Is Media Matters’ depiction of Seth Grossman anti-Semitic?

By Rubashov

Eric Hananoki is a DC-based, DC-educated opposition researcher and writer for Media Matters – a leftwing organization that supplements the Democrat Party with attacks on its Republican opponents.  Mr. Hananoki is a good writer – very readable, entertaining, biased in the extreme, but you expect that from an outfit like Media Matters.  He serves his masters, which can be a compromise on his art.  It’s an old story well detailed by Cyril Connelly in his “Enemies of Promise.”

So much for the writer, who posted a rather crushing story today on the campaign of Seth Grossman.  A Republican candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s 2nd District.  A longtime Libertarian from Atlantic City, Grossman was an eccentric member when he served in county and local government. 

Seth Grossman can be described as the Kinky Friedman of New Jersey – sometimes a strict constitutionalist, at others espousing a hippy individualism.  Grossman has argued for legal drugs and prostitution, said the State should default on its debt, and has given speeches in which he’s fondly recalled the days when the mob ran his home town.  Grossman has that kind of shoot-from-the-hip, radical honesty you almost never find in politics.

Yes my comrades, people love to be lied to – especially liberals – who lack that shitty exterior many conservatives develop.  “That’s not piss… it’s dew,” they advise us, as they skip from rationalized disappointment to the dawn of new and more hopeful disappointments. 

But honesty can be entertaining.  It can even be art.  Maybe a transgressive form, but still art, and we think a writer like Eric Hananoki – one day, when he’s ditched his current paymasters – one day, will get that about Kinky Grossman.

Not so the editor for Media Matters who selected the photo of Grossman for the story.  Whoever choose that picture read the name “Grossman” and went right for caricature.  He or she has the same ham-fisted touch as those propagandists who did “The Eternal Jew” for Joseph Goebbels in 1940 – and who made it too over-the-top for even him.

So careful now Mr. Hananoki.  You don’t want to get mixed up with a group of anti-Semites.  We thought we were done with them after they put out the last fire in Berlin, but who would have thought they’d be back – and so many, Left and Right.  Perhaps we’re too liberal in our expectations?  A conservative would have expected mankind to neglect the past, to unlearn it and forget.  Stupid, stupid, stupid, but we always do… until the times comes and there’s a great re-learning thrust upon us.

Take care now, Mr. Hananoki.  Mind the company you keep.