ANTISEMITISM-- THE STRAUBINICAL PERSPECTIVE

 A recent column by Charles Krauthammer had my dander up for a minute, but that was good, because it got me thinking about the two different services anti-semitism provides to the American right. For some on the right, antisemitism is a thing to accuse the left of. For others, it's like a delicious protein.

  Krauthammer used some inflammatory words to describe Obama's recent decision to abstain from voting on the UN resolution condemning Israel over settlements. This symbolic "no comment," in the framing we hear so often, is "shameful," and represents for Krauthammer circumstantial evidence of Obama's "deep-seated antipathy to Israel." To the columnist's credit, I suppose, he used the word "perhaps," and avoided the word "antisemitism."
  I'll say right now that there may not be any other issue that affects me quite this way.
  There are many controversial issues where I'm not afraid to weigh in, but this one is different. I have friends who are passionately and professionally dedicated to defending Israel. I'm kind of hoping they don't read this, but if they do, I hope they'll be frustrated with me rather than furious.
  I can't put it off forever, so here's my point. I'm no Israel-hater, and I have mixed feelings about Palestine. But I don't see how it's healthy when anything less than full support of a powerful country's military policies puts you at risk for the charge of antisemitism. This has been the case as far back as I can remember. Which isn't really that far, and I assume that most people who care deeply about this know much more than I do, so I don't have an official ironclad stance about the morality of either side in the great Jewish fight. As far as I can tell from my minuscule research, both Israel and Palestine have done things that resulted in children being repurposed as bags of meat. As a leftist, I keep getting distracted by that.

HOT PLATE-- RADIO FOR READERS?

  Ladies and gentlemen, the reaction to my Christmas post about David Mamet, politics, prose, and religion may someday appear to have been a watershed moment.
  My original plan for the Hot Plate radio show was to focus on politics (sociology, really) and music. In the months before the election, I imagined the political content would be just tolerated by music fans, and would constitute a benevolent welcoming of conservatives back into the fold in the aftermath of a Clinton presidency.
  In the current environment, I've publicly focused on the political/sociological end of it, because it's all anyone's talking about, but in the background I've been preparing a lot of music-related material.
  The Mamet threads gave me pause. I'd already been thinking about including some literature content on the show. I'm inclined to caution on that front-- but it may be that a certain amount of material in that vein could fly. Could Hot Plate be a place where smart people go to have fun, but also a place where fun people go to smarten up? Is it possible to have a radio show where the Stooges and Bernard Malamud are both grist for the mill? Is there an audience who will listen to discussion about Louis Jordan, but also about Louis-Ferdinand Celine?

EVEN DAVID MAMET'S FALLACIES ARE GREAT FUCKING FALLACIES

  A top shelf writer, to me, is one I enjoy reading even when I disagree with him or her.
  Thus, my love for deeply Christian writers Flannery O'Connor, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and G.K. Chesterton. I don't exactly know how an evening with Waugh would have played out; I suspect the great man would have tired of me before I of him. But it's hard for me to imagine a sentiment so tedious that Waugh could not have enlivened it with his voice and style, shot through as it was with the best sentences available to us in English.
  Shimmying across the street from Jesus's romanticizers to his descendants, we have the Jewish writers. For psychological and emotional reasons which may amuse and divert some among you, I put Jewish writers in a somewhat different category from the Christian luminaries above. Although I have no religious beliefs, I'm reluctant to tar Judaism with the same brush I use to tar Christianity. Do I believe in any Jewish religious doctrine? I do not. Do I therefore lump it together with its Christian cousin? I do not. What is my justification for this double standard? I have none.
  Except, that is, for the way I feel. I've never felt that any Jewish person had the slightest interest in indoctrinating me, or the remotest need to shame me for not sharing their beliefs. This statistic has little value as data for generalizing purposes; much of my youth was spent in a Catholic private school which kept me largely (not entirely) sheltered from Jews, paupers, and nonwhites. But I can also say from my non-scientific observation of Jewish people, that proselytizing is not their thing. Whereas Christians of various stripes have knocked on my door, left things on my windshield, and accosted me in the street to tell me about the god they trust, I can't recall any Jews ever encouraging me to be more Jewish. Perhaps this is one reason why I don't typecast them as people I disagree with. Whatever Jewish doctrine may be, no Jews have ever felt the need to explain it to me, and thus its very mystery makes it enticing where the Christian doctrine is wearyingly familiar.

CURSORY RESEARCH CONFIRMS ALT-RIGHT EVEN BIGGER DISAPPOINTMENT THAN ALT-ROCK AND ALT- COUNTRY

  I need to clear up a little mystery here before we get into the usual weighty matters. Can anyone confirm that I was hanging with Fred Hof last night at the gig? My recollection of Tuesday's events is pretty blurry this morning. All I know is that if it wasn't Fred, then I must have been chatting about Willie Nelson with some freakish hairy stranger at two AM.

  And now, watch me make a sharp left turn from the right lane, fish tailing chaotically into a larger topic.