YES, IT IS A JEWISH THING

The fairer question, perhaps, do you want to be the T-shirt's object of ridicule or do you WANT to understand? It is all well and good to say that we're all brothers under the skin and all of that palaver, but we know that isn't true. Not in America anyway.

It's only a fantasy that can be played out on the SID MEYER'S CIVILIZATION game or any of the more contemporary upgrades of the same idea, but what exactly would happen if the 70% of American Jews who self-identify as progressives or liberals were just to take their ball and go home -- to Tel-Aviv, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, London, or Moscow. Who's going to fucking protect all of you who "come correct"? John Edwards? A pro-war and pro-death penalty cracker? Bill Clinton? Good president in a democratic republic, another villain in the absence of a counterweight. Maybe Magic Johnson? Wrong.

Maybe Michael Jordan? Wrong. And how cool was it when another of the heroes, Abe Pollin, told Michael Jordan how sideways he could fuck himself? That's a great story. Feature that a little 80-year old man who told America's favorite person (after Rudy Giuliani, of course) "You don't own this fucking team. I do." Nice. And before anyone gets all wound up, please DO recall that when asked why he refused to endorse Hunt and later Harvey Gantt against Jesse Helms, even after Coach Dean Smith had tirelessly done so, Jordan responded "well, Republicans buy sneakers, too." A profile in courage, no? Give me the old dude any day.

So, who's going to protect you? Al Gore, Jr.? He's a pure creation of the other 30% of "us". That 30% who brought you Iraq2. That 30% who brought you the DLC. That 30% most ably represented by Rahm Emmanuel. By Uncle Kelso's lights they've long given up any claim on an historical link to King David or Moses or Jesus or Maimonides or Spinoza or Marx or Freud or Bohr or Einstein or Salk or Sabin or...who goddamned ever. Neo-Con Bush ass-lickers are not part of this conversation. As far as this little corner is concerned they are Fundamentalist Baptist Christians. Not Jews. This week, Senators Feinstein and Schumer nailed their colors to the Fundie mast as well. Good-bye and good riddance.

We've had a lovely look back round THE PITCHFORK at some of the stand-up guys of the past like Carl Rosen. Who cares about Carl Rosen, right? Who is Carl Rosen? Is he like Leonardo DiCaprio's agent or something? No. Carl Rosen was one of the LEFT-WING GARMENTOS OF THE 60s and 70s. Yeah, yeah Uncle Kelso gets it. The old-time garmentos are gone and it's all about Phat Farm. One question: after you look up Carl Rosen, ask yourself -- Black or White -- who would pull your ass out of a fire first, Rosen or Russell Simmons? Rosen would have dived into the fire head first. Simmons would let you fry as he indulged his foot fetish by sniffing his wife's Capezios and donating to that 100% Fundie Obama's campaign. Those are guys who stop fascism? Fundie Obama and Pot-Belly Simmons? That's just goofy. Maybe new "progressive" TV host Rosie O'Donnell?

Please don't go getting all pissy now. Schumer's been exiled. Cynthia McKinney's with us. She'll always be with us because she was the first to bring articles of impeachment against these monsters in the White House. Barbara Lee's with us. She was the first and only not to jump on the bandwagon in 2001. Schumer? He's history. Biggest PATRIOT ACT supporter out there. It's not a racial thing. It's knowing friends from enemies. In that sense, yeah, it is about "coming correct."

Do some homework. Find out who Carl Rosen was and why that's significant to the bare-knuckle fight in the political realm of today. Read a history of The Rothschild Family. Who's Barry Schwartz? Who's George Soros? Who's Sheldon Drobny? Figure out why folks you all think of as Rich White Male Exploiters are standing between you and Guantanamo.

How exactly do you reckon a single Democrat gets elected? Bake sales? Signature drives? Get real. Because of this, we must have this discussion openly if the progressive movement is going to hang together and on a personal level I want this conversation because I want to know if I want to be part of that movement. The elephant in the room is that there IS no progressive movement without Jewish clout and Jewish money. I know where Republicans stand on this. I do not know how fellow progresives think. Do you mind that we are HJIC? Honest, now. The fantasy that Jews are going to put up all the dough and take all the risks but have no sway because it's not "fair" that sub-interest group A or sub-interest group B doesn't get to be boss is just silliness. If sub-interest groups A, B, C, D, E or F want to be boss they should work harder and make more money. And then maybe in a few years they get to be boss. Or study harder and develop indispensible skills: campaigning, organizing, etc. Cry all you want about elitist, white domination but do it privately. Or else, Jews'll sit it out and the crybabies can fight the Wingnuts naked.

Basically, this is a gut-check. From the non-Jewish progressive viewpoint, are Jews really only a necessary evil to tolerate for the juice and money? This is important to me because while I'm out of the picture at some point I want to come back, but I want to know that if the Right may still not want me, the Left will. I love America but have, quite frankly, begun to look upon Americans down here with the same suspicious, jaundiced and predatory eye the locals do. I don't feel like going much further down that road. If it's time to return I need to know at least that I'm welcome in the progressive community for my ideas and my support. Jews on the Left hear the codewords and recognize their meaning: "Israeli hegemony," "hedge fund," "tax breaks," "lawyer," "technicalities," "the arcane business shrouded in secrecy known as 'derivatives,'" "Country Club prisons," "Oh my God, SPECULATORS actually TRADE crude oil without every physically touching it," and so on....No matter how many times it's explained that 70% of us are NOT Zionists, believe in a Palestinian state, oppose war, believe in not only affimative action but yes quotas, strongly oppose the death penalty, strongly support 100% pay equity, abhor violence, are feminist, there's still some suspicion of us. Like in the Tom Waits song whose title escapes me and the Hitchcock movie, The Rear Window, White Gentile Progressives are thinking "What is he building in there?" The answer depending on how you read things is either "nothing...he's just going about his own business" or "something progressive, egalitarian and peaceful." What's it going to be, then?

The flavor is kind of good in being able stick-up a middle finger and say you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. Just wondering what would happen if every Jew with a left-wing orientation, a college degree and two nickels to rub together did the same goddamned thing. Don't really need to wonder. Republicans control 90% of the seats in Congress, with the other 10% held by the DLC. Permanent lock on the Presidency. Perpetual war. Book burnings. CD burnings. Random executions.

You'll be begging for us to come back. You'll be apologizing profusely for having said that it's stupid and old-fashioned to take pride in who you are and where you come from when Identity Politics is the game YOU play. It was never about noblesse oblige for Jews in America. It was about remembering the Holocaust and not wanting to see it perpetrated on some other scapegoats. You all missed that class in school, huh?

If Jews have to go en masse there won't be any coming back. I don't guess we'd be in a big hurry to be doing any favors for anyone who wasn't willing to fight. It seems as if some Gentile progressives would, just like the Fundies, like us to shut-up, and take our position at the back of the Identity Politics Bus because we got some plata in our hands and that makes us unfit for the Left-Wing cause because of the whole eeeeww filthy lucre thing. Sorry, not happening. We only feel guilty in the movies and on TV.

Let us know where we stand. Does the same class envy which turned Camille Paglia and Thomas Wolfe (the one who wears white) into right-wing douchebags still eat even progressives alive inside? If all of the Right and half the Left don't want us, what's the point? Stateless is good. Stateless works. While even the most liberal Americans have a 250-year memory, Jews have one millenia and millenia long.

Kelso's Nuts love you