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Jewish World Review May 24, 2004 / 4 Sivan, 5764 On the Fritz By Stefan Kanfer
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
Not all the news is bad. Think of it: next year thousands of intelligent, sensible folks from the west, east, north, and especially south, will be able to recite a rhyme for the first time in almost 50 years:
Of course the Senate has never lacked for smooth buffoons, and surely others will be found to do Hollings's job. Still, those are large jackboots to fill. For good old fashioned bigotry like Germany used to make— and the Middle East still does— it's Fritz every time. Of course, the Senator is 81, and some of his bombinations could be ascribed to the garrulity of age. But this would be wrong. Very wrong.
Way back in 1961, when he was governor of South Carolina, Hollings flew the Confederate flag high atop the state capitol building.
As a Senator, Hollings revealed some of his inner feelings when he referred to a fellow solon, Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, as "The Senator from B'nai Brith."
But this shows only a scintilla of his twinkling southern gallantry. In 1993 he told an interviewer that African leaders enjoyed going to meetings in Geneva because there they could enjoy a good European meal, "rather than eating each other."
Predictably, in 2002 Hollings was one of only two Senators who refused to vote for a resolution supporting Israel. (The other was Robert Byrd, Democrat, West Virginia, once a Ku Klux Klan member and understandably biased against Jewry because of his interest in pork.)
Last week Fritz was at it again. He wrote a newspaper column alleging that the Bush administration went to war against Iraq in order to convince Hebrews to turn out at polling time: Bush "came to office with one thought— re-election. Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together, and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats."
In his screed, Hollings joins a long list of American anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, dating back at least to Charles Lindbergh. In the 1930's, the aviator was part of the America First organization, which blamed the Jews for dragging the U.S. into a wasteful, pointless war with Nazi Germany. Some of them even referred to Franklin D. Roosevelt as Franklin D. Rosenfeld. Another example of the humor Hollings might enjoy when no reporters are around.
More recently there has been the lout-mouthed arguments of Pat Buchanan, who ascribed the first Gulf War to the machinations of the "Israeli Defence Ministry and its amen corner in the United States."
So Fritz is in the right company— although he has since argued that calling his opinion "anti-Jewish stereotyping or scapegoating is ridiculous."
Actually, ridiculous is hardly the word. Pernicious is more like it.
Holling's official website looks back— benignly, of course— on the Senator's vocation. But the last sentence gives the show away: "His career speaks for itself."
That it does. In hate speech.
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JWR contributor Stefan Kanfer is the author of a dozen books on a wide range of subjects. His last two biographies: the recent Ball of Fire, about the sources of Lucille Ball's comedy, and Groucho, concerning the life and wit of Groucho Marx, were both national bestsellers, as was The Last Empire, a social history of the De Beers diamond company. One of his novels, The Eighth Sin, centering on the fate of gypsies during World War II, was a Book of the Month selection, and led to an appointment on the President's Commission on the Holocaust. Kanfer was a writer, critic and editor at Time magazine for more than 20 years; his articles and reviews have appeared in most major publications. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including installation as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, among many other awards. Currently he is the drama critic for the New Leader magazine, and serves on the editorial board of City Journal, a quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute.
© 2004, Stefan Kanfer
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