Jedi and the Jews

So, my January 12th op ed for the Jewish Standard was given the title, Jew vs. Jedi: “May the Schwartz Be With You”, and here it is for the first time on Blog Time Passing:

The Last Jedi is one of the best, if not the best, of the Star Wars cinematic series that first exploded onto theater screens in 1977. The film franchise, originated by George Lucas, was sold to the Walt Disney Company in 2012, and revitalized in 2015 by the first installment in the new trilogy, The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams.

Although it was a huge commercial success and generally well received, many fans were unhappy with the shift to a more progressive outlook in The Force Awakens, and expressed dissatisfaction with the casting, which deviated from the previous films, which were all but monopolized by white males. In this new trilogy, the lead heroic role of Rey is given to a young woman, while another main character is played by a young African-American man. Even when the sentiments expressed were not overtly racist and sexist, those undercurrents were apparent, especially given that the plot of The Force Awakens was quite consistent with the original Star Wars film.

Star Wars The Force Awakens cast Harrison Ford; Daisy Ridley; Bob Iger; J.J. Abrams; John Boyega; Lupita Nyong'o; Oscar Isaac

The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, extended the new sensibility by highlighting female leadership, including the late Carrie Fisher as the leader of the resistance and Laura Dern as a self-sacrificing admiral of their decimated fleet, while introducing a significant new character played by Kelly Marie Tran, the child of Vietnamese immigrants. Consistent with this move toward greater diversity in casting, the film also emphasized the progressive theme of breaking with the past.

Given the reactionary mentality of most disgruntled Star Wars fanatics, I was disturbed to read Liel Liebovitz’s December 18 piece in Tablet magazine, called “Reform Jediism.” Liebovitz explains his reaction to the film:

I felt a torrent of anger I haven’t known since gazing at the calamity that was Jar-Jar Binks. That’s because the movie, while otherwise engaging and enjoyable, introduced a radical new take on the Jedi religion. Call it Reform Jediism.

Anger is consistent with right-wing screeds against any form of liberal politics, but in this instance the target was Reform Judaism. As he puts it,

for American Jewish audiences… The Last Jedi can feel almost like a documentary, a sordid story about a small community eager to trade in the old and onerous traditions for the glittery and airy creed of universalist kumbaya that, like so much sound and fury, signifies nothing.

As a Reform Jew, I am deeply offended by Liebovitz’s disdain for those of us who practice a form of Judaism different from his own. And I have to wonder what it is about us that makes him so afraid. In the words of the Jedi master Yoda, who presumably represents Liebovitz’s idea of Orthodox Jediism, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Don’t we know this to be true? Isn’t our world big enough for different forms of Jewish worship, different modes of Jewish identity? Does he really want to open up an irrevocable schism in the Jewish population?

Responses from readers both sympathetic to his general outlook and supportive of the Reform movement have taken Liebovitz to task for misinterpreting the meaning of The Last Jedi, ignoring important details in the film or just getting them wrong, forcing facts to fit his views instead of vice versa. For my part, I find the entire conversation absurd. Its original sin is Liebovitz’s equating Jew and Jedi.

The Star Wars universe was created by George Lucas, who was raised a Methodist. The film’s underlying Christian sensibility is apparent in its emphasis on a savior figure. In the original trilogy, the messianic character is Luke (evoking the Gospels) Skywalker (paralleling walking on water). In the prequels, Anakin Skywalker is born via immaculate conception on the part of the Force and identified as the “chosen one” of prophecy, before falling from grace and becoming the equivalent of the Christian Satan, Darth Vader.

The Jedi are referred to as an “order” rather than a religion. Judaism does not have any orders, but there are many within the Catholic tradition (e.g., Jesuits, Dominicans), as well in as other forms of Christianity including the Methodists, and also within Buddhism, a major influence as well on Lucas and his creation. The Jedi Order is monastic. Worldly attachments—notably marriage—are forbidden; that’s a rule also associated with Christianity and Buddhism.

A fully trained Jedi is referred to as a knight, and Jedi knights are all but invincible warriors, in some ways modeled after Japanese samurai, but also after holy paladins, not unlike the Arthurian knights of the roundtable in search of the Holy Grail of Christian legend. Jedi also are much like priests, Christian or Shaolin, with a direct connection to the godlike Force, one that ordinary people lack. They are nothing like the great rabbis of Jewish tradition, learned sages who study and interpret our sacred texts.

The Christian sensibility of Star Wars is especially apparent in its valuation of redemption and forgiveness. At the end of the original trilogy, Luke is able to convince his father, Darth Vader, to turn on his master, the evil emperor. Luke insists that there still is good in Vader, and this final act allows Vader to die in a state of grace, and to appear in ghostly form alongside the good Jedi who have also left the earthly plane. But the fact remains that Vader was guilty of untold atrocities, including destroying an entire planet in the first Star Wars film.

In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren is introduced as essentially worshipping Darth Vader as well as following the evil Supreme Leader of the First Order, and engages in acts of patricide and mass murder. In The Last Jedi, Rey tries to turn Ren away from the dark side, just as Luke did with Vader, saying that it’s not to late for him. The idea that you can be forgiven for all of your sins as long as you repent in the end has its origins in Christian theology, whereas in our tradition, as expounded by Maimonides, some sins are so heinous that no forgiveness or redemption is possible.

