Remember when you’d be with your friends, fooling around in some questionable manner, and then your mother would tell you to stop it, because “it’s all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt…”
And you and your friends would keep doing what you were told not to do, until, inevitably, someone would get hurt.
So, the last few days, a few of us bloggers have been irreverently hooting about San Franciscan’s foreskin fixation and it’s desire to outlaw circumcision.
And now…it’s getting uncomfortable:
If I were Jewish I would be getting uncomfortable.
Writes Bookworm:
Zombie has gotten hold of some of the campaign literature from those supporting the circumcision ban that made its way onto San Francisco’s November ballot. I am not kidding when I say that the material is indistinguishable from something the Nazis would have prepared . . .I read a headline today (and can’t, for the life of me, figure out where), stating that antisemitism is resurgent today in a way not seen since the eve of WWII. This kind of garbage makes that claim — a claim I don’t doubt is true — resonate with real force.
San Francisco in a very insulated, in its own way provincial little enclave where people are accustomed to thinking that everyone around them shares the same opinion. I am choosing to believe, for now, that this is merely the case of one person with vile views overconfidently overreaching within that community, and that he’ll be slapped down. If he’s not, then it might be time to get very worried, because, as someone mentioned in an email exchange:
San Francisco has always been a loony city, but it’s also been a leader. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my educational process started decaying big time, as the SF schools abandoned traditional teaching in favor of all the “new” theories coming out of the educational Left. Although we stopped learning, those failed techniques became de riguer in public education and are a large part of what’s driving our failing schools. Where San Francisco leads, even if off a cliff, too many other cities, anxious to appear forward looking, follow.
UPDATE: Instalanch! thanks Glenn! and welcome, Insty readers; while you’re here, please nose around. We’re also talking about whether another insulated community — that would be Hollywood — has too strong a hand in shaping social and cultural directions
UPDATE II:
In a new post, Max Lindenman has additional thoughts
Now, I’ll admit, Tatler makes a pretty good prima facie case. All the tropes of Nazi propaganda appear to be in ordnung. Foreskin Man is one of those blond Ubermensch types that Jesse Owens ate for breakfast. (Indeed, had the comic come out 20 years earlier, its film adaptation would have given Dolf Lundgren the role of a lifetime.) Monster Mohel and his henchmenschen could have been extras in The Eternal Jew. They’ve got that whole Shylock-on-meth look: shaggy beards and peyot, hooked noses, maniacal gleams in their beady eyes.
And yet, for me, it doesn’t quite add up.
Anti-Semitism has been called the oldest hatred, and I have no doubt it’ll always be around — somewhere, in some form. But if it’s re-emerged and metastasized in a major American urban center, I have a hard time believing it would take the form suggested by the tropes in this comic.
And because he is tireless, and also willing to listen to what his commenters say, Max has yet another post on the subject, complete with punny title. Do remember that Max’s last name is Lindenman.
When I read that Hess and his friends call themselves “inactivists,” my heart broke a little. That’s clever, damn it. Urbanites who are clever enough to come up with a name like that and geeky enough to draw passable comics have no business disliking Jews. If anything, they should BE Jews. But now I realize I’m stuck in the New York of my childhood. It’s w hole ugly new ball game out there.
UPDATE III: Neo-neocon finds Old Nazi Cartoons and other anti-semitic drawings with which to compare Foreskin Man. Go look.
I clicked through and read the thug in its entirety. Wow. That is just disgusting.
Should say read the thing, not thug. Stupid iPad.
Looking at that so-called “comic” I felt something cold and terrible.
Mary of the Immaculate Conception, pray for us.
Yes, I felt something cold and terrible too. And evil.
If this isn’t slapped down—and fast—things could get quite ugly. . .
“If I were Jewish I would be getting uncomfortable.”
You should be getting uncomfortable even tho you’re not Jewish. If this kind of thing continues, your turn will come.
It’s the way of the Left, ever since the French Terror.
That I could see this kind of thing in a US city while the men who liberated the camps were still alive is incredible.
I’m depressed to find that I’m finally old enough to see history repeating itself. Can you say “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”?
The “gentleman” behind these images (Mathew Hess), and his organization (mgmbillorg) hail from San Diego, not San Francisco.
See http://www.ForeskinMan.com
Yes, Datechguy, this is America, in the 21st Century, not Gernmany, 1930′s.
Or is it?
This is why the Israelis are the way they are,and why I am such a 2nd Amendment believer.This time it will truly be understood that when we say “Never Again”,we mean it.We,the jews,have come to understand the meaning of these threats,that is those of us who understood the debauched thinking of the left.And frankly the way I feel now I kind of like the idea of facing off with those lunatics.
