December 14, 2005
H. Brown & Anti-Semitism
A few days ago, Pat Murphy handed the keys to the San Francisco Sentinel over to another political blogger, H Brown of the SF Bulldog. In a Week in Review type column, Brown starts giving out grades to members of the Board of Supervisors, based on his opinions and how they measured up to his progressive beliefs. He gives Sup. Gerardo Sandoval an A- and writes this as the reason why:
"For taking one for the team in fighting Donald Fisher pretty much alone. I feel almost responsible because I kept writing about the Jewish cabal of Fisher & Shorenstein & Blum & Goldman & Hellman and how they're playing Sim City with San Francisco. It's true that they think they're better than all of us. It's true that a big part of why they think they're better than us is because they're Jewish. That's all true. But, you better not say it if you have any property to lose. Or, a family to raise.
Needless to say, an interesting thing to write. One way of looking at it would be that it was a poor choice of words. Another way to look at it is that it's fairly anti-Semitic. Calling a bunch of people who you oppose by their ethnic/religious identity? Always questionable. Using the words "Jewish" right next to the word "cabal"? Not so good. Then going on to say that the people in question "think they're better than all of us" and then say it's because they're Jewish? Really not good. The reason? See past 2000 years or so of Jewish history.
Somehow, this made it past everyone, including Pat Murphy of the Sentinel who either didn't notice or allowed H to post that. The only one to raise any kind of stink is political gadfly Able Dart, who wrote about it on his new blog, the Wall.
So we asked H. what he meant and if he had any clarification about what he wrote, especially the possibility that it might be perceived as anti-Semitic. Here's what we got, after the jump:
Photo by Luke Thomas, SanFranciscoSentinel.com
All publicity is good publicity. Write what you will. The Hellman group cloaks themselves in their religion pretty much the way the fundamentalist Christians hide behind Jesus and Uncle Toms use the color of their skin. None of them have a special right to a bigger slice of the pie due to their claims. As regards the local cabal, their greed contributes to an imbalance of wealth that spawns suffering and violence. It's happened before over and over. They want to shift the attention from their greed and lame justification to my frailties (good move). Challenge Hellman & Fisher & Blum to debate me. Not their mouthpieces. Me & them. How about Christmas day? We're all free then.
A little background here. Hellman and Fisher are both on the Committee on Jobs and SF SOS, which Fisher helped start along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Blum is Feinstein's husband. Both the Committee on Jobs and SF SOS represent "downtown interests" and are therefore the progressive communities' Big Bads.
How Sandoval fits into all of this and what is drawing H's ire is that in 2001, Sandoval made an unfortunate comment during a debate in which he said people in the city should protest CEOs and other big business types by picketing their "houses in Tiburon and their bar mitzvahs." This drew the ire of the SFSOS who anonymously mailed out flyers charging Gerardo of anti-Semitism. Sandoval got upset and sued, the result of which are the financial and legal problems facing him now.
Underlying all that is the fact that lately the tensions between the Jewish and the Progressive communities have been on the rise, with the Middle East conflict being the hot point. The Jewish community has felt that the line between being anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic is being crossed way too often and way too easily, while the Progressives feel that one can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. H. Brown's comments probably are not going to help matters. Neither is the fact that the Sentinel let him say it and the only person to call Brown on it is the admittedly-biased Able Dart.
And then, of course, there is the irony of somebody proclaiming to be a progessive mouthing off completely un-progessive statements.
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That's an awfully selective racial insult you've used from h. brown's latest column, considering he also wrote these rude remarks about other groups in the same "Grading of The Supervisors" piece:
"Bottom line is that Campos is a Democratic party machine hack. But, as Peskin pointed out, Campos is indeed a gay lawyer and Latino to boot. That combination easily overcame his 'competitors'.
And, God knows that Irish developers hate nothing worse than trees and grass.
As a black female from a working class backround, she (Sophie Maxwell] cudda been Mayor. She just never broke free from the Amos Browns & their brand of cynical racism. I think she's honest but I also think that if you want to influence her vote, just bribe a few of the right black preachers. Sad.
[Fiona Ma] Never had a value. Never will. Totally deluded regarding her worth. A damper on any party with her incessant complaints about the Board and how she can't wait to get away from it. Well, we agree, Fiona. We love the Board and can't wait to see you go."
Mr. Brown is a better writer by far than either you or me, and a better polemecist to boot. And please don't do the anti-semite baiting. It's just creepy as is much of your Reactionary Lite Politics.