I don’t mean to imply that Star Wars is based only on Christian elements. Lucas weaved together a variety of influences, including Buddhism, Japanese samurai films, westerns, World War Two movies, old movie serials such as Flash Gordon, and Joseph Campbell’s notion of the hero’s journey (itself more consistent with Christianity than Judaism). What I want to emphasize is that Star Wars does not reflect Jewish sensibilities, and does not make for a good analogy with contemporary Jewish life.

We still can appreciate and enjoy the movies, which above all are entertaining. But we also ought to be aware of Lucas’s failings as a storyteller. His movies have been criticized for portraying democratic institutions as weak and ineffectual, supported only by the elitist Jedi. Only a few people exhibit the force sensitivity needed to become a Jedi, and that trait is inherited rather than acquired through hard work or ethical conduct.

Lucas drew on many stylistic elements from the World War II era, some in disturbing fashion. For example, the final scene of the first Star Wars movie is based on a scene from the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. Worse, in the prequel trilogy, Lucas drew on offensive ethnic stereotypes, trying to displace them onto alien beings. The character of Jar Jar Binks, whom Liebovitz and many other fans criticized for being too silly, was based on African-American Stepin Fetchit stereotypes, with a Jamaican/Rastafarian speech pattern. The leaders of the evil Trade Federation were based on East Asian “yellow peril” stereotypes. And the greedy slave owner Watto is hook-nosed and speaks with a Yiddish accent.

Liebovitz is wrong in thinking that the earlier Star Wars movies emphasized tradition. No, they were exercises in nostalgia, romanticized images of the past. And they are profoundly ahistorical, set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” The fairytale-like formula stands in stark contrast to the Jewish invention of historical narrative. The events that occur in the Star Wars universe have no connection to our world. How long ago did they happen? What is the connection between their time and ours? Are we the descendants of the human characters in these stories? Are they even human? For this reason, as well as the fact that there is no rationale given for the “futuristic” science and technology, purists argue that these stories are fantasy rather than science fiction.

As Jews, we believe in progress toward a better future as well as continuity with the past. The Star Wars universe is as disconnected from our tradition as it is from human history. We can enjoy the films as entertainment, certainly, and I would suggest that also we ought to applaud the more progressive approach associated with Abrams, Johnson, and Disney. As for a Jewish take on the franchise, I can think of none better than the 1987 Mel Brooks movie Spaceballs, which teaches us to live and let live and not take ourselves so seriously.

And so I say to Liebovitz and others like him, “May the Schwartz be with you!”

Post-Truth and Post-Reason

So, I was playing catch-up in posting 3 of my op-eds published in the Jewish Standard and online on my blog for their Times of Israel site previously, and was going to hold off until posting my most recent op-ed here on Blog Time Passing. But in light of recent events revolving around the inauguration of Donald Trump, I figure I should post this sooner rather than later.

The piece originally appeared in the December 30th issue, and was written with an end-of-year sensibility. The editor extended the title to read, Post-Truth and Post-Reason—Big Data and Big Dada Fight It Out, which is a bit misleading since it's more like big data and big dada ganging up in an assault on truth and reason. But I am grateful that they were willing to publish what turned out to be a very long item, almost twice as long as the typical op-ed. So, here it is:

As we reach the end of 2016, I find I have mixed feelings about the Word of the Year chosen by Oxford Dictionaries: post-truth.

Reflecting the Brexit vote in the UK as well as the presidential election campaign in the US, the term reflects the disillusionment that many of us feel with political discourse in the 21st century, especially as it is conducted via television, the internet, and social media.

But the advent of post-truth leaves open the question, what is truth? In one sense, it is the opposite of a lie, and this year’s election campaign has seen more accusations of lying coming from both sides of the political spectrum than I can recall from past political seasons. A lie is a deliberate attempt to mislead, either by knowingly making a false statement, or by withholding information known to be true.

Over the past half century, two of our presidents have gotten in trouble for lying—Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign, and Bill Clinton, who was impeached. Of course, some of us find that there is a significant difference between Nixon lying to cover up an attempt to undermine the democratic process, and Clinton lying to cover up a personal indiscretion. But both were guilty of failing to live up to the ideal of honesty. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, campaigned on the promise that “I’ll never lie to you.” Whatever else might be said of him, he tried to tell the American people the truth about the end of postwar prosperity. His message was not well received, to say the least.

The apocryphal story of young George Washington admitting to chopping down a cherry tree with the words “I cannot tell a lie” reflects one type of honesty, honesty in confession of sin, wrongdoing, or error. This kind of honesty is very much a part of Jewish religious and ethical tradition, and the Judeo-Christian foundation of the American republic. It is a practice that our president-elect seems to avoid more often than not, although it has been in general decline through our culture, in part due to the litigious nature of our society, but also due to a decay in people’s willingness to take responsibility for their actions.

Abraham Lincoln was known as “Honest Abe,” reportedly long before he entered the political arena, when he was a young store clerk and, notably, when he was a lawyer. In this regard, beyond telling the truth, honesty refers more broadly to integrity and trustworthiness; beyond lying, dishonesty includes a variety of unethical behaviors, such as cheating. Here too, we can trace this ideal back to biblical passages such as can be found in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-27), which includes the commandment “You shall not cheat in measuring length, weight, or quantity. You shall have honest balances, honest weights…” (18:35-36). Accusations of cheating also have been a part of 2016 politics, again directed at both major parties and their candidates.