This is the first I heard of this activism. I was told by my doctor when we made the decision for my first child that only one percent of babies were circumcised these days, and they are almost all Jewish.
Who are these activists? Are they queer-politics types or what? We have heard recent medical research indicates a lower likelihood of disease transmission for circumcised, so I am really puzzled why they have their shorts in abunch over it.
I’d feared for some time that this banning circumcision thing could lead to anti-semetism, since such a ban would be tantamount to banning Judaism.
I didn’t think the manifestation of it would be quite so ugly, however. . .
As a Californian, I can tell you that neither our ridiculous state nor any of our ridiculous cities are leading anything anymore. The nation is repudiating “progressivism,” and the elites here sense it.
What do fanatics do when they realize that their time is over? Double down, of course. You’re not seeing the beginning of an ominous new trend; you’re seeing the dying flatulence of furious, foolish, self-centered, superficial, childish, parent-hating clowns who know in their guts that California no longer leads the way, except into the garbage bin.
It makes them so angry that they’re in the tantrum phase. They’re pounding on the high-chair tray and throwing their puréed banana in all directions.
It is fortunate that San Francisco is an enclave who thinks everyone around them thinks like they do. Fortunate because SCOTUS doesn’t usually think their way. (9th Circuit left out for obvious reasons, though they occasionally visit the real universe.)
If this abortion of a law passes (Oh wait. Isn’t abortion right and good?) I predict that a mass Bris within the city limits will soon follow. A few years later (after a legal battle to which I intend to contribute financially) a high federal court will strike it down and SCOTUS (if it gets that far) will decline to review it.
Well, to be fair, this thing seems to have been put together by a guy in San Diego, a guy in Brazil, and a third guy in Canada. After a quarter century living in the Bay Area, I think I can say that antisemitism — while it is indeed all over the place — isn’t the main driver of this initiative in SF.
The Bay Area folk I know who are seriously exercised about infant circumcision are not interested in the ritual aspect of it; they simply think it a cruelty, and a deprivation of a natural right to maximum sexual pleasure. Many are very passionate about this issue — women as well as men — but I’ve never seen a trace of religious or ethnic animus.
When you see antisemitism in the Bay Area, it’s almost always tied somehow to Israel, and emanates from Muslim anti-Zionist students and their non-Muslim sympathizers. But Muslims practice ritual circumcision too; so that isn’t what’s going on here.
No, this blond beast of a superhero, and the Uzi-toting henchman with the Chassidic hair, and the super-villain with the super-yarmulke, all come from a different strain. One that I never thought to see in CA. Maybe it’s merely an incredibly elaborate leg-pull, but it doesn’t read like one.
Wonder what Dianne Feinstein has to say about it.
After all, that is her neck of the woods…
california is a large state. the ridiculous law is on the san francisco ballot… this odious ‘comic’ is from san diego.
The story I was getting, and I wrote about it awhile ago (http://edgeofthesandbox.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/oh-san-francisco/) is that the proposal, which is unlikely to pass, btw, is authored by a man with no history of involvement in children’s issues. He is an uncircumcised gay man who for some reason, although he has a steady boyfriend, feels ostracized. It all seemed pretty harmless. This comic is something new.
Further confirmation of the fundamental unity between leftism and Nazism.
Well, US leftists are into becoming ever more Euro-socialist, and they’re getting closer all the time.
I have a feeling that this sort of thing will spread. Anti-Semitism (masquerading as anti-Zionism) is all the rage in trendy circles nowadays.
Yet the images in that comic book are eerily familiar. They remind me of images and ideas that some secularists in the media love to use when portraying Christians, although (to the best of my knowledge) I have never seen a comic book like this one attacking Christians.
It is important to remember that some secularists do not distinguish between Jews and Christians; that as far as they are concerned we are all a bunch of Bible-thumpin’ (or Torah-thumpin’) bigots; that we are superstitions and ignorant barbarians who would never be permitted to exist in a proper modern scientific society. The secularists who think like this are few in number (I hope!), but I would not underestimate their influence.
Every type of “socialism”, whether democratic, national, or international, is based on some collective group, collective guilt … collective hate.
Individualism, American and classical liberal (~libertarian), is opposed to group identity / socialism.
It’s easiest to form groups by agreeing on what to be against:
Vietnam war, racism, population explosion, fur, whale hunting / all hunting, global warming, tax cuts (for the rich!), immigrants, Jews, Republicans … liberals.
