{"id":111,"date":"2011-06-04T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T19:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=111"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:05:00","slug":"foreskin-man-peeling-back-the-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/06\/foreskin-man-peeling-back-the-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreskin Man: Peeling Back the Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Product
\nA vigilant reader has informed me that I was entirely wrong in supposing that Foreskin Man,<\/strong><\/a> the comic put out by San Francisco circumcision opponents, was someone\u2019s bad idea of meta-humor. The artist, Matthew Hess, is a real person of real German ancestry \u2014 not, as I had hoped, a Jewish prankster who named himself after a Nazi for a lark. <\/p>\n

Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle<\/i> interviewed Hess.<\/strong><\/a> The interview is brief, but still revealing:<\/p>\n

UPDATE:I spoke with Matthew Hess of Foreskinman.com this morning. I asked him if the comic is anti-Semitic. He answered, \u201cA lot of people have said that, but we\u2019re not trying to be anti-Semitic. We\u2019re trying to be pro-human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cnext issue will deal with a different kind of circumcision.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he gave me permission to post material from the site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not anit-Semitic, but pro-human rights, huh? Well, now we know anti-circumcision activists can be just as mealy-mouthed as any other activists. I also have to wonder just what other kind of circumcision Foreskin Man is going to tackle in the next issue. Having taken down Monster Mohel, will he go after the Malevolent Mullah? <\/p>\n

My reader made a point which I think valid. He said I had dismissed evidence that failed to jibe with the picture of the world I\u2019d formed already. I had figured that anti-Semitism \u2014 at least of the overt, Nazi-like kind that Hess is plugging \u2014 was confined to the margins of America\u2019s political dialogue. Sure, some far-leftists\u2019 support for Palestine might evolve into a hatred of the so-called Israel lobby, but they\u2019d have little to gain by banning circumcision. Sure, Jesse Jackson and Cornel West might pop off at the Jews every once in a while, but they would not expect any Aryan to avenge them; they\u2019ve got serious Aryan issues of their own.<\/p>\n

When I read that Hess and his friends call themselves \u201cinactivists,\u201d my heart broke a little. That\u2019s clever,<\/i> 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\u2019m stuck in the New York of my childhood. It\u2019s whole ugly new ball game out there. <\/p>\n

My reader also warns of a new breed of anti-Semite I couldn\u2019t have dreamed up in a million years:<\/p>\n

In this instance, I think it\u2019s yet a third kind of acceptable anti-Semitism, a little-known one yet one that is persistent especially in California: Gay activist anti-Semitism. A certain subset of gays are strong \u201cuncut\u201d proponents and want all penises to have foreskins because they prefer them that way, and so try to force the world to comply; when they get the biggest pushback from Jewish groups, their frustration turns to hatred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have no idea if he\u2019s right. (I certainly don\u2019t pretend to know anything about Matthew Hess\u2019s sexual orientation.) But if he is \u2014 wow. Isn\u2019t anti-Semitism supple? Isn\u2019t it versatile? It slices, it dices, it makes Julienne fries! Historically, it\u2019s proven able to provide a solution and an explanation for anything, even mediocre sex. Speaking from the Jewish side of my family, I quote the Scots: Whae\u2019s like us? Damn few, an\u2019 they\u2019re a\u2019 deid.<\/em><\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> It\u2019s occurred to me that some readers may not understand what\u2019s so anti-Semitic about Hess\u2019s portrayal of Monster Mohel and his band of no-goodniks. In a way, that\u2019s a good thing \u2014 it suggests ancient slanders and stereotypes have fallen so far out of common use as to look new. Well, sorry to break it to everyone, but there\u2019s nothing new under the sun \u2014 especially not the act of depicting Jews as ugly, hook-nosed ruthless monsters who harm children. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a poster from Der Ewiger Jude,<\/i> or the Eternal Jew, a 1940 Nazi propaganda film:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one from Jud Suss,<\/i> or Suss the Jew, which came out the same year:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I wish I could say these stereotyped images began with the Nazis, but they didn\u2019t; they\u2019re much older. Here\u2019s a fresco from St. Paul\u2019s church in Sandomierz, Poland:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

No, they\u2019re not circumcising the kid; they\u2019re about to kill him and pour his blood into their Passover matzoh. Will Hess be able to top that in his next issue? We\u2019ll just have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> For an object lesson in how propagandists use distorted images to demonize their enemies, here\u2019s an engraving of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, the man whose life formed the basis of the movie Jud Suss:<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t look very foreign or very threatening, does he?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A vigilant reader has informed me that I was entirely wrong in supposing that Foreskin Man, the comic put out by San Francisco circumcision opponents, was someone\u2019s bad idea of meta-humor. The artist, Matthew Hess, is a real person of real German ancestry \u2014 not, as I had hoped, a Jewish prankster who named himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,59,60,61,94,156,209],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-semitism","tag-circumcision","tag-circumcision-ban","tag-comics","tag-foreskin-man","tag-matthew-hess","tag-san-francisco"],"yoast_head":"\nForeskin Man: Peeling Back the Mystery<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A vigilant reader has informed me that I was entirely wrong in supposing that Foreskin Man, the comic put out by San Francisco circumcision opponents, was\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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