Admittedly, these concepts of honesty are old-fashioned and obsolescent in our contemporary culture of celebrity, where honestly amounts to self-display and self- promotion. It is the honesty of going on a talk show and talking about yourself, or feeding details of your personal life to the gossip outlets. Donald Trump is seen as honest by his followers not because he accurately conveys the truth, but because he says what he thinks, seemingly with little or no filtering. This stands in stark contrast with the typical politician, who sends different messages to different audiences, especially to wealthy backers as opposed to the general public. Not to mention the fact that officeholders often must withhold information from their constituents.

Because Trump seems to say whatever comes into his head and does not care to be diplomatic in his remarks or hold back in concern over anyone’s sensitivities, he is seen as honest in a way that renders any inconsistencies in what he says irrelevant. So what if he contradicts himself from one situation to another, if what he says at any given moment is what he truly is thinking, what he truly believes to be true? In this way, Trump’s vulgar remarks caught on tape before an Access Hollywood appearance serves as more proof of his honesty, and does not conflict with his statements that he loves women and that no one has more respect for women than he does, at least as far as his fans are concerned.

The kind of honesty Trump represents is associated with the ideal of authenticity. For celebrity logic, authenticity means playing yourself, even if you are playing a role. That’s the difference between being an actor, along the lines of Meryl Streep or Dustin Hoffman, or being a star, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or Adam Sandler for that matter. What fans often forget is that playing yourself is still playing a role, that authenticity on the part of celebrities is still an act.

Politicians can accuse their opponents of lying as a way of emphasizing their own image of authenticity, but actually proving such claims can be very difficult, because they require some evidence that there was an intent to mislead. The Watergate conspirators avoided charges of perjury by using the phrase “to the best of my recollection” in conjunction with their testimony. Who can prove that a lie is not the result of a faulty memory rather than a deliberate deception?

For similar reasons, journalists rarely accuse anyone of lying, instead identifying statements as false. That leaves open the question of whether the politicians were simply mistaken, or in the neologism used by press secretaries, whether they misspoke. Journalists can, however, report on the accusations of lying made by some other source. While they may not be able to support the claim that candidate A is lying, they can easily show that candidate B said that candidate A is lying.

The important point is that while in one sense lies are the opposite of truth, in another sense it is falsity that is truth’s antonym. The contrast between true and false takes us away from the ideal of honesty, and removes the factor of personal belief. Instead, we are asked to objectively consider the logic of the claim, and the evidence that may support or refute it.

This meaning of truth is closely related to the concept of facticity, hence the Oxford Dictionary definition of post-truth: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” This reflects the commonly held view that facts are statements that are true, typically having been verified scientifically. But this is based on a misunderstanding of science.

A scientific fact is a statement that is open to testing. A statement such as “God created the world,” cannot be tested empirically by any known method, and therefore cannot be considered a scientific fact. That means that it cannot be tested to see if it’s true or false. A statement such as “The world is approximately 6,000 years old” can be tested via scientific method, and has been shown to be false. But it is still a fact, in the sense of being a statement open to testing. Ronald Reagan was notorious for citing facts that turned out to be false, but no one accused the former actor of lying.

Actually, according to philosopher Karl Popper, scientists can never prove anything to be absolutely true, because to do so would require observing every possible instance of the phenomenon in question, past, present, and future. And it only takes one exception to prove the theory false. In this sense, science advances by falsification alone, by eliminating error and mistaken notions.

Science cannot give us truth, just tentative explanations that conform to the available evidence, and effective means of predicting outcomes. Science is by far the best method we have for making such predictions. But absent claims of absolute truth, science leaves open the door to relativism, a view that is problematic when it is championed by the left in regard to morality, and by the right in regard to reality.

Stephen Colbert introduced the term truthiness to refer to George W. Bush’s reliance on intuition and gut feelings as a guide to truth, rather than logic, evidence, or even thoughtful reflection. The word seems almost quaint now, as it retains at least a bit of a folksy connection to some sense of the truth, something less extreme than post-truth. It is perhaps a reflection of nostalgic longing and disturbance over contemporary public discourse that accounts for the revival earlier this year of the classic television game show To Tell the Truth, introduced in 1956 by Bob Stewart, née Isidore Steinberg of Brooklyn.

But truth long has been a problematic term, and for many years now we have been rightfully suspicious of anyone who lays claim to the truth. The true tragedy we are witnessing is the decline of rationality. The prophet Isaiah declared, “Come now and let us reason together” (1:18), and it was the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, that gave birth to the American republic. The democratic basis of our government was predicated on our ability to engage in rational discussion and argumentation, and through competition in the marketplace of ideas, arrive at the truth, or at least negotiate a compromise between opposing opinions.

Rationality has been under attack on two fronts, from the irrationality of an image culture that emphasizes appearance and personality rather than sensible language, and from the hyper-rationality of number-crunching information technologies that leave no room for deliberation or value other than efficiency and productivity. We are caught between emotional appeals that leave no room for thoughtful, impartial consideration, and calculations of quantifiable certainties that do not allow for human evaluation and judgment.

In short, reason is being squeezed out by the extremes of big data and big dada.

