All Whoopi, All The Time
Whoopi Goldberg made some dumb comments about Jews and the Holocaust .. one lesson is that maybe news organizations shouldn't be featuring the views of people who don't what they are talking about
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
First, some quick housekeeping: there will be no Zoom Chat on Friday. Unfortunately, I have a prior engagement that I cannot change. But I will be back next week!
Also, I received a few emails from folks who seemed a bit confused by my recent Russia/Ukraine piece. The first half was intended to be sarcastic, and the last section sought to explain why overheated, US-centric rhetoric about Russia and Ukraine was all wrong. I probably should have made that clearer, so I apologize for any confusion!
Whoopsie
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This week I, amazingly, have two pieces up on Whoopi Goldberg, which is a humbling reminder that when you are an opinion columnist, you never truly know how the week is going to go.
The first is in the Daily Beast and looks at the imbroglio from the Jewish angle. I argue that it makes far more sense to educate Goldberg about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism than cancel her. I wrote the column before she was suspended for two weeks by ABC News, which I think is a truly short-sighted overreaction by the powers that be at the network.
For those of you who missed the controversy, in a discussion on the ABC News show “The View” about the recent decision of a Tennessee school board to remove the Holocaust book “Maus’ from the curriculum, Goldberg made some rather stupefying comments.
She said that the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews was “not about race” and that the Holocaust was about “two white groups of people. This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”
Here are a few bullet points on why this is badly wrong:
The epigraph to “Maus” is this quote by Adolf Hitler, “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” The Nazis most certainly thought Jews were a race.
Jews are not white. We are, as I like to say, off-white. Yes, we have white skin — and yes, we receive some of the benefits of white privilege, but the Nazis believed that Jews despoiled the white race. There’s a reason the original Nuremberg laws, passed in 1935, aimed to separate Jews and non-Jews by, in part, preventing intermarriage between the two groups. For a more recent example, look to the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 in which white supremacists marched through the streets chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Race is a social construct—and so too is whiteness. And these constructs have consistently and ostentatiously excluded Jews.
Goldberg conflates being a Jew with being Jewish. As I note in the piece, if you ask 10 Jews how we define ourselves, you’d likely get 11 answers. But many Jews, particularly those who are not religiously observant, would use the term Am Yisrael, which means the people of Israel, or the Jewish people, and a nation among all other nations. Enemies of the Jewish people don’t make these types of distinctions and don’t care about religious observance.
Lastly, Goldberg’s comments appeared to come not out of malice but rather ignorance — shocking ignorance, but ignorance nonetheless. She apologized for her comments, and the next day the View hosted Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti Defamation League, to explain what she got wrong. That’s a useful corrective and one that has the potential to turn this whole situation into a teachable moment. It’s a shame that ABC News chose to respond by suspending Goldberg, a move that feels more like the network trying to look like they’re doing something rather than a needed or useful action.
Stop Listening To Idiots
The other piece, which just went up, is at MSNBC and pivots off the one thing I find most shocking about this entire story — “The View” is part of ABC News. It’s considered a news show. As I note in the piece:
While the original panel of hosts for “The View” included two journalists, Meredith Vieira and Barbara Walters, the current group is a comedian (Joy Behar), an entertainer (Goldberg), a lawyer (Sunny Hostin) and a TV host (Sara Haines) who is the only one of the group with a background in journalism.
“The View” is intended to be entertainment and not hard-hitting reporting, and that’s a good explanation for why it’s more popular than, say, PBS’ “Washington Week.” But the hosts of “The View” do discuss serious, newsworthy topics — which is perhaps one of the reasons why they seem to so frequently make foolish or inappropriate comments.
The same is true of Joe Rogan, who rose to fame through his comedy career and getting people to eat live bugs on network television for cash prizes. Like 3/4 of the View hosts, he has no journalistic experience — and yet for millions of Americans, he has become a source of news and (mis) information.
This problem obviously runs deeper than just “The View” and Joe Rogan. The internet and modern media are inundated with people who posture as experts on topics they don’t fully understand. I see this quite a bit on the cable news networks, which often rely on 20something news producers to bring on talking heads to discuss breaking news, even though the news producers themselves don’t have a solid grasp of the issues being discussed. (This is why personal bete noire, the hackish Leon Panetta, keeps being relied upon for expert foreign policy analysis even though he frequently doesn't know what he’s talking about). I’ve frequently been asked to go on television and talk about foreign policy issues even though I may have no actual expertise on the topic being discussed. But because somewhere along the line, I got tagged as a “foreign policy expert,” I got invited on.
There is such a vast news hole to fill that the expertise bar consistently lowers. Moreover, as journalism has increasingly morphed into entertainment, these lines frequently get blurred — and the most entertaining or provocative are considered, at least by some, to be the most trusted news source. Or perhaps it’s just a case of people finding expertise in individuals who tell them what they already believe — or want to hear.
I’m not sure what the solution is to this problem — and clearly, there is a news consumer issue as well. If people are getting information about vaccines from Joe Rogan and “some guy they saw on the Internet,” they are partly to blame for being misinformed. But this situation ups the antes for established news organizations — and those aspiring to be content producers like Spotify — to exercise greater rigor in the kind of news programs they produce. I expect this kind of stuff from Fox News. Hell, it’s their business model. But broadcasting a show with five non-experts and non-journalists talking about the hottest issues of the day — as ABC News does — and calling it news is not upholding the highest media standards. It is, to put it bluntly, part of the problem.
What’s Going On
The US and Iran might be getting closer to an agreement to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
This is an excellent historical overview of how America fell in love with economic sanctions … even though they are largely ineffective.
Yair Rosenberg has a good take on whether Jews are a race.
WGBH’s Dan Kennedy looks at the Spotify revolt.
Fred Kaplan persuasively argues that the Ukraine crisis is not going well for Vladimir Putin.
Banning books is evidence of a sick society, and it’s happening at a record pace in Texas schools.
Musical Interlude
The picture above is from what I believe to be the peak of Whoopi Goldberg’s career - her star turn in the Penny Marshall movie, “Jumping Jack Flash (which leads to this rather obvious choice for today’s musical interlude).
For those of you who are part of a younger generation, yes, people in the 1980s listened to music played on cassette tapes and through orange headphones.
I had never heard this Marcia Shines cover version, and it’s fantastic.
Jeezus Pleezus, how can somebody like Goldberg (which last I knew signified an Israeli ex-husband or who knows what). She ain't no kid. Neither is she stupid. Maybe she just wanted to bust out on Twitter. Well, uh, she did succeed in that anyway.