Some quick thoughts on RFK Jr
and the Republicans who made him our problem
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: September’s ET Ask Home will be out for paid subscribers next week.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
I am doing a two part virtual event at the Workers’ Circle on September 9 and 16. We will be talking about American Jewish politics and identities. I am really looking forward to it and hope you will sign up!
For Haaretz, I reviewed Long Story Short and how the genius of its specificity is in its recognition of universality.
I spent the last year working on and off with the good people at Hey Alma on their guide to antisemitism. It is my hope that this will help young people think through and talk about what is and isn’t antisemitism in an informed, nuanced, empathetic way.
From CJR: “The ongoing deterioration of press freedom and independence in the United States is deeply concerning to many journalists who don’t know where their country is heading. That chilling uncertainty is one we have lived through ourselves. We are journalists from Russia and Poland.”
We have not one but two must-read Arundhati Roy interviews this week: one in the New York Times and one in the Financial Times. As a teaser of the former: “it’s so similar that you wonder, is there a playbook or is it just osmotic authoritarian behavior? The ruling party is confused with the government and all of it is confused with one man.”
MY VIEWS ON…
…RFK Jr!
Just a few things from me on this one.
I actually don’t know if I am more upset with him or with the Republican senators who are now questioning him on vaccines. This person very obviously had no business being confirmed to the role of HEALTH SECRETARY and you knew that and the time to act on that knowledge was back when he was up for confirmation, not now, when he is in the role. Questioning him after voting for him or pathetically expressing concern is a face saving measure being performed by useless cowards who put this country in front of a moving train and are now going “uh oh, the train is moving!”
Also: Why is it not enough to make it so that these ridiculous people don’t have to get vaccinated? Why must he make it harder for the rest of us to get vaccinated?
And finally: While out searching for links that do not exist between vaccines and autism, he is burying links that do, ie between alcohol and cancer, suggesting that his concerns are not with clean living but with being a fame and power seeking grifter.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
From the New York Times: “Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who has been one of Congress’s leading liberal voices for three decades, will not seek re-election next year, heeding a call for generational change roiling his party…For years, he has tried to stake out space for a politics that was both pro-Israel and progressive. But in the interview, he conceded that Israel’s brutal prosecution of the war in Gaza had not only turned Democrats against a former ally ‘to a very major extent’ but made his own position increasingly hard to maintain. ‘I don’t know what to say at this point,’ he said. ‘I can’t defend what Israel is doing.’”
From JTA: “A major association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying that Israel’s two-year military campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide. Israel’s Foreign Ministry immediately rejected the determination, accusing the scholars of having been swayed by ‘Hamas’ campaign of lies,’ and a Jewish former member of the association’s advisory board raised questions about the process leading up to the resolution.”
From the New York Times: “The president of Northwestern University, Michael H. Schill, announced Thursday that he would resign, ending a difficult tenure that included attacks on the school from Republicans in Congress and cuts in funding by the Trump administration that forced the university to lay off hundreds of employees.” Jewish president resigns in the face of pressure from Republicans. Consider the fight against antisemitism won.
From +972: “Only one in four Palestinians captured by Israeli forces in Gaza were identified by the army as militants, with civilians making up the vast majority of “unlawful combatants” detained in Israeli prisons since October 7, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.:
-ET
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