SLAVE NAMES

Fasten your seat-belts everybody. This one's not really funny. Inspired by D-CUP's posting of a Mos Def/Dr. Cornell West appearance on Bill Maher's show and in continuation of some thoughts about 9/11 Kelso began to wonder just who he is? The horrible realization that as a Jew Kelso DID in fact get a pass on 9/11 sure as any Right-Wingnut did. Jews hate Muslims; Muslims hate Jews, ergo...So, Kelso should have felt the same rush of hate and self-righteousness the whites did. But he didn't. Gonna air some dirty laundry here.

While growing up, Kelso heard some nasty talk around the house about "low Jews." Get Kelso Sr wound up on the subject of Zionism and he goes batshit. Nasty shit about "fucking Yeshiva buchers" and peoples who "think they're shit because their fathers made a few bucks during the war." And "fucking Podhortetz's father was a fucking commission baker." Kelso was really too young to understand. He'd look around and not feel too upper-class because how he was living wasn't so great. What did this "low Jew" thing mean?

As he gained the gift of congnitive thought it kind of fell into place. We ALL had SLAVE names, sure as JACKSON, JEFFERSON, WASHINGOTON, WILLIAMS and MASON are. These surnames may sound "otherly" to the Anglo ear, but outside of COHEN and LEVY, the familiar Jewish names you know: Friedman, Greenwald, Bernstein, Schwartz, Katz are meaningless; they are merely names assigned to us or those which we were allowed to have by our Central, Northern, and Eastern European masters. The same is true of the familiar names of our Sephardic brethren and sistren to the South following the reconquest: Flores, Rosa, Leon, Girasol, Aeras, Avena and...yes...Gonzales. So, were we really different from our Black and Brown countrymen? And the generation which preceded Kelso's parents who REALLY made a lot of money, not just enought for the ranch house and the caddy, were not the enemy. The Loebs and Rhodeses and Sterns and Rothschilds and Lists built institutions of learning in New York and other big cities. As recently as the early 1990s, a guy like Felix Rohatyn tried like the devil to get Louis Farrahkhan and the Zionist pre-cursors to the PNAC/AIPAC crowd TOGETHER.

Why did my parents hate Schumer and Spitzer so much? Why were they so proud of their heritage yet derisive of their people? It finally made sense on 9/11. For once in the bizarre history of our heritage we were no longer "the other." If we wanted we could play the same anti-Muslim game. Alan Dershowitz sure sold his soul to the devil on it.

Which brings up an interesting point. O.J. Simpson. Dershowitz was one of his defense team. no? During the by-play among Dr. West, Mos Def and Bill Maher, the latter in response to the former's no-hold-barred, full-throated advocacy of Senator Barack Obama, Maher asked whether or not that was a "tribal" thing, something to which Cornell West took great offense. And Maher pressed it recalling the cheers and wails that accompanied the first O.J. verdict. Mos Def who is not an Obama supporter merely made political arguments similar to those Kelso, David Sirota and a million others have made. But they're right and West is wrong. It's always a tribal thing. Kelso made a nice score betting on O.J. Simpson's acquittal, when he saw the pre-trial polls: guilty or inncoent. Blacks went 90/10 "innocent". Whites went 65/35 "guilty." This was a gift. Kelso was expecting a black tribal vote but that 35% of Whites were skeptics suggested they couldn't find jury to convict.

And fuck yeah it's tribal for us, too. You should have heard the peals of delight from the Florida retirment community when Lieberman was picked as Gore's running-mate. Truly as sickening as spectacle as the 90/10 prejudgement of O.J.'s innocence by Black America pre-trial. To all of Kelso's brethren and sistren, why no peals of delight when Jewish Martin Frost ran for Democratic Minority leader against Pelosi? Why no peals of delight every time Russ Feingold takes a stand that goes against the suburban grain? What happened to mourning Paul Wellstone? Maybe because the Feingolds and Wydens and Waxmans of the world see past the tribalism. We know 9/11 isn't cut and dried for them. We know they walk a lonely road. We know it's Lieberman whose the face of Jewish America to the world. And we're ashamed.

But what can we do? As commenter "Harvey" noted eloquently a few posts back in his comment, we're not all going to turn into Augie Marches over night. While Kelso believes that everyone has the right to be called whatever they like and condemns no one for that, we Jews have our slave names; Blacks have theirs. There have been all sorts of efforts to reclaim some originality by the latter. Muslim names. Spelling "Siobhian" as "Cha-Von." That's a little silly, OK, but Kelso's not going to call himself "Ori ben Yehuda" just to make a point. He has his slave name and given the degree of patience and forebearance that Black America has shown in the face of unending misery all the while keeping those slave names, Kelso can too. As Kelso rhetorically asked D-CUP, where do they get their patience? And as we've concluded, if they could bottle and sell that patience and tolerance, they'd put the Dalai Lama out of business. The least the lucky Kelso can do is accept his slave names with grace and move forward, knowing that AIPAC/PNAC and their camp-followers like Brooks and Friedman and Kristol and Perle and Podhoretz and Decter and Murray and so have abandoned that which makes them Jewish in service of who knows what, that they have no chance of redemption. And if a wretched folk-Christianity has infected their very souls to the point they believe not only Middle East domination but also in "Rapture," they are no longer Jewish. They are meshumeds (apostates). Headed for a Southern Baptist's hell and WE don't want them back either.

Thanks for speaking the truth, Mos Def. Not too crazy about your religion but as Kelso commented on Politits, "you are a Jew by my lights." Thanks for speaking your kinda celebrity version of the truth, Dr. West. Thanks for keeping eveyone on his toes, Bill Maher.

9/11 comes and goes and Kelso's doing his best not to feel really paranoid that it's a national holiday celebrating all that which led to Kelso's odd situation. One or two Augie Marches out there, maybe?

Kelso's Nuts love you