EASTERBROOK OR DONNYBROOK?

A “déjà vu” kind of thing has happened to Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic. He wrote a column for his blog at TNR about Quintin Tarantino. It seems Tarantino’s new movie Kill Bill and it’s WAY OVER THE TOP violence pushed Easterbrook over the top, too. In the column, Easterbrook blasts the whole culture of gratuitous violence that pervades Hollywood today, even when studies have shown that violence on the screen leads to violence in real life.

So far, so good until the last paragraph. In that he says,

“Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice.”

Whoa, did he just say Jews worship money? It surely can be read that way and A LOT of people did. Including Easterbrook. A few days after he posted the Kill Bill blog, he posted an apology trying to explain how he could post something so stupid. It was creepily similar to my blog on Mel Gibson’s The Passion. In his apology, Easterbrook explains how he was trying to make the point that Christians and Jews are both acting against their faiths by producing violent movies, especially just to make a lot of money. He feels that Jews doing this is especially egregious considering how they have for centuries been targets of violence. He also admits that his wording was terrible and the point he worked on through the whole blog on was lost because of very poor and insensitive expression. He was NOT saying Jews are money hungry.

I feel for the man because I did the same thing and boy, I still feel stupid to this day. The internet rocks and blogging is great, but when you make a colossal blunder like this, it’s often made worse by instant dissemination. Perhaps I’m especially empathetic to situations like this because I was in one of my own, but reading his original column and the apology, I think it’s obvious he wasn’t defaming Jews, he was incensed by Kill Bill and didn’t make sure he was expressing himself well before he posted.

Of course, that’s not good enough for a lot of people. Abe Foxman over at the ADL called his explanation “insufficient”. Foxman said:

“We expect more from The New Republic. Gregg Easterbrook's mea culpa is insufficient. It's a rationalization. There is no excuse for bringing religion into a discussion about greed and the film industry. Greed is a human frailty. Money is not only colorless, it is faithless. “

Abe says there is no need to bring religion into the discussion of greed and the film industry? That’s poppycock. Easterbrook was saying religious people have a responsibility NOT to promote violence, especially for money, and I think he may have a point. Foxman is asking something incredibly unreasonable - that nobody can ever mention money and Jews in the same sentence. If they do, they

“summon[s] up classic stereotypes that Jews are greedy, money-grubbing and morally deficient.”

Please, come in from the ledge Mr. Foxman. Judeo-Christianity has strong underpinnings of generosity, fairness and a visceral dislike of greed. To mention that someone may be acting against their faith by promoting something bad (violence) just for money is calling anyone, Jews, Baptists, tree-huggers, whoever greedy with no feeling for society at large. It’s not fair to exempt Jews from such criticism just because of ancient stereotypes and that’s what Mr. Foxman is asking for.

The story gets worse. I guess Gregg Easterbrook was a columnist for ESPN and they fired him over this scandal. OK, so they fired him – it’s understandable considering ESPN is coming off the whole Rush Limbaugh thing and ESPN is owned by Disney, the subject of Easterbrook’s column, but that’s not the worst part. ESPN has purged their website of any mention that Easterbrook ever worked there. Searches for his name yield no results. It’s like they have said to him, “You are dead to me, you have never existed”. If that’s not some sort of revisionism, I don’t know what is.

OK, to recap. Easterbrook’s column was out of line, it definitely gave the impression that he thought about Jews everything Abe Foxman accused him of. Because of that, he deserved all the scorn that was thrown his way. Waiting three days to make the apology/explanation was another problem. Dude, you need to get these things out quicker in the age of internet. His explanation was fine, I feel it covered everything and cleared up all misconceptions, but it should have appeared the next day at the latest. The ADL embarrassed themselves with their press release. Easterbrook offered a very believable and heart-felt explanation of his blog, to say he meant to call Jews cheap is disingenuous. The ESPN thing is just plain creepy.