"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it." Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010 LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Monday, July 10, 2017
Hate Mail
Simels deciding, after years of me calling him on his anti-Polish bigotry, that he is "half Polish" (I suspect someone at Baby Blue might have objected this time) reminds me of Noam Chomsky's reaction to Christopher Hitchens' claim that he was Jewish (which seems to have been news to his brother and others in his family). As reported, Chomsky said, “From anti-Semite to self-hating Jew, all in one day.”
I am half Polish. The other half -- the one from my ancestors who spent much of their time trying to not to be raped by anti-Semitic cossacks -- is Russian.
ReplyDeleteOh, he's half Polish? Well then, he can crack any ethnic joke he wants!
ReplyDeleteOh, but it has to properly fit into the correct stereotype of the ethnic group. You have to do it properly so to assign the right negative traits to the same people. You know, the way Kevin Macdonald or George Rockwell would .... oh, sorry, the way that Andrew Dice Clay or whoever is considered the latest hot comedian who does that is.
DeleteYou know how Simels loves to follow the right show biz rules.
Really, he's never had an original idea in his entire life. I was tempted to do yet another post emphasizing this time that it was exactly that kind of stereotyping that led to the exclusionary racial laws of the 1920s that kept Jews from emigrating in the 1930s and 40s when it could have saved their lives. I recall there was a certain ship that was not allowed to land. Only I've written so many of those posts which have made no impact on his tiny little mind - no doubt he'd attribute that to his "Polish" side.
He's the kind of person who needs direction in what to think from what's considered groovy in show biz, repeating that is how critics on his level work. I think that blogs that establish and get run on the basis of a "community" that congeals in its comment threads can go with that, establishing a house POV and reinforcing that. As I recall Simels was one of the strongest of sticklers for it being his POV and for everyone observing it.
How all of this makes him different from Steve Bannon or David Duke differs in that it's allegedly supposed to be funny.
I have a feeling he's about as Polish as I am. What he is is a TV and pop music trained repeater of a particular range of commercial culture which in his middle age, especially in New York City, readopted racial, ethnic and gender stereotyping. I don't think it's unrelated to the mania for genetic stereotyping that arose at about the same time largely through The Selfish Gene which was an easier read than E.O. Wilson with less math, which is why it became the best seller to replace the best sellers of B. F. Skinner which had been the rage along with behaviorist instead of genetic determinist lore. But I'd guess Simels got all of that second hand from people who read the books. If this were 1972 Simp's "humor" would reflect that.
Fuck both of you morons. I made a Polish joke to make a point about Sparkle's repeated denial of the existence of virulent Polish anti-Semitism during WWII and later.
ReplyDeleteWhich you both knew, so again -- fuck both of you.