The LA Times has published a piece that is so bad and offensive, they must have forgotten they were in LA and thought they were in NY.
Can you admire an anti-Semite and advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions https://t.co/VVUPyU1Tjm
— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) January 4, 2019
Titled Can you admire Louis Farrakhan and still advance the cause of women? Maybe so, the author of the piece, Robin Abcarian, deals with the antisemitism of the Women’s March. And by deals, I mean mentions it and then tells us we should accept it.
Excerpt:
Last March, according to a detailed account in Tablet, an online magazine that reports on Jewish news and culture, three of the Women’s March founders praised Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan during a conference call with leaders of the group’s state chapters, despite his abysmal record of anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism.
Tablet reported that some women were offended that the group’s leaders did not denounce Farrakhan on the spot. His rhetoric, they felt, could not be reconciled with the inclusive principles of the Women’s March.
Personally, I find Farrakhan’s world view vile. Yet, I think it is possible to be repulsed by his hateful rhetoric about white people, especially Jews, and still appreciate some of the empowerment work that he has done in the black community, including leading the 1995 Million Man March to promote African American family unity.
If that is hypocrisy, there is plenty to go around.
How about all those Trump admirers who overlook his constant and casual expressions of racism, or his more pointedly racist call to execute five young men of color — later exonerated in the rape and beating of a Central Park jogger — whom he described in four full-page newspaper ads as “roving bands of wild criminals”?
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After reading the Tablet story, I came away feeling that anyone who tries to harness a grass-roots movement like this — a prairie fire sparked by one woman talking to her friends in Hawaii — is probably on a fool’s errand. Why spend energy creating a national infrastructure that replicates the work of so many venerable organizations that are already working toward the same goals?
This may be heresy, but I’m not sure we need another national organization to promote the rights of women.
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While organizers of the Women’s March battled over who said what to whom about Jewish people when, and the merits of a noted anti-Semite, American women stood up by the millions and changed the country.
For that, everyone involved in the Women’s March can take a bow.
The idea that people should accept the Jew hatred of those who are otherwise doing some good is a vile idea that could be applied to the likes of the Nazis (who, for example, held charity drives) and Hamas (who provide social services for their people).
Do you think the LA Times would ever dare publishing any of the following pieces?
“Can you admire a White Supremacist Neo-Nazi and advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions”
“Can you admire a slave owner and advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions”
“Can you admire an Islamophobe and advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions”
Yes, me neither.
The Jewish Norman Pearlstine is executive editor of the Times. His email address is [email protected]. Just saying.
Hat tip: Jay Bee