The end of rationality has had an adverse affect on the State of Israel as well, as Jewish culture, with its long tradition of Talmudic scholarship, which emphasizes reasoned discussion. Israel’s attempts to use logic and evidence fare poorly in the face of its enemies’ use of images and emotional appeals in the international arena.

Liberals have had more difficulty adjusting to a post-rational world than conservatives, given the liberal bias toward intellectualism. One advantage that liberals do enjoy is in the use of humor, so look for comedians to take on leadership positions in the Democratic Party. For this reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if Saturday Night Live alumnus Al Franken, the junior United States senator from Minnesota, was the Democratic nominee in 2020.

But the end of reason is not a problem only for liberals. It is a challenge to liberalism writ large, to our ideals of freedom and equality. And it makes it all but impossible to follow the commandment found in Deuteronomy (16:20): “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” How can we pursue justice in a post-truth, post-rational world?

Happy Purim!

Tomorrow evening is the holiday of Purim, a minor holiday on the Hebrew calendar, often described as the Jewish mardi gras. I wrote about it in a previous post, My Purim Spiel, so you can read more about it there, if you care to.

In that previous post, I also mentioned how one of the traditional ways of celebrating Purim is to put on a Purim spiel, a play based on the biblical Book of Esther, which in turn is the basis of the Purim holiday. Purim spiels usually are humorous, loose adaptations that might include parodies of popular songs, movies, TV, Broadway shows, etc.

And in that previous post, I mentioned that I had written a Purim spiel, my first, which was performed last year at Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia. The title of the spiel is The Schnook of Esther, and we have since made it available to read online. You can click on the link to see a PDF of the spiel. (There's also a note about how anyone wishing to perform the play can do so, all we ask for is a donation to the Adas Emuno Social Action Fund. Most congregations purchase their spiels in this way, although usually without the opportunity to read them first.)

So, in celebration of Purim, you can read the spiel, and also read along with the admittedly amateurish performance we put on last year, twice, actually. The first version was also included in my previous post, but I'll include it here as well:





And here's the second version:





And just in case you're in the neighborhood, you can stop by Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia to see my new spiel, Shalom Shushan, performed tomorrow night, Wednesday, March 23rd. Here's a link with all the info: Purim Time! And I hope to share the new spiel here on Blog Time Passing before too long. Until then, Happy Purim!

Grandpa Bernie and the Millennials

So, my most recent op-ed for the Jewish Standard came out on February 12th, under the title of Zayde for President, the link again going to the posting on my Times of Israel/Jewish Standard blog, just FYI and in case you want to see it in that context. Anyway, it was given the subtitle of, "Grumpy, cool, fun grandpa speaks to millennials," and here's the rest of it:

When Larry David hosted Saturday Night Live on February 6, Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance during a skit about a sinking ship — an apt metaphor, some might say, for the state of the union.

With David playing the part of a rich man arguing that his wealth earned him a spot in the lifeboat along with the women and children, Sanders was given the opportunity to deliver a few lines about the one percent “getting preferential treatment,” and the “need to unite and work together.” A brief exchange regarding democratic socialism followed, leading David to ask, “Who are you?” Sanders replied, “I am Bernie Sanderswitzky — but we’re gonna change it when we get to America, so it doesn’t sound quite so Jewish.” “Yeah, that’ll trick ’em,” David shot back sarcastically.

And certainly there is no disguising the fact that Sanders is Jewish, although this was one of the rare moments in media coverage of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination that any mention has been made of his ethnic and religious identity. And that arguably is odd, given how much emphasis was placed on the fact that Barack Obama became the first African-American president, and on Hillary Clinton potentially becoming the first woman to be president.

Maybe it seems that by contrast with African-Americans and women, Sanders becoming the first Jewish president would be less of a monumental breakthrough for the nation. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that some Americans believe that we already have a non-Christian president — that Obama is a secret Muslim. Or maybe it’s a matter of longstanding Jewish reticence, as reflected in the name change mentioned in the skit. Sanders is a traditional Anglo-Saxon name; interestingly enough, it originated in the same impulse that was prevalent among the Jews of antiquity, to name their children after Alexander the Great.

Of course, Sanders’ self-identification as a “democratic socialist” often is referenced by the news media, as it was on the Saturday Night Live skit, but would that make him the first socialist president of the United States if he is elected? Not according to Republican rhetoric, given that most Democrats have been accused of promoting socialist policies. More significantly, not according to Sanders himself, who positions himself in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and policies, as extended by John F. Kennedy and, significantly, by Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. Those presidents avoided the label of socialist, however, given American opposition, from the Russian Revolution on, to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, even during the brief period we fought together to defeat Nazi Germany.

To get a sense of the brief moment in our history when socialism first represented a serious political movement, we might turn to another Sanders, Edward Sanders. Perhaps best known as one of the founders of the 1960s rock band The Fugs, Ed Sanders also has distinguished himself as an activist, author, and award-winning poet. And his extended poem, called Yiddish-Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side, stands as a tribute to the likes of Meyer London, Morris Hillquit, Scott Nearing, Eugene Debs, and Emma Goldman:

To make a New World
inside the New World
at Century’s turn
the Yiddish speaking socialists
of the Lower East Side.