I think that you are taking h. far too seriously. And let's cut the crap about the anti-semitic thing. Jews are among the most powerful, wealthy, and educated demographic in the world. And most of them are essentially white. Sure, 6 million Jews were murdered in the holocaust and that is a tragedy. But try to put things in perspective. Some 20+ million Native Americans were killed off by white settlers; 20 million+ Africans were killed on their voyage to Charleston bay; and 20 million+ Russians were murdered by the same nazi regime that killed all of those Jews. This isn't a pissing contest, but try to keep this in mind the next time you see yet another movie about the holocaust.
And, Jon, it is kind of annoying that you are suggesting that Pat should have censored h. It's called freedom of speech.
Editors who care to earn the respect and trust of their readership need to go a little further than simply letting their writers spew offal onto the page the way they toss last night's scotch into the wastebasket. So if Pat Murphy respects his readership's intelligence and wants his readers to respect his publication as a news source of some import, he has a responsibility to hold his writers to a certain standard. He does not owe his writers a place to be irresponsible, crass, or insulting.
I'm really irritated by people who defend idiocy in the name of Free Speech - in caps - as if having a freedom means you must exercise it. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you have the privilege of doing it anywhere you want to. The U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to speak; it does not guarantee all speakers an audience. Writers must earn their readership. Due to the paucity of real civic reporting in this berg, I think h. brown wins much of his audience by default.
I'm also irritated by people who deign to dictate what should or should not offend others. If I step on your foot, I apologize not because I meant to hurt you and I got caught, but precisely because I did *not* mean to hurt you and I want to make sure you know the offense was inadvertent. So, if someone says, "That offends me," the correct response is not, "But it's not offensive," but rather, "I'm sorry to have offended you. That was not my intention." And maybe also to have a discussion about it to reach a real understanding.
It is typical of the ugly gentile to blame his conspicuous lack of success in the world on some kind of Jewish conspiracy. From the Roman Catholic Polish peasant to Ukrainian gas chamber guards that kind of slur has always been a staple of the hardened Jew-hater.
He fails to realise that without the innumerable talents and immense hard work of the Jewish people the U.S. would be infinitely worse off. On the other hand, he also does not see that men like him have contributed little but mediocrity and bigotry to the United States.
I find it really sad that barely sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz Jewish children are compelled to breathe the same air as H. Brown.
Thank God for the State of Israel.
Matt writes:
"Jews are among the most powerful, wealthy and educated demographic in the world"
As they were in Germany and Austria which is exactly where the Holocaust was devised.
You do not wish to put things in perspective. You do wish to diminish the horrors of the Holocaust in which the vast majority of Europe's Jews were put to death by the Nazis with the collaboration of most of Europe in a carefully planned campaign of industrialised slaughter. And it isn't just the Holocaust but nearly 2,000 years of virulent prejudice, violence and discrimination, the kind of wicked behavior which is far from dead as your dirty little post makes clear.
There are days when I begin to think that the US in 2005 is no safer for Jews than the Europe of the 1930's.
Damn! I didnt know Jewish people hated blacks and indians!
brown's anti-Semitic remarks didn't get past everyone. The following letter to the editor was published in the Sentinel on Dec 9. brown weak answer, publicshed yesterday, appears below my letter. Notice that he doesn't bother to answer the anti-Semitism, just garbage he thinks is funny.
Howard Epstein
May anti-Semitic h. brown rot in SRO hell
Dear Editor:
Re: "Birds of a feather flock together." H. brown's anti-Semitic defense of anti-Semite Supervisor Geraldo Sandoval destroyed any credibility he had as a commentator.
When he could not defend Sandoval on his merits as a Supervisor, which I realize is very hard to do, he showed his true colors and stooped to the lowest common denominator - anti-Semitism.
My hope is that brown rots in an SRO in hell.
Howard Epstein
San Francisco
December 9, 2005
Get in line Epstein!
Dear Editor:
I've lost credibility? ... I had credibility? Oh, darn. Well,
welcome to the party, Howard Epstein. I know you're special but
you'll have to wait in line behind the others. Go stand behind Joe
O'Donoghue, Amos Brown, Ken Garcia & the Mayor. Did you bring
anything to drink?
h. brown
San Francisco
As someone who has experienced H. Brown in person during the Matt Gonzalez campaign for mayor, let me say, quite frankly, he is a Grade A crank. I mean there are people who help your cause, and then there are people who actually hurt your cause. H. Brown is of the later. He really does little to ligitimate progressive politics with editorial outbursts like his " jewish cabal" theory.
