non-W. Obama is W. Paul Wolfowitz is W but most of the neocons aren't. Elliott Abrams is very non-W. Norman Podhoretz non-W. Michael Walzer was probably the smartest professor I had in college, him and E.O. Wilson, but Walzer is determinedly non-W. E.O. Wilson–W. Walzer's whole intellectual definition of "Culturalism" is non-W. It rationalizes the idea of stickin' with your kind. Nakba: Non-W.
W/Non-W is an important distinction in my personal life. I grew up in very Jewish Non-W surroundings, and even at Harvard I found Non-W places. I married someone who was W–studied anthropology, had been to Africa a few times. Part of my difficulty in journalism was, Most of my editors have been Non-W. They love New York, New York is the world for them. That's Non-W. My closest friends are W. They have a real sense of how other people live their lives, and a respect for it. One reason I have worked so closely with Adam Horowitz on this site is that when I met him in lower Manhattan last May, in an Arab cultural center, I instantly recognized him as W. Completely himself–and that included being Jewish–in a very "alien" setting.
I don't think people roll off the assembly line Worldly and Non-Worldly. But the choices they make in their young adult lives seem to solidify the trait.
Avrum Burg, W. Dinky Romilly, W. Steve Walt, W. Tony Judt, W. The late Hilda Silverman, W. Tony Kushner, W. Ali Abunimah, W. And Obama, W. Time to bring more W to Israel/Palestine.