As the poem explains, they had, “a passion for Justice that never fades away,” although they failed in their efforts to translate their ideals into a successful political revolution. Ed Sanders, who is just two years older than Bernie, was an icon and leader of the counterculture of the ’60s and early ’70s. Although he was not Jewish, he took inspiration from the social justice activism of these early 20th century pioneers.

Movements like these seem to run in cycles, so it may well be that the socialism that arose at the turn of the 20th century and returned in the form of the counterculture over half a century ago is due to make a comeback now. Without a doubt, the counterculture movement also was a youth movement, and not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders has enjoyed widespread support among the youngest of our eligible voters, the generation referred to as Millennials. Indeed, this has been a frequently invoked theme in news coverage of the campaign, with the pundits often seeming at a loss as to why twenty-somethings would support a 74-year-old candidate.

The expectation that young people automatically should favor the youngest candidate perhaps has its roots in the fact that baby boomers venerated John F. Kennedy, who was the youngest person ever elected president, but this overlooks the fact that no one from that generation was old enough to vote in the 1960 election. As much as JFK’s appearance of youth and vigor seemed to resonate with the ascendancy of the boomers, we have no way of knowing how that generation would have regarded him had his career and life not been cut short by an assassin’s bullet. We do know that his successor, LBJ, was vilified for his escalation of the Vietnam War, and that happened despite his progressive domestic initiatives.

In the same sense that political movements may be cyclical in nature, so too are filial relationships. That’s why we often speak of traits and qualities skipping a generation. Millennial support for Sanders therefore should come as no surprise, as he easily fits into the role of America’s grandpa, or more accurately, America’s zayde. Often he comes across as a grumpy grandpa, as Amber Phillips of the Washington Post suggested last July. But Emma Roller of the New York Times labeled him “your cool socialist grandpa” in December, and just a few weeks ago, People profiled him as a “fun grandpa,” according to his own grandchildren.

Jeb Bush, who had been struggling to gain the slightest bit of traction, recently had his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, venture out into the New Hampshire snow to help him in his primary campaign. The news media has made frequent reference to her enormous popularity, referring to her as “America’s grandmother.” And there is no question that she fits the image, and did so even back when her husband was president. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has included the fact that she recently became a grandmother as part of her campaign rhetoric, but she has not been able to come across as particularly grandmotherly, drawing criticism this past December for comparing herself to an abuela (Latina grandmother).

Grumpy, cool, and fun are not mutually exclusive traits, and there is something about the image of older Jewish men that plays well in contemporary American culture, and especially on television. It is indeed a mixture of idealism and humor, impatience with injustice, and infinite patience with the young. Whether this is a wining formula for the Democratic primaries remains to be seen, but the source of his appeal to Millennials, as a socialist zayde, should not be a mystery.

From Bunker to Trump (via Reagan)

So, last month I was contacted by Stephen Nessen of WNYC, a New York public radio station, and asked to comment on the parallels and similarities between Donald Trump and Archie Bunker. And I have to admit that connecting the two was not an idea that had ever occurred to me, but as Nessen pointed out, both hail from Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York City, or as it used to be called, Greater New York (on account of the fact that Brooklyn and Queens, the two Long Island boroughs, only became part of the city in 1899). As it turns out, I grew up in Queens as well, in Kew Gardens, not far from where Trump came from, which was the private, affluent neighborhood of Jamaica Estates. Archie Bunker, by way of contrast, was from the older, working class section of Corona.

Speaking of Queens, the elementary school I attended in Kew Gardens, PS 99, was the same one that comedian Rodney Dangerfield went to many years earlier. My Junior High School, Russell Sage (otherwise known as JHS 190) in Forest Hills, had boasted of future NBA player and general manager Ernie Grunfeld, who graduated the year before I began there, and my high school, Hillcrest High, in Jamaica, had two major TV stars a year or two behind me, Ray Romano, and Fran Drescher (not that I was at all aware of them). Just to better establish the milieu I hail from.

And anyway, the Queens connection was just a jumping off point for making the connection between the fictional character from Norman Lear's hit TV show All in the Family (1971-1979, succeeded by the spin-off, Archie Bunker's Place, 1979-1983), and the nonfictional character (although some might debate the point) from The Apprentice (2004-2015, including seven seasons of The Celebrity Apprentice, and more recently the reality series we might as well call Who Wants to Be President?). The key similarities for Nessen and his colleagues had to do with the fact that both were labelled as bigots (Bunker quite intentionally as the comic foil in Lear's liberally minded sitcom, Trump more controversially, based on his comments about Mexicans, women, and Muslims) and both became quite popular with the mass American audience (Bunker unexpectedly, as he was intended as the subject of ridicule, not sympathy, while Trump's popularity was certainly his intended aim, but came as a surprise to many, both liberal and conservative).

So now, how about taking a moment or two to listen to the four minute story they wound up airing back on December 10th?





Or go have a look and listen on the WNYC page devoted to the story, Is Donald Trump the Archie Bunker of Today? The text that accompanies the report, which is similar but with some significant differences from the radio version, is also available on that page, and it goes like this:

Before Donald Trump ran a campaign on xenophobia and pledges to make America great again, another Queens native who feared the changes happening in America dominated television.

Archie Bunker, the cantankerous patriarch of the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, like Trump, was known for spewing anti-immigrant, unabashedly racist screeds on national TV. He told America how it is from the view of his armchair.