Some conservatives are also guilty, immigrants, liberals above, but the group identity focus is socialistic, “us vs. them”, hate inducing.
Too bad so many liberals have so much entertainment talent, and tell better jokes. But the entertainment/ Hollywood industry is far too anti-individualistic; and anti-American.
TO: All
RE: It’s Only ‘Natural’….
….that the homosexuals would hate the Jews, as well as the Christians, for God’s dictums against their unnatural behavior.
Expect to see more of this sort of behavior on their part. And it’ll get a LOT more ‘interesting’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[We were warned—in that Old Book—that things would be like this.]
you know what an uncircumcised Jewish child is called?
A girl.
Mohel: The pay isn’t much, but the tips aren’t much either.
The “artwork” of the “comic” isn’t bad– too bad it’s such an ugly theme.
Yes, it’s anti-Semitic … next damn-fool question?
I think this sort of madness is a feature of a society with more free time and affluence that it knows what to do with. Does any man–at least one not obsessed with other mens genitals–spend 5 seconds of his life lamenting the tragedy of the lost foreskin?
That this would turn into another excuse to demonize the Jews is just the icing on a poisonous cake. God help us all.
“Should say read the thing, not thug. Stupid iPad.”
No, I think you were right the first time.
And Nancy Peloso????
It may be a local, not national issue, but outrageous antisemitic stuff like this should at least be commented on and condemned by any politician.
The basic idea behind this is that it is an elective surgery being done on someone incapable of giving informed consent. However, these kinds of decisions are made by parents not infrequently during a child’s early years and society makes the assumption that a parent will be acting in the best interests of the child. I personally don’t think it necessary or wise to do this procedure, but I confine expression of my opinion to cases where I am asked about it or it is implicitly relevant to a conversation about such matters. I don’t wear a button. That said, I wonder whether those involved on the legally coercive side of this argument have considered the fact that, in all likelihood, most of their number, who are vehemently expressing the need to acknowledge “rights” heretofore unknown that are to be enforced by the state in these cases, would defend the “right’ of the mother of that same infant to suck its brains out and deliver it dead to the world only a few days earlier. Modernity is reaching its age of senility. It is starting to make less, and less sense.
Just to make a correction: All Muslim babies are circumcised as well.
Funny how they are the ones being vilified.
To ban one of the commandments of God is one more step in total rebellion against God, which is a pre-cursor of the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Posted by Rev. Daniel W. Blair, author of Final Warning http://www.revelation-truth.org
Recovering Lutheran, the images in this comic are familiar because they’re very similar to images in the Nazi mag “Der Sturmer”, and Nazi propaganda in general; evil, hooknosed Jewiish males, threatening “Aryan” children and females. Been there, done that, we’ve seen it all before.
And you are right. Far as the seculairists are concerned, Jews and Christians are all Bible thumpers together, and they hate them with a passion.
Christians will not escape the next big persecution.
If the creators of this “comic” get slapped down the way they so richly deserve, watch them try to make the case that it was just “satire”, too ironic for us rubes to get.
The way this comic treats the Jewish people is disgusting and actually worthy of a NAZI/Hitler comparison because it truly is rabidly anti-semitic. This is also the way that anyone to the right of Stalin is treated by the “progressive” fools…pathetic.
RebeccaH, I say in this case, we don’t let them get away with that excuse—at all.
(Besides, in order to count as humor, something has to be, well, actually funny—this stuff isn’t.)
Surprise, surprise. The Left is anti-Semitic. How dare these Jews be smarter than the Arabs. How dare they win all
those Nobel prizes. The gay community in SF is aging and in decline for the same reason that we have almost no Shakers
left. They have become irrelevant and are making all these
strange loud noises to be noticed.
I empathize with the comment that they think everyone thinks like they do. I find in general the more anything to do with sexual orientation or sexual identiy comes into play the more narrow the definitation of what it means to be ‘human’ becomes.
Wow, that’s really disturbing. I have to say, when the blog posts about this circumcision legality issue in SF came up, I have read with interest. I’m a semi-crunchy Catholic and my husband and I chose to not circumcise our son when he was born a little over a year ago, based on the medical research we did and information we received from our doctor. I know people interpret the literature differently, but based on what I read I found that circumcision could be necessary at some point but does not need to be done routinely for every boy at birth. (I know others will choose differently for the chance of their son needing it later in life, and that’s fine. I respect that when people make an informed decision – most people in my “world” just accept it as status quo without question, that it must be done. And think we are freaks to not circ.) All that to say, I kind of understand a little of where these people in SF were coming from originally…though I would stop far short of banning it. Raise awareness so people can make an informed decision, yes; force them to not give this procedure to their baby if they want it, no. For the record, we have Muslim friends who don’t circ either.