As someone who has experienced H. Brown in person during the Matt Gonzalez campaign for mayor, let me say, quite frankly, he is a Grade A crank. I mean there are people who help your cause, and then there are people who actually hurt your cause. H. Brown is of the later. He really does little to ligitimate progressive politics with editorial outbursts like his " jewish cabal" theory.
Howard,
Many thanks for that. Who can be surprised that this evil gentile monster cares so little about his credibility?
40% of all large gifts to charity in the United States are made by Jews. Virtually none of that money is given to Jewish or Israeli charities. I wonder how this fits in with Brown's anti-Semitic notions about greedy Jews bilking poor gentiles by engaging in some kind of vile conspiracy?
Brown proudly talks elsewhere of his two children and four grandchildren. I hope and pray for their sake that this is one case where the apple did indeed fall a very long way from the tree.
By the way, does anyone know if he really is as ill as his photograph suggests?
this all sounds awfully personal; like it's not REALLY about jews at all, and the religion thing is just being used as a smokescreen for the continued escalation of tensions after many years of bickering. i hope, eventually, one or both parties has the grace to turn the other cheek.
MattyMatt writes:
"I hope, eventually, one or both parties has the grace to turn the other cheek"
Three points
1) Turning the other cheek is what got six million Jews murdered.
2) Why is it that gentiles always throw the "other cheek" nonsense in the face of the Jew when the former are always the very last people on earth to ever abide by that absurd advice?
3) So we Jews should forget a vicious anti-Semitic attack, and, if we don't, in your eyes we'd be ungracious? It's gentiles like you that gets Jews like us murdered.
How about the next time Jews are under attack you prove that perhaps you're a little better than a Nazi thug by not rushing to the defence of the Jew-haters?
During World War II, egged on by a viciously anti-Semitic population, the United States to its eternal shame refused to tangle with the Nazis because it didn't want to get involved in a "Jewish war". Even after it was forced into that war the U.S. didn't lift one finger to help the drowning Jews of Europe. And now, well over sixty years later, anti-Semitism is once again rampant in the United States. One only has to look at the gentile defenders and appeasers on this board to see just how dangerous things are for the Jews of America.
It's obviously not just the EU who should be taking down some stars and replacing them with swastikas.
Joshua-- your points are taken. It's a serious set of issues. But cut the inflammatory crap, OK?
What exactly was this "vicious anti-Semitic attack"? Definately fanning the flames here.
Anyhow, you guys are all really misguided. You need to forget everything else and let the Flying Spaghetti Monster into your hearts.
http://www.venganza.org/
miscdebris writes:
"Cut the the inflammatory crap, OK?"
That would suggest that I'm deliberately attempting to incite people by distorting certain issues when I believe implicitly in every word I've written here. If we Jews don't fight anti-Semitism then we might as well give up altogether, as the response of the gentiles on this board have proved yet again.
And if you want to give orders to someone in that very distinctive tone that is so reminiscent of another time and place, I suggest instead you get yourself an Alsation, or perhaps a partner who is willing to put up with that kind of abuse.
Hello fans,
I agree with judy b. I get my readership mostly by default cause the rest of you write like crap. Write some more. Maybe I'll get a TV show out of this.
h.
Here, here, h. Keep up the great work!
evidently, h, you read like crap. judy b said your audience was due to "a paucity of civic reporting," not a lack of good writing. there are enough jackasses on television already; no openings there.
Holocaust be damned, to chock up an entire race of people to a malicious, prevalent, historically-laden set of stereotypes (even if they be superficially positive) is never acceptable, regardless of the race or group. Those comments are disgusting, the vengance that so clearly imbues the makes the comments more disgusting.
I feel that some people on both sides of the discussion here have also toed the lines of good taste (as any blog comment-fest), and think it's important to note when we're saying things that have the same effect as Brown's comments, even if they're generalizations meant to advance perceptions of Jews, in the hands of someone like h. brown, it all becomes a tool of hate and oppression.
For shame.
Huh -- the Sentinel's got a statement up saying that they're "sadly, in exasperation, and for the third time," pulling H Brown's column and saying "h. brown will have to take his anti-Semitic claptrap elsewhere."
H's last column, for what it's worth, contains a semi-"apology to Jews everywhere (except for local cabal -- listed below)."