WNYC went to the block in Glendale, Queens where Archie Bunker's house was shot to see how residents there feel about both men.

“Lot of people think, and they don't verbalize, he verbalizes and so does Trump,” Irene Kessler, who lives in Woodhaven, Queens, said. She supports Trumps views on the economy, but not his recent comments on Muslim.

“He's saying what I believe the majority of Americans are thinking,” Joe DaSoro, 55, said of Donald Trump.

DaSoro grew up in Ozone Park, but now lives in Huntington, Long Island. He’s a registered Republican, but considers himself a moderate.

“A lot people are stuck on this political correctness, and he's not, he's just speaking his mind and being honest about it where the others are being phony,” DaSoro said.

He could be talking about Donald Trump, or Archie Bunker.

“Donald Trump is paralleling Archie Bunker and appealing to people who are simply dismayed by all the change that’s going on—by political correctness and the influx of immigrants from other parts of the world,” said Lance Strate, a professor of Communications and Media Studies at Fordham University.

Of course, not everyone in Queens is on board. Linda Morton, 84, from Glendale, thinks Trump is simply a bigot.

“I'm really worried, if he becomes president,” she said. “I really think some of the countries are laughing at us.”

No one knows Archie Bunker better than Norman Lear, the creator of All in the Family. Lear believes his creation was more lovable.

“I think Donald Trump is a horse’s ass,” he told WNYC in a recent interview. “A righteous fool. And I've always thought of Archie as simply afraid to be on the precipice of the future, progress baffled him.”

In Archie Bunker's world of the 1970s, young people were having sex out of wedlock, inflation and loss of manufacturing jobs was prevalent, and integration was firmly taking root.

“He wanted to reach back instead of forward,” Lear said. “Blacks moving into the neighbored—‘my god’—the rest of it was just simply poor education and badly informed.”

Today, many Trump supporters are upset by gay marriage, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and minorities becoming the majority.

Near the Bunker family home is a Wendy’s where Pat Ryan, 59, a truck driver from Islip, Long Island stopped for lunch. He said it’s hard to support Trump’s recent comments. But, “if he says something outlandish and at the end of the day something is done positively then I would support that.”

He said while Trump may be trying to appeal to blue collar workers like him, Archie Bunker really did speak for them.

“Archie was part of middle America, he was a blue collar worker he got to work every day,” Ryan said. “Donald Trump is basically looking down from the towers. I don't know if he has a good grasp of what people go through day to day.”

Now, when I spoke to Nessen, we were on the phone for about half an hour, so the brief quote that was used was only a small portion of my comments. And as you may know from many of my previous posts, whenever possible I try to provide you with the entirety of my comments, both to illustrate the process of journalistic practice, and so they don't have to go to waste. In this case, that's not possible, but I can tell you that I did make reference to the fact that All in the Family was all about the profound generation gap that existed between the baby boomers and what is now known as the greatest generation. That gap is what fully ignited the culture wars that exist to this day, with Archie Bunker representing what is sometimes referred to as the red states, the Republican conservative types that Trump has become so popular with, while the baby boomer counterculture types, like Bunker's daughter and son-in-law, turned into the blue state Clintons and Obamas of today (not to mention Bernie Sanders, and of course Al Gore and John Kerry).

I also pointed out that Queens has been the borough of New York that most resembles middle America, being semi-suburban, almost small town in some respects, certainly more Main Street in contrast to Manhattan's Wall Street (to use a common opposition from contemporary political rhetoric). I suspect that this is less the case today than it was in the past, because Queens has become one of the most diverse places on the planet. But at least back in the 70s, that sensibility is what contributed to Archie Bunker's appeal (although one source of misunderstanding had to do with the fact that Bunker didn't own a car, a sign of poverty almost anywhere other than New York). A working class fellow from Queens fit in very nicely with what Richard Nixon referred to as the silent majority, even though in his case, the silence was not very profound (rather profane, actually).

I did have the sense, in my comments, that I was taking Trump more seriously, less dismissively, than Nessen and his colleagues, by which I mean that I was less willing to reduce Trump to the flat stereotype of Archie Bunker, although I did note that the brilliance of Carroll O'Conner as an actor made his character more well-rounded and much more sympathetic than he was meant to be, less of a joke and more of an ironic icon that many could identify with. Even so, I think there is much more to Trump than Bunker's bigotry and rants, as much as Trump eschews both contemporary political correctness (although not entirely) and the diplomatic caution of the career politician. But the hidden ground connecting Trump to Bunker is none other than Ronald Reagan.

In my comments, I noted the similarity between Trump and Reagan quite a bit, both having backgrounds as media professionals before making the switch to politics, both revolutionary outsiders challenging the Republican Party establishment, both seemingly immune from any consequences for their gaffes, mistakes, and controversial comments. Reagan was referred to as the teflon President, because nothing would stick to him, and I'm surprised that almost no one has commented on the similarity to Trump as a teflon candidate.