Circumcision is now deemed “immoral” by the Catholic Church (in most cases).
Catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraph 2297 states in part:
“Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”
“Thus, a circumcision is a non-therapeutic amputation and mutilation. Therefore, for Catholics, non-therapeutic circumcision at any age is immoral according to the teaching of the Church as expressed in the Catechism.” cirp.com
As a Jewish man, this didn’t make me nearly as uncomfortable as when they cut my foreskin off without my permission.
I’m not convinced by Max’s belabored-hipster-irony theory. I think a more likely theory is that, whether or not Hess and his illustrators are themselves avowedly anti-Semitic, they created an overtly anti-Semitic comic to create a controversy that would draw attention to the issue — trolling, in other words.
[check his site -- he's reconsidered some of that --admin]
It is hard to believe that people who consider themselves educated and sophisticated could come up with something that awful. I should not be shocked or surprised, but I am.
I have several Jewish American correspondents. None of them is a believer and they are all Democrats, like most of their community. Funny, that, isn’t it? It’s almost as if they didn’t believe what the likes of Bookworm are saying, as if they scornfully rejected what the Republicans “offer” them.
[Bookworm is herself a secular-minded Jew who has moved from left to right --admin]
The actual concept of banning circumcision is something that could be looked at. Banning ritual slaughter is another one, especially after the barbarity of halal has been exposed time and again:
http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/05/31/the-horror-of-halal-slaughter/
Who is actually saying that kosher is any better than halal, or that one kind of circumcision or the other involves visiting this practice on infants who can’t give their consent? I can’t say I’ve made circumcision my area of expertise, but I do support the banning of FGM and if this is anything like it then I won’t complain.
As for San Francisco, I could no more live in it than I could in London, New York, or any other megacity that is little more than a car park filled with immigrants and tourists.
Yes, I know, and I see that Bookworm often bemoans the fact that the majority of Jewish Americans are Democrats. I just happen to think they’ve made the right choice. And I think Republicans need to ask why a constituency which isn’t even particularly left-wing for the most part is so set against them, and whether it has to do with their own policies and actions.
“If this kind of thing continues, your turn will come.
It’s the way of the Left, ever since the French Terror.”
5 Marty.
IOW, Marty’s saying a lot of folks are slow to notice.
If I were Jewish I would be getting uncomfortable
>>>
No, if I was a Jew out in SF, I’d be getting angry, ARMED, and ready, not “uncomfortable”
I write as a 70-year-old American Catholic circumcised a few days after birth. I have heard all the propaganda about sensual pleasures I have reportedly been denied by that act. I have known only one man (or at least have been aware of only one) who was circumcised as an adult: an Italian-American Catholic five years younger than myself who was circumcised during his stint in the Army. When, decades ago, I asked his opinion on this question, since he had known both sides, he answered with a knowing smile: Best decision I ever made in my life. I have read of the same reaction among Soviet Jews who made it to Brighton Beach in NY. After consulting other immigrant Jews circumcised as adults, they hurried to have it done for themselves, and not always for reasons of deep piety. So perhaps the propaganda is wrong. We know the general orientation of a lot of San Francisco males. Their criteria may differ from the norm. Because it is helpful in avoiding transfer of viruses, one might think they would be in favor of enforcing it. The personal, after all, is always the political for the Left, and freedom and personal choice be damned. Except, of course, in the sacramental matter of abortion.
All the PARANOID people who can’t look themselves in the mirror … circumcision is a pagan remnant of human evolution.
Why exactly is the male prepuce the only normal, healthy, functional human body part that we consider inherently disposable?
I keep asking this question and nobody ever provides a defensible answer. I just get knee-jerk programmed responses about “religious freedom” or “parental rights” or “potential medical benefits” as though they were some kind of blank check trump cards.
The problem is, those clearly don’t justify cutting off other normal, healthy, functional human body parts, let alone far lesser harms such as tattooing or decoratively scarring babies or the like.
So why exactly should the law have this radical and extreme exception to its default standard of equality otherwise?
Why is it only the male prepuce that can be amputated at whim, in defiance of the existing standards of law?
Religious freedom, parental rights, potential medical benefit and the similar given justifications are clearly insufficient to overrule the existing regulations about cutting parts off human beings, let alone just permanently marking them.
So why exactly are they supposed to justify this singular and unique exception to the law for only the male prepuce?