seekingferret | (no subject)

There's a line in the pilot of "The West Wing", and it's one of the lines that first won me over on Toby, made me ache for his every pain, glory in his every triumph, weep for his every family problem. Toby is sitting with Josh as Josh is apologizing to a Christian group for insulting their values. Josh is in the wrong, and he knows it, but the firebrand leader of the Christian group can't take the apology gracefully.

MARY: That New York sense of humor was just a...

CALDWELL: Mary, there's no need...

MARY: Reverend, please! They think they're so much smarter. They think it's smart talk. But nobody else does.

JOSH: I'm actually from Connecticut, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, Mary...

TOBY: She meant Jewish. [A stunned silence. Everyone stares at Toby.] When she said "New York sense of humor", she was talking about you and me.

I bring this up because of yesterday's Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Now, there's much anxiety about the religious makeup of the court, since for some reason the white Protestants who've made up the court and most of the country's government for the past two hundred years can't seem to get anybody on the court anymore, and some of them find this threatening.

Which leads us to Senator Lindsey Graham and the incoherent question he asked Elena Kagan.

GRAHAM: Now, as we move forward and deal with law of war issues, Christmas Day bomber, where were you at on Christmas Day?

KAGAN: Senator Graham, that is an undecided legal issue, which -- the -- well, I suppose I should ask exactly what you mean by that. I'm assuming that the question you mean is whether a person who is apprehended in the United States is...

GRAHAM: No, I just asked you where you were at on Christmas.

KAGAN: You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.

The exchange, as I said, appears incoherent to me. It's not clear to me why Graham asked her what she was doing on Christmas. If he was trying to make a point about the Christmas Day bomber, I don't know what the point was. If he was just trying to humanize her, he couldn't have done it in a more insensitive way if he tried.

It's the aftermath that bothers me. This wasn't played in the media as an insensitively asked question and a defensive reply. There were no calls for Graham to apologize. It was played as Kagan showing off her sense of humor. Her New York sense of humor, if you know what I mean. Google "Kagan Christmas" and you'll find a host of news articles talking about how Kagan flashed her sense of humor in yesterday's hearings.

But that wasn't what I heard. I heard a Christian put a Jew on the defensive by reminding her that no matter how high she reaches, she still will be a minority in this country. I heard Senator Schumer, another Jew rendered uncomfortable by the question, jump in quickly to explain away the joke, to make sure it wasn't taken the wrong way. I heard a nasty question, inadvertent or not, handled with a reasonable amount of tact by way of a reflexive display of "New York humor."

And just once, I'd like to see this addressed for what it is. A minor but still noxious form of antisemitism. Jews are "allowed" to be funny. It's one of the designated defense mechanisms they haven't taken away from us. But they look down on us for it, sneer at the Jewish sense of humor and how nasty and edgy it is.

Bottom line: If you're Christian, think for a moment before asking a Jew what he's doing on Christmas. Or a Muslim. Or a Hindu. Or an Atheist. Not everyone follows your cultural paradigm, and it's rude to assume that we do.

EDIT I've been rewatching the CSPAN video over and over again, helplessly. It turns out that the worst part wasn't even covered in any of the news reports.

Graham: So you were with your family in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas?
Kagan: That's right.
Graham: That's great. That's what Chanukah and Christmas are all about.

No, Senator Graham. Chanukah is not about being with your family on Christmas.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

To me, that reads a lot worse than merely an insensitive question. That sounds to me like a deliberate attempt to publicly Other her, even de-Americanize her.

Which she dealt with gracefully, but the fuck. The wording of "Where were you on Christmas Day?" has what-is-your-alibi connotations to it, and that's even before you get to, "Well, if you weren't celebrating Christmas, then you are inevitably insensitive to the significance of a bombing on Christmas Day; you could not truly feel this particular attack against America, and that puts you, almost by definition, outside the experience of being American." That is a nasty move that Graham made right there.

...which is beside the point that you're making, about the news coverage. Which I thank you for pointing out, because while I well get that self-deprecating humor is the only response most of us are allowed to have to verbal attacks from the kyriarchy, I failed to realize that there is a very particular construction placed around Jewish defensive humor, which is coming into play here.

Yeah, I mean, I felt blindsided by the question when I heard it on the radio, but I felt even more blindsided by the radio coverage, where they were presenting it like it were a cute anecdote that lightened up the boring coverage of the boring confirmation hearing. (Which of course is a whole other issue. The stuff the Supreme Court says matters, as I'm sure I don't have to tell you, and the idea that even a perfunctory hearing for a Supreme Court justice is the kind of thing that needs to be lightened up with shtick is seriously broken.)

If you dig through my livejournal you'll probably find four or five posts about how uncomfortable I am being a Jew on Christmas in America. It's something I'm deeply insecure about, and this was a sucker punch right to that insecurity. And then you add the New York sense of humor bit (See here for a great example... Despite the laughter in the chamber, it was one of those “only in New York” references that might go over the heads of a few folks.) and... damn them all.

:: Despite the laughter in the chamber, it was one of those “only in New York” references that might go over the heads of a few folks. ::

Fuckers. They're not as awesome and broadminded and cosmopolitan as they're telling themselves they are.