the holocaust
Pete Temko | October 2, 2009I posted a link to the Nation Magazine’s blog entry about Alan Grayson’s outburst regarding health care reform.
There is some question and difference of opinion about whether Facebook is the place for serious political discussion. I don’t really have an opinion except to say that “what’s on my mind” a good bit of the time is stuff like this and not so much on what I had for breakfast. I understand completely the value of staying up with friends on that level. Its nice to be in touch with the daily stuff of people you like. Posts such as this one generate some gentle and some not so gentle responses, and to my eye, that does seem out of place in a setting in which people are generally informing each other about their daily and very personal successes, failures and commonplace events.
The heart of the issue and controversy seems to revolve around the use of the word, “holocaust,” to refer to the systemic failures that allow many unnecessary serious illnesses and deaths to occur in a country that spends far more and has far lesser results than many other countries. The outrage is coming largely from the right, but the left-middle is certainly queasy about the use of the word. We live in memory of an occurrence which forever elevated the meaning of “holocaust” to such an unbearable level that no other use of the word seems possible.
I’ll discount for the moment the protestations of the branch of the right wing which has no problem with calling Obama a Nazi, and I’ll assume, however gullibly, that the horror of the rest of the spectrum is based genuinely in the opinion that inserting the word,”holocaust,” into a discussion of anything but the most massive attempts to extinguish a people cheapens the word and renders it meaningless.
My immediate impulse to cheer Grayson on rises from the intense frustration that most Democrats feel at the seemingly passive responses to outrageous assertions and downright lying from the right. A Democrat who responds with the same passion and doesn’t hesitate to use inflammatory rhetoric to ratchet up the heat can seem like a hero to some. I admire swinging for the fences when necessary.
As a practicing Jew, Grayson has some credibility on the issue. I don’t know if that’s an excuse or a true reason to use the word. The “h word.” Sigh… We know what the word means, and the use of it is intended to define what’s happening here as monstrous.
On balance, my present feeling is that he’s done a service which outweighs the negatives. When the indignation dies down, it will have been helpful to define the extremes on both sides of an issue for once. Finding the middle is easier if you know where the tails of the curve are.
The difference between indignation of the righteous and that of
Leo | October 21, 2009The difference between indignation of the righteous and that of the self-righteous. Grayson’s is of the Righteous sort. it’s no sin. Others, though, are extremely guilty of the self-righteous sort….and THAT is a sin (to overuse a biblical reference). Grayson’s use of the word was appropriate and meaningful to his point. It was also brilliant.
On the topic of words that are appropriated for a single reference, I recently used the term “tar-baby” in a meeting and noted several raised eyebrows. Even though my use of the term referenced a sticky situation that we can’t seem to shake and one that gets worse the more we do, which is completely appropriate to its literary origins, the term has, to some, become a racist slur. That’s too bad. It’s a good term. And perhaps I too used it to raise the pulse of the situation….perhaps.
There's no question that the term "tar-baby" has its origin
Pete Temko | October 22, 2009There’s no question that the term “tar-baby” has its origin in the Uncle Remus stories and no doubt refers to race..it certainly has in my recollection. I don’t imagine the term is used much any more, but it sure was a derogatory term in my childhood and some beyond.
I can imagine some reaction for those who remember…I’m kind of surprised that many in your circle do. Your use of the word is exactly right for the original meaning. If your idea was to do a Grayson to shake some stuff loose, it was brilliant, and probably necessary.
What sort of “offends” me is the idea of being offended *for* others…a kind of assumed offense where no direct offense is possible. It is certainly possible to think less of people who engage in bigoted behavior or language, but I’m very suspicious of people who work up a huge dudgeon on the account of others. The impetus is almost always political gotcha. You don’t hear a lot of Jews complaining about Grayson.
There’s an interesting example of the sort of misplaced and hypocritical crap in recent political doings here. The mayoral race in St. Pete is between a nice man who believes that the earth is 5K years old, and a brilliant woman with a tendency to fly off the handle and piss people off. Just recently, in an interview with a local radio guy (what the fuck was she thinking?!), she referenced Cornel West’s use of “HNIC” to refer to a single representative for an entire community…she was implying that she didn’t think that was the best way for city hall and the black community to communicate.
There are actually not a whole lot of folks in the black community that are offended, but there are a ton of white folks who take great glee in it. Some prominent A-A politicians support her.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/fords-comment-divides-st-petersburg/1045185