Archie Bunker preceded Reagan, but the decade that All in the Family ran was the decade that saw liberalism and the counterculture political movement, aka the movement, go into sharp decline. While it was the decade in which the United States finally withdrew all of its troops from Vietnam and the odious Nixon was forced from the White House due to the Watergate scandal, it also saw the collapse of the movement in the landslide loss of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in  1972, having already been weakened by the necessities of going mainstream for the general election. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, tried to revive American patriotism via the bicentennial celebrations of 1976, and while he gained the Republican nomination that year, he faced a very serious challenge as a sitting president by Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries. And weakened as he was, Ford was unseated by Democrat Jimmy Carter who, although today viewed as highly liberal, was seen as a relatively conservative candidate during the 70s, certainly more so than McGovern, or Teddy Kennedy, or Eugene McCarthy, or even Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson (Carter was the first born again Christian to become president). And then came 1980, and the Reagan revolution that moved American politics farther to the right than it had been since, at least, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The increasing conservatism of American politics was reflected in the evolution of All in the Family, as Archie Bunker evolved from ironic foil to American folk hero. And in many ways, he reflected the actual demographic of what came to be known as the Reagan Democrats. This was a part of the population that had traditionally voted for Democratic candidates, but had many conservative tendencies, and had grown increasingly less comfortable with the liberalism of the Democratic Party. Reagan Democrats tended to be blue collar workers, like Bunker, who had previously supported the Democrats in conjunction with their association with the labor movement and labor unions. But while union leadership generally endorsed Democratic candidates, the rank and file more and more were ignoring those endorsements, and favoring the more conservative, Republican types; this was a remarkable shift, in that Republicans were traditionally seen as supporters of management rather than workers, and retain that association today in being the party of big business (although Bill Clinton and others in the Democratic Party shifted away from the leftist anti-capitalist stance of other Democrats, that divide now the under current in the rather subdued contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders). It was the beginning of the end of labor unions as a significant political force in American politics, and Reagan's politics were decidedly anti-union. Ironically perhaps, the blue collar workers had come to take the benefits derived from unionizing for granted, seeing them as having outlived their usefulness (and needlessly taking money, in thew form of union dues, out of their paychecks).

The Reagan Democrats were also more hawkish, as opposed to the doves that dominated Democratic politics.  The anti-war protest had resulted in Lyndon Johnson deciding not to run for re-election in 1968, with the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President, not coming out against the war out of loyalty to LBJ until close to the end of his campaign. The protests that followed Nixon's refusal to end the war had much to do with McGovern's victory in the 1972 Democratic primaries, and while losing the election, Nixon's resignation was a victory for the left (and for basic decency I would add), putting an end to the Nixonian promise of peace with honor. Instead, anti-war pressure led to what conservatives viewed as a decidedly dishonorable pullout of our troops, followed by the fall of South Vietnam. Ignoring the fact that this occurred under Republican Jerry Ford's presidency, and putting aside various rhetorical technicalities, this was seen as the first time that the US lost a war. That loss was followed by what would appear to conservatives as Carter's mishandling of the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis. There was a sense of defeatism that accompanied these events, Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran, and also the Arab oil embargoes of the late 70s, which resulted in sudden major hikes in gasoline prices, and even more drastically, long lines and rationing at gas stations. This downward trend was exactly was Reagan vowed to reverse, and that is what Trump is echoing when he talks about making American great again, and how we don't win anymore, and how he'll put an end to that. The Reagan Democrats, being altogether patriotic, resonated with those sorts of messages, and not with the critical appraisals associated with the counterculture.

Going back to the culture wars, Reagan, while touting laissez-faire economics and minimizing government regulation and influence, liberalism in its classic sense, also built a new Republican coalition by appealing to social conservatives, including the growing evangelical and fundamentalist Christian populations opposed to lifestyle liberalism that included civil rights/equal rights for all; social programs including welfare, food stamps, etc; strict separation of church and state; easy availability of birth control options and abortion on demand; the sexual revolution; legalization of recreational drug use; etc. Bunker was nothing if not a social conservative, dismayed in fact by all of the social change going on in the culture. One point that others have made is that while the character is presented as a typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, still at least symbolic of the majority of the American population, in fact the kind of demographic that Archie Bunker actually reflected, the Reagan Democrats, were more likely to be Catholic than Protestant. Of course, Reagan benefited from the support of the newly emerged evangelical Protestant Christian Coalition, and Trump also seems to have gained their approval. Ironically for both, I might add, in that Reagan was the first divorced man to be elected president, and Trump also has a personal history of something less than perfect family values.

So, the bottom line here is that while drawing a line connecting Archie Bunker to Donald Trump is a clever insight, the connection itself has much to do with Ronald Reagan, and while this does not guarantee that Trump will become the next president of the United States, or even the Republican nominee, it does suggest, to me at least, that he needs to be taken much more seriously as a candidate than he has been so far. 





And that's the story, Jerry!

Musings on Jewish Identity at Christmastime

So, I wrote another op-ed for the Jewish Standard, which was published this past Friday, December 18th. It's timely, as you might gather from the title, Musings on Jewish Identity at Christmastime, and that link goes to the post on my Times of Israel/Jewish Standard blog, but of course you can just read here, below, starting now...

Adam Sandler performed an update of his “Chanukah Song” last month at the New York Comedy Festival, with a second performance in San Diego available on YouTube. The new rendition is the fourth version of the song he debuted in 1994 on Saturday Night Live, a song that is as much about Jewish identity as it is about the holiday.

 

Sandler’s “Chanukah Song” is not without its critics, however. In an editorial published in the New Jersey Jewish News last month, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll of Teaneck, expresses much ambivalence about Sandler’s listing of Jewish celebrities. He worries that while it reflects a sense that it is cool to be Jewish, that coolness is a shallow expression of ethnic pride, lacking the depth of religious commitment.

In my view, Silow-Carroll sells Sandler short.

But first let me note that I agree with the general argument that Jewish identity ought to be based on something more than ethnic pride. If Jewish identity is reduced to ethnicity alone, it eventually will be lost within the great American melting pot. Think of how many Americans today claim to have a Native American great grandparent. But the key to understanding “The Chanukah Song” is not in the list of Jewish celebrities, even though that constitutes the main part of the song.

Steve Allen once observed that the comedian is usually a person with a grievance, and Sandler explained the grievance behind “The Chanukah Song” when he first introduced it on December 3, 1994. “When I was a kid, this time of year always made me feel a little left out, because in school there were so many Christmas songs, and all us Jewish kids had was the song, ‘Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,’” he said then. And while Sandler goes on to say that he “wrote a brand new Chanukah song for you Jewish kids to sing,” in actuality the song actually has very little to do with the holiday.

Sandler does begin with a reference to religious tradition, as the first line of the song tells us to “put on your yarmulke,” and goes on to identify the holiday as the festival of lights. But for the most part, the connection to Chanukah is tangential, a list of famous people who are more or less Jewish, motivated by the mostly unstated implication that they also celebrate Chanukah instead of Christmas. In other words, the song is not about Chanukah itself, but rather about not celebrating Christmas, about feeling like “the only kid in town without a Christmas tree.” About feeling left out.

Certainly, the song’s appeal to ethnic pride is an effort to compensate for that sense of alienation, and there is something very Jewish about taking note when a prominent person is a member of the tribe. Indeed, doing so constitutes a link to our tribal roots, an expression of a group-centered communal sensibility, one that stands in marked contrast to the extreme individualism of American society. Moreover, it can serve not only as an expression of shared pride, but also of collective shame. For example, in the new version of the song Sandler expresses his disapproval of former Subway spokesperson and convicted sex offender Jared Fogle, and his disappointment that Fogle is Jewish.

To understand the peculiarity of American-Jewish life over the past century or more, it is helpful to consider how the equivalent of “The Chanukah Song” would work for other groups. A song pointing out the identity of African-Americans or Asian-Americans, for example, would seem pointless; it simply would state what is obvious to all. The same would be true, to a large extent, for a song about Italian-Americans naming Pacino, DeNiro, Stallone, DiCaprio, etc.; or for Hispanics naming Lopez, Garcia, Longoria, Montalban, etc. And yes, we have our Levines, Shapiros, and Cohens, but then there are also names like Gyllenhaal, Johansson, and LaBeouf, all named in Sandler’s recent update.

That Jewish identity is often not immediately apparent goes hand-in-hand with the fact that for most of the time, Jewish-Americans are privileged to feel and function as if we are part of mainstream American society. Even when we take off for Jewish holidays, fast on Yom Kippur, and avoid chametz on Passover, we may be diverging from the mainstream, but we do so by taking an alternate path, a detour, rather than running counter to its current. It is only at Christmastime that we find ourselves at odds with the vast majority of Americans and can feel like strangers in our native land.

And let’s be honest, generic phrases like “holiday season” and “season’s greetings” are essentially euphemisms for Christmas. The attempt to acknowledge that there is more than one holiday at this time of year essentially translates to “Christmas and others,” or more accurately “Christmases and others,” by which I mean not only the Orthodox Church’s Christmas that falls during the first week of January, but more importantly the distinction between the religious observance of the Christian holy day and what has become, for many, a secularized American holiday.

It is pointless to deny the power of secularized Christmas, whose elements include Christmas trees, magic snowmen and reindeer, elves, and of course Santa Claus as a figure akin to the tooth fairy. And Sandler doesn’t mention the fact that in an effort to avoid feeling left out, some Jews actually do celebrate some form of secularized Christmas.

While I don’t believe that Santa Claus ever can be fully separated from his origins as the Christian Saint Nicholas, or that Christmas ever can be the kind of pluralistic national holiday that Thanksgiving is, my point is not to criticize attempts to create a kosher Christmas. Rather, what I want to emphasize is that if it is possible for us to celebrate some form of secularized Christmas, then the decision not to celebrate Christmas becomes a conscious choice that we have to make, an act of resistance to the dominant culture, an affirmation of our group identity as a people, and most importantly, an affirmation of our faith.

The decision not to celebrate Christmas is much more than a matter of ethnic pride. It must be based on religion, and this is the underlying assumption of Sandler’s “Chanukah Song,” and the point that Silow-Carroll misses. We are defined by what we are not, as well as by what we are. Admittedly, it is not enough to define ourselves against others. We also have to define ourselves positively, by our beliefs and practices. But we should understand the hidden ground of faith behind Sandler’s humor.

We should also understand the grievance behind the song, stemming from a sense of isolation that may be felt only or much more acutely at this time of year. Sandler’s song counters isolation through the creation of a sense of connection, achieved by naming others who are “just like you and me.” What he gives us is an imaginary community of people who are known to us, but who do not know us in return. In doing so, he points the way to the real solution, which is to seek out a real sense of community, something we can only find through our Jewish congregations, synagogues, and